trying to do it differently - parenting after an abusive childhood?

[Leonine]

Any other mummies out there who'd like a sort of support thread on the particular challenges (and joys!) of being a parent yourself if you grew up in the kind of family that you really don't want as a role model for your own? My own childhood was very, very emotionally abusive and that affects me as a mother in lots of ways, good and bad. Good in that I try to do things as differently from them as possible, and a fair bit of the time I succeed; bad... more complicated. I'm hoping that if there are other mums going through the same kind of thing you'll understand where I'm coming from. I'm not looking for answers as such as I've already spent a long time coming to terms with these issues; more for shared experience of what is inevitably a painful situation in some ways or others, and how to manage that. If there are others out there in a similar position, would be good to hear from you!

"Good in that I try to do things as differently from them as possible, and a fair bit of the time I succeed; bad... more complicated."

Know where you are coming from and would definately be interested.

Im intrested too - i know were you are comming from too!!

Signing in

I'm muddling along as well.

Good to hear from you all! Thank you for replying. Had to post and run last night, DS woke up and took ages to settle. Am on my own with him today so no time for this really but will try and post more tonight, a bit more background and so on, now I know there are some others out there!

mussyhillmum I like the phrase muddling along, that's how it feels a lot of the time...

I'm expecting my second and that has thrown up huge issues for me.

I have a sister. Our relationship (or lack of) makes it difficult for me to see siblings as a good thing. Even though DH gets along brilliantly with his.

Part of the reason we have such a large gap - nearly 6 years(so it wouldn't be the same gap as me and sis), I'm also glad ds is a boy so I won't be repeating the two girls thing what ever sex the baby is.

Funnily enough dh is 6 years older than his sis and we think this baby might be a girl - so we are repeating his family patterns rather than mine which is comforting.

I have also read (several times) sibling rivalry and have 'how to talk' on order. I have to have a structure/plan - having none from my own childhood to deal with.

Does anyone else find that part of the problem is working out what your parents did that was terrible and what wasn't? It's difficult for me trying to parent without relying on just doing what they didn't - reactive parenting if you like, not proactive.

That's what I'm trying to get out of atm. So to come up with a positive way of dealing with ds rather than just doing the opposite of whatever my parents did.

He is happy, getting on well at school, generally well behaved, not scared of us and excited about the new baby, which must mean I'm not doing too badly.

He's certainly much happier/more confident since we stopped seeing my parents. His nightmares have stopped and even the school have noticed a huge difference. That alone is enough to stop me going back to them.

SOrry I've written an essay

For me what has worked has been

a) Advice from Mumsnet

b) Books - giving me a background understanding of abuse and what effect it has, how to break the cycle and practical ones like How to talk etc.

c) Counselling. For me this came at the "end" of the process of wising up (not that that ever really stops, but YKWIM). By the time I went to counselling, I'd done the books, parenting courses and MN threads, but it was simply the liberation of saying out loud to someone who would not contradict me or look sceptically at me, that I realised I didn't have a functioning mother or father, which made me feel ... well, liberated. I walked out of that room feeling free - I know it's a cliche, but I really did feel as though I'd dropped a burden I hadn't even known I'd been carrying all my life. I remember thinking "bloody hell, this is what normal people feel like all the time."

Since then, I've felt confident and happy as a parent - I know that I'm not doing any worse a job now, than I would have done if I'd had functional parents. I'm not complacent and I always question myself, but I've let go of the doubts and constant fear that I'd damage my children as much as I was damaged. I went through a phase of almost doing "parenting by numbers" - doing what Supernanny/ Tanya Byron etc. said, but I now feel confident enough to dump all that and follow my own instincts - because I now trust myself to have good instincts, in a way that even five years ago I couldn't.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is whatever way works for you, you can let go of the past and genuinely enjoy being a parent and be confident about it. It's a journey, but if you're prepared to do it and be honest with yourself, you'll get there.

This book I found very useful in helping me understand how my family dynamics had worked and what effect it had had on me - it helped me understand my own motivations and behaviour.

And this one told me in practical terms what to do to try and ensure that my kids don't go out into the world as damaged as I was.

Can I sign in too?

It's a challenge for me every day. Sometimes I hear the words of my emotionally abusive mother coming out of my mouth. But I have worked so, so hard (counselling, self- therapy (writing stuff down/journalling, self-calming techniques).

It has been the project of the last 7 years since the birth of ds1 and has taken me to some very dark places indeed. Hardest thing I've ever done.

HerBeatitude, great links.

Me too. I consciously try and give my DC's the things I never had from my parents, love, affection, attention.

But some days I end up feeling like I am doing things just like my dad, shouting at the DC's for no reason other than my own issues which are nothing to do with them.

I take comfort from the fact that even though I do have bad days, I know with absolute certainty that my DC's childhood already isn't and will never be anything like mine. I have 2 DC's, close in age, and I do everything I can to make sure they are close and not turned against each other like me and my sisters were.

Gosh, i could go on forever and write an essay, but it's good to know there are others out there feeling like I do and sharing our experiences is such a good idea.

I think we all need to remember that "normal" people who had normal, loving, functional childhoods, also get annoyed at their DC's, shout at them, say awful things to them, feel ashamed of their behaviour afterwards...

For years I felt such a weight of trying so hard to be different from my parents, I beat myself up about every single little mistake instead of accepting that all parents make mistakes and you have to forgive yourself, say sorry and move on. I've now got to the point where I can say sorry to my DC's and not feel that "OMG I'm ruining their childhood", because I know that on the whole, I'm not.

As long as the overall direction is right, a few wrong turns won't do lasting damage. It's taken me years to accept that.

Hello and welcome to everyone who's posted, it's great to have this response.

I've actually had a really good day with DS today, no shouting or episodes of total unreasonableness (from me, I mean - from him it's appropriate behaviour given he's only 2, although I don't think there was much from him either today!) - and I do have a fair amount of good days; but underneath it, all the time, there's always this welter of grief/rage/pain which is just as real as the happiness and love I share with DH and DS. I think for me one of the issues is how do I make space for that dark side of things, when nearly all my time is taken up looking after DS. So I suppose I'm hoping to be able to vent/rant a bit on here sometimes, among people who get it. If ranting on here saves me even one episode of shouting at DS - as you put it cherry, for no reason other than my own issues - then that's got to be a good thing, I think.

allegra I totally know what you mean about hearing your mother's words coming out of your mouth - I sort of feel like I start channelling my mother/father/brother when a rage starts, it's horrible, it's almost as if I physically become one of them, and I still haven't found a foolproof way of breaking through that. Me and my therapist come up with lots of solutions, some behavioural, some based more on trying to heal the original pain/damage that the rage is coming from, but it just goes so deep, and even if one technique works for a while, it kind of loses its power sooner or later. I've been working on this stuff for a very long time and I know what you're saying about the dark places, and how hard it is.

HerBeatitude I think you're absolutely right about not beating yourself up because you make some mistakes, and that in fact it's normal to do so. And you're spot on about the overall intention being the most important thing. It's so hard though when you don't have a barometer of what normal parenting is. Like you say fairybaby the relationship is so loaded when you come from an abusive background. My DH also constantly tells me that I'm doing a brilliant job, and DS and I (v similar age to yours, 2.7) have an extremely close and loving relationship, he gets more love from me in a week than I've had in all my life from my parents. And sometimes logically I can step back and see that he is doing great and that whatever I get wrong isn't going to blot out all the good stuff.

But the legacy of my childhood and having the rage of three people all bigger and stronger than me constantly dumped on me and never being able to express any rage myself, means that I now have a ton of anger and not enough outlets for it. I don't want to be hard on myself as I realise that this is a result of being abused and not a choice I made, but I don't want to say well I can't help it and not bother to deal with it either. Sometimes I think I try to deal with it till I'm blue in the face! but it kills me to put my DS through that, and myself. It's like I'm walking a tightrope - will I/won't I blow up - and it must be a little bit like that for him - and of course that's just what it was like for me, growing up with them.

I think we internalise our parents - nothing you can do about it at the time, it just happens - and then it's not till you become a parent yourself that you find out just HOW deeply they are internalised inside you. Well, that's how it was for me, anyway - I thought I had done such a raft of work on myself before I had DS that I never for one moment anticipated that I would find myself replicating some aspects of their behaviour to me. Talk about a rude awakening. But I do have to try and keep in mind, as others say, that I am ultimately a VERY different kind of mother from my own mother and that the love he gets from me will carry him through a lot, and I can already see that in fact.

I too have written an essay... thread starter's perogative - have not started one before!! Armadillo it really sounds like your DS is benefitting hugely from you going NC with your parents, so that's a good sign. I've been NC with my whole family for some years now, more or less, and I know it's the right decision but it doesn't stop it from being a painful one afaic. When DS was born and all the other new mums I knew were in constant contact with their own mothers, lots of visits back and forth for the ones who weren't local, I didn't want it to hurt because I wanted to just focus on how incredibly happy I was to finally be a mummy myself, and put them behind me. But it did hurt, and it still does.

There's an awful lot I want to say on this... is it obvious?! I do hope this conversation continues, thanks again to all who have replied so far.

Can I join? Nt got much time to post now as I'm off to bed but loads of stuff is ringing true on this thread for me.
I've just finished some CBT which I found dealt with my symptoms rather than the underlying causes. I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet, I still feel there's an undercurrent of rage that really needs to bne dealt with but I don't know where to find the space...
I've been NC with my father for 7 years, never had the courage to go NC with my mother... Parents got divorced when I was 4 and spent all their time pitting me and my brother against the other parent. My mother also feels entirely justified in only seeing my father's behaviour as damaging.
Like others have said, my biggest challenge is knowing what's 'normal' and I really lack confidence in what I'm doing emotionally with my dc but I'm confident in my ability to teach them practical things like potty training, putting clothes on etc...

bad day today trying to toilet train recalcitrant ds2 who has turned from angel baby into normal stroppy toddler rather late (3- I missed the terrible twos).

Took the boys out with a childless couple friend of mine and ended up feeling so tense as the boys were running around and being noisy and refusing to do as told, ended lunch wanting to yell at everyone. By evening I was exhausted to the point of crying and I so nearly shouted at them but didn't. I was too tired to read the bedtime story (up at 5 45) but I still did it....

does anyone sometimes feel that because you didn't have the care you needed you ahve to dredge it up from a place where sometimes it feels there is nothing left...am I making sense???

hope all are doing OK. I feel like the world's shittest mother today.

Something I really hate in myself is how I sometimes find myself judging my children as 'bad' boys and then of course blaming myself (I'm a bad mum...) I know my mum always judged me and I feel I reproduce it...argh.

Hi to puddle and glad you've joined in, yes it is so hard to find the space to deal with it all. Hope it helps to have some space here.

allegra, what you said "does anyone sometimes feel that because you didn't have the care you needed you ahve to dredge it up from a place where sometimes it feels there is nothing left" rang so so true for me. So many times I have felt that - that feeling of having absolutely nothing left in the tank - and yet you still have to go on and find something, somehow, from somewhere, making something out of nothing. But another thing I've thought about that is that although I experience that most obviously and physically with DS, the root even of that feeling is in my childhood. My family just took and took and took from me, emotionally. All in different ways, and often very covertly, but for example the way I had to put up with them verbally abusing me over and over again, had to put up with being endlessly hurt by their ridicule, judgement, blame, and just nastiness BUT act as if everything was completely normal and fine and I wasn't hurt and we were this lovely, normal, loving, happy family - that was totally exhausting and left me completely depleted, and I had to do it day in, day out for years. With never any thanks, obviously. At least with motherhood you do get rewards for the unending effort!

Don't know if that's any use, I'm not in any way diminishing just how tough the reality of mothering very young children can be, especcially as you say when we didn't get the care we needed ourselves and so have few resources to draw on, but I find it helps me in my relationship with DS if I can place the negative feelings that come up back in an earlier context, back with the shitheads who really hurt me and didn't love me like they were supposed to and pretended to.

And I would also like to categorically say that although I know that feeling, you are categorically NOT the world's shittest mother!!!! Anyone who cares enough to do the work you're doing on yourself and go to those scary dark places is a very loving, caring mother, in my book. And you didn't shout and you did read the bedtime story too, well done for that!

Hope tomorrow's a better day.

can I join in?

it is really hard, and if all you ever do is attempt to be different to your own upbringing then you still end up doing something that is indirectly moulded by your own awful past, iyswim. The trick which I do not claim to have mastered is to find a way to accept that you are not your parents and to feel able to do what is right for you without comparing it to what happened before. Just because your abusive mother gave you beans on toast on a saturday, does not mean you cannot also give beans on toast on a saturday. It can be really hard though to separate out the bits that are 'you' from the bits that are just a product of them.

Struggling with all this and mostly just fighting to remain compos mentis and not allow myself to go anywhere near that dangerous dark door marked 'depression'. I think my mother's profound misery and dissatisfaction with life did more to damage my family than anything else.

Sorry not sure if any of this made sense other than in my own head.

Another who'd like to join..

1. What's been said about giving and caring, but feeling empty quite quickly struck a cord with me. I guess those with 'normal' parents can feel love and care from them. They can lean on them for advice to get them through the tough bits of parenting maybe ?

I miss this, I think. But I'm only guessing having never had it.

2. I felt very sad when other friends had kids they all seemed to spend a lot of times with their own mothers.

I used to go shopping alone struggling - as a first time mum ( not enjoying it ) then kept seeing loads of mums with their little one and the granny, having fun, helping each other sharing the work. It made me miss having a 'normal' mum more. My mum was/is so unkind & toxic I could never imagine doing anything like this !

3. Sibling stress. Since having one child I have been very scared they will fight/argue/hate each other. Its so hard to see how they won't, as that is all I have known before. I have read the Fab Siblings without Rivalry book, which helps.

It feels like it will be so hard to deal with because I just dont know how and cant imagine how you have siblings in the same family who get along ???

I am just very fearful and annoyed I cant relax and enjoy my kids early years. My own Miserable childhood keeps coming into my mind.

Now I have kids myself, I have been really shocked how my parents could have been so unloving. How can you not love your kids?? Has anyone else had shocks like this ??

Opps sorry is very long !

I am a Mum of three, one girl of six and boy-girl twins of 3 years, in Greater London.

What a brilliant thread.
I wonder if there really is such thing as a "normal" mum? I seem to spend all my time trying to discover how "normal mums" are and trying to pretend to be one - like Herbeatitude says: parenting by numbers. But then I feel that this is just an illusion anyway. I had always thought that my parents were normal and perfect until I had counselling and realised that maybe all this stuff wasn't just coming from me, inherently, and was all my fault but that things in my childhood weren't actually normal or acceptable.
I feel like I can maybe see a way forward by thinking back to how I was treated and what effect that had on me and how I felt to try to find some kind of instinctive feelings as to how to parent. I must say, by thinking really deeply about the situations which I experienced and what would have helped me - with a lot of help from a counsellor - I found my way to Alfie Kohn's book "Unconditional Parenting" which I found really great.
I'm really interested in what you have all had to say - it helps a lot when your thoughts are going round and round in circles to hear someone else's ideas.

I have been watching this thread and would like to contribute - though feel I will repeat so much of what has already been said as it chimes so much with my feelings. I had a emotionally and at times physically abusive father and 2 siblings with mental illness and another sister who lives with an abusive partner. I have had no contact with any of my family for the last 10 yrs and before that a long time of little contact. I found the arrival of my first daughter incredibly emotionally challenging and it brough out a lot of pain. Like others have said the lack of my own mother to support me was hard.

I too struggle with what is normal - my father did crazy things like not allow us to speak at the dinner table (no glass of water either) and lots of other oddball behaviours, one of which is talking to himself which I also do and try really hard not to. I find that it feels sometimes like the only way to be understood - my husband knows my background though we have not talked about it much so I feel on my own with it.

One big issue I have now and I would appreciate any advice/thoughts is that my father in law is a milder (much milder) version of my father - he likes to put other people down, has an explosive temper etc and I am really finding it hard to deal with this person. My MIL tells me that his father hated him so he has issues in his own past but unlike me, he will never apologise for his behaviour. I now find that all of my anger that once was directed remotely towards my own family is now directed at my PIL's and I really need to deal with this for the sake of my husband and children.

Another thing I would say I worry about is the fact that I have so much baggage to deal with sometimes makes me worry I am mentally absent for my very small children - my mother was too wrapped up in her (numerous problems) with my father and had 4 children under 10 so I do now appreciate how hard it was for her but she had nothing left for us, there was nothing good in life and she gave no encouragement for the future and I worry that my own lack of optimism will cloud my children's life.

Leonine (and everyone else on this thread), I just want to offer you a bear hug and say well done for fighting through this. Everyone has childhood difficulties of one sort or another to work through, but an abusive childhood is a huge weight and it sounds like, emotionally speaking, you're living up to your MN name. Our childhood experiences do not have to create unbreakable patterns for our adult lives, you clearly realise this. Your children are very lucky.

Huge kudos to you all.

Hello all and welcome to all the new posters, everyone who feels they identify with the theme of this thread is very, very welcome to join in. It is always helpful to read other people's stories/experiences and I think someone somewhere always draws support from someone else talking about the kind of stuff that isn't often talked about. My personal view is that one of the purposes of a thread like this can be for people to work things out as they go along, so if it is a case of just getting things out without being sure if they make sense, that's great! And actually they ususally do make sense to others anyway.

afterall, re the situation with your PILs, like you say this is the anger that used to be directed at your own family, and my opinion, fwiw, is that that is the place to start in dealing with it again now. I don't mean you have to get angry with your family directly, ie actually communicate with them - I know from experience how pointless that can be - but if you can find a way to do some anger work of some sort that involves recognising that they are the real root cause of your anger, maybe it would help.

I personally find this one a biggie - I carry so much anger against my family but I cannot express it to them because they aren't that interested in me. It's so frustrating and disempowering to be angry with people who don't care that you're angry with them. So I have to bring it back to what I can do - I have various techniques including writing and visualisations (really evil ones - they don't have to be all floaty and la-la! you can be as horrible as you like when you know that it's only in your own head and you're not actually wishing harm on anyone!) and I try to work through the anger that way, rather than taking it out on DS and DH if possible.

And also to let yourself be human. Even if your original anger does stem from your own parents, your PIL still sounds like a deeply provoking and difficult man to be around, and if that upsets you - well, don't you have a right to be upset by that? My MIL is staying with us this week and she's a godsend in some ways and incredibly hard work in others; it also usually sets me off when she's here simply because it rubs it in that I'm cut off from my own family and the effort they should be making that they're not. Tonight, after being a model of patience all week, I blew up at DH over something of nothing once she and DS were in bed - not all that nice of me but I'm only human and have been very restrained, and better that than if I blew up at DS or at her and more easily resolved. But obviously I don't know how much this relates to you and how much the situation with PILs is encroaching on your relationship with your DH and DCs.

Simic - I really related to what you said about thinking your parents were normal till you had counselling, and this: "and realised that maybe all this stuff wasn't just coming from me, inherently, and was all my fault but that things in my childhood weren't actually normal or acceptable". They do make you think it's all you, don't they? Mine did, anyway. I think of it as brainwashing. It's an on-going process, I think, to debrief yourself from that massive onslaught of being force fed lies, distortions and more lies in your formative years.

As lots of people have said, we are VERY different to our parents - just the fact that we are thinking about this stuff marks a difference. My parents never sat and agonised about how the way they were treating me was affecting me and how they could possibly do it differently. They just put the blame on me. I cannot be the mother I would have been had I had a really loving, emotionally stable upbringing myself, but I try to be the best mother I can be in the world that actually exists. And I too feel a really, really profound sense of connection to my son, which is gradually transforming my whole world.

speedy, thank you so much for your post! It meant a lot to me. I do feel like I've spent most of my life fighting a huge invisible battle, and very few people have ever really understood what I've had to take on, so an acknowledgement like that is chocolate for the soul! Kudos to us all indeed