All parents are toxic narcissists apparently and all adult children have experienced trauma …

[ElspethBulgeworthythethird]

Is anyone else a bit cheesed off with the on-line rhetoric that teens and young adults seem to be plugged in to nowadays…? That somehow everyone is a victim?

That every parent is toxic or a narcissist and every woman over fifty is a “Karen”?

That everyone is suffering from trauma or needs to “heal their inner child”

Oh and then there are all the “special” on-line morning routines that involve, er, getting up, washing, eating your breakfast and maybe exercising; all of which I thought were just standard things that most people did every day without much fuss.

I don’t mean to sound horrible or unsympathetic. Of course there are some young men and women who have suffered truly awful upbringings and serious abuse which has traumatised them terribly. I am not addressing them in this post as of course they need proper support.

This post is about the comfortable young adults I know (my adult children and teens and their friends) who seem to buy in to the rhetoric of victimhood when I happen to know that they have loving parents and come from good homes where their parents willingly made lots of sacrifices for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I happen to think that the period of life between leaving university and getting your first job is one of the most challenging you experience as a young adult; when the struggle finding a job and a flat and new friends and standing on your own feet financially is suddenly very real all at once.

It’s just the culture of this generation that seems to make everyone in to a victim that I object to? Somehow everyone is “special” and “in need of healing” and I get labelled toxic if I say to my young adults that although you are special to me, we are just a very ordinary family, and life is about getting on with things and working hard and not blaming everyone else when you don’t put in enough effort and commitment yourself.

That is interesting @Octavia64

I wonder often if a little more philosophy in our school rooms would help. Life happens.

We forget that adverse life events are part of the privilege of living a life. Part of the rough and tumble.

Understanding early on that living through these events show us that we have the strength to live through difficult times. We have the internal scafolding. And crucially - we can and should enjoy the good times.

Obviously abuse is an entirely different thing.

I have had a pretty rough ride with my DD and she has thrown some soul destroying shit at me & DH and our best wasn't even good enough for her . It's amazing what they will be influenced by on SM " go no contact with your abusive parents " etc. But I am so pleased that I will never be one of the unfortunate parents who is going to be accused of fucking up their kids with trans ideology and mutilation of their bodies in 15 years time .that abuse seems to be accepted by many people in society I feel sorry for those parents because that's exactly who is going to get the blame.

I would’ve just picked mine up and lifted her off the train. Job done.

she explained everything has to be his idea - he was sort of toddler/reception age.

Heaven help his teachers when he starts school.

Tbf at the same time, I remember many threads on here 20 years ago where doing that would have been criticised as being too rough/not caring for the child’s feeling etc….

Yep the backlash from formally "trans kids" is coming down the pipeline and the fall out will be massive.

Yes I haven’t had any experience of the trans issue but I have had situations where I have let my ds do something unwise (going to a party for example) against my better judgment after he has begged and screamed blue murder and said “everyone else” would be there but then the same night, when everything has gone belly up, I have got it in the neck for allowing them to go and “what was I thinking?”. That’s a fairly trivial example and I obviously should have stuck to my guns, but mothers just can’t win sometimes.

Yes the mother can't win and it sucks 😞 . With the view my DD has of me , I should have just sat back put my feet up and been a shit parent , it would have saved a lot of energy. 🤔

@ElspethBulgeworthythethird Where has the self awareness gone though? My parents let me do stuff as a teen, I would get into hot water at times but even when I was a lot younger I could see that it was me who wanted to do those things and that if my parents had tried to stop me I would have been upset about that too. Also its by fucking up and getting into trouble that you actually learn and grow and get some kind of perspective on life. Do people now never want to take any responsibility for their own actions and do they expect never to suffer or struggle? If so I have some difficult news for them about life.

I think this is a ridiculous generalisation. I'm in my 20s and within my secondary school friend group, one was abused by their parents for being gay, one witnessed alcohol fuelled domestic abuse between their parents, and one has a father in jail for trying to kill his wife, my friend's mother.

I think they all have grounds to say they suffered at the hands of their parents. The idea that no one under 30 could possibly have been abused growing up is ridiculous.

I'm so glad I found this thread. I've been beating myself up over the behaviour of my two adult children and how they've turned themselves into victims. Comments on here have shown me I'm not alone and have given me comfort

It is a ridiculous generalisation @SpongeBobSquarePantaloons. Its also ageism. Young people aren't the only ones to get sucked into SM echo chambers where every hurt is validated and victimhood becomes identity.

It's culture wars.

Some children are brats. Some parents are awful. It's always been this way.

💐

MidnightOnceMore · Today 11:30

Of course life is difficult for everyone. Good friends take it in turns to give each other a kind ear, not a lecture.

You've been lecturing several posters on this thread and telling them what they should be thinking.

That isn't what I meant. I meant getting hit was normal parenting. It wasn't classed as abuse back then.

I never said no child gets abused anymore just that if we'd told anyone our parents had hit us a fellow adult would probably say we deserved it as we were bad. That attitude does not persist today.

I was once pinned to the bed by mum as she stood over me and slapped me repeatedly for swearing at my sister. I was about 8 at the time. No one would have batted an eyelid at that in the 80s. Now though...

You mention pretty serious abuse between adults and the kids watching it. I'm talking about slapping children pretty badly being normal parenting as it was back then. That attitude does not prevail today.

I suspect it’s all related.
Whether young people are identifying as trans or not, I strongly believe that the identity of something is driving this, and affirmation comes from all around, nay sayers are easily shut down.

Parents can do their very best, but at the end of the day are often unfairly judged as abusive for their few human mistakes.

Unfortunately this will end up worse for those young people talking themselves up into victimhood. They’re already not that resilient. How are they going navigate the world of parenting when they’ve effectively isolated themselves from their own families?

Threads like this remind me of the ultimate family-unit-splitting goals of queer theory, and that the effects are far wider reaching than trans issues.

I was once pinned to the bed by mum as she stood over me and slapped me repeatedly for swearing at my sister. I was about 8 at the time. No one would have batted an eyelid at that in the 80s.

WTF? Yes they would! I mean, sure, there might have been some parts of society that would've considered it okay, but I grew up around then and that kind of thing was definitely not thought of as normal or acceptable by people I knew.

I'm not quite that far, and mine is younger, but yes.

Absolutely this, it's worrying.
I hope mine isn't too far down the rabbit hole, but really, there's nothing I can do.

Along with my daughter's sudden interest in the parent hate culture i really believe if she was younger there would a trans issue to deal with as well .

Oh my God you would violate your child's bodily integrity in such a way?! You now owe her 24/7 free childcare for the rest of her life while also cooking her dinner to order daily.

I'm not the sort of person that plays the victim or wants any attention or for people to feel sorry for me. I'm recently realising that my mum has a lot of narcissistic tendencies and a lot of it has shaped how I am today. I've come to this realisation since having my own daughter and making comparisons to how she treats me compared to how I treat my DD.

I have really struggled over the last so many years trying to do what I can to keep her happy and I've realised that in doing so she made my wedding, birth of my child etc all about her and has wrecked a lot of happy memories because I was just so stressed out trying to please her.

I've beaten myself up a lot over the years as I feel like I shouldn't be thinking bad of my parents (mum is the worse but my dad enables her). I constantly feel guilty and stuck between my DH and parents, for some reason they absolutely hate him, there's no reason for this and I think it actually boils down to jealously that I'm happy and she doesn't have as much control over me

From the outside people probably think they are lovely etc and probably think we're close but it's all a pretence on their side. It's all for show.

Sorry that's long but just trying to say not everyone is quick to label their parents things and it's not the easy way out.

I think it's at least partly because through the internet and tv we "know" more different kinds of people. When my grandparents were young parents they only knew their friends, family and neighbours well. People who were all fairly similar to them. They had obviously heard of rich and famous people like the Queen and Elvis but they didn't know every detail about their lives. I can click on Instagram and instantly see inside celebrities houses. I can watch families on YouTube who spend their time travelling and homeschooling their children (who are named after game of thrones characters) while living in a caravan. I can see the polished edited versions of people's lives in social media.

Then there are the magazines where nobody has a normal life anymore. Either they are perfect and blissfully happy with their white furniture , well behaved photogenic children, or there are headlines about "our struggle with infertility" when they took 3 months before getting pregnant, "our nicu journey" when their baby goes to special care for a quick check up or "my battle with postnatal depression" when they have the normal baby blues on day 3. All stressful but normal events that happen to most people. Also nobody goes to hospital at normal speed anymore, they are "rushed to hospital". Everything is a big drama and there is no sympathy for normal vomiting viruses or colds anymore. if you say that you are ill there is always someone who knows someone who had it worse. In call the midwife, although there were awful things going on, people were kinder to each other I think and the mums of new babies get help and sympathy, not expected to be back to normal within hours of a c-section like now.

Meanwhile I am wondering why everyone else in the world has perfect lives when my floor is covered in crisp crumbs again within an hour of it being mopped and the highlights of my 10 year olds holiday diary was being allowed to join in his older brother's band practice and going to tesco.

Hey I really appreciate that you replied. Usually from people talking about how later generations have no resilience the definition of resilience is just accepting it. I should not have assumed you thought the same. I’m happy you are more balanced.

The thing is though who defines having it good? Is it just that some people have it worse? Look at the ‘Stately Homes’ threads? Is it money?

I think parents can feel very defensive when adult children criticise their parenting, usually they were doing their best under a lot of stress and financial strain. My parents were not perfect, some things were very wrong but I don’t think bringing it up to them would be of any use. I see it more pragmatically, I won’t bring up another person in the same condition, accept if I do they are not guaranteed to like the gift of life so bestowed upon them and that ultimately I’m taking a huge gamble with another life.

For all that though even if they have valid concerns there has to come a time when they stop blaming you for it, at least to your face.

Oh yes, very definitely so