Does anyone not really like their parents?

[notamummysgirl]

I've namechanged because I feel a bit guilty.

I don't think I like my mum very much. She is totally self absorbed.
She thinks everyone is bullying her, and against her if they don't admire her and praise her.

She doesn't come to visit when DS (4) is up as she "can't talk with him around", can't hear herself think.
When she says talk, that's exactly what she means, her "blah balh me me me blah" while I nod along.

She moved us around constantly as kids, wherever her man at hte time wanted to be. left me with her friends horrible old husband who made me rub my hands over his bits. (I was 10)

I have a brother a yr younger than me who she does everything for- wouldn't move him in his GCSE year (having moved me in mine) paid for his driving lessons and insurance despite him being 25 with a full time job, just generally fawns over him. Then I have to listen to how unappreciated she is when he doesn't kiss her feet.

I got a job recently, having been looking for quite a long time. She decides they'll come over to 'celebrate'
The whole eving she read the paper, talked about herself, about how hard everything is for her and updated her fb status, while I made them endless cups of tea.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't want the whole conversation to revolve around me but a celebration it wasn't.

I know this sounds like a load of rambling but it's building up into huge resentment and I feel like I don't want to see her anymore.

Does anyone else dislike their mum or dad?
Waht do I do?

Oh Mittzy - Our fathers do sound very similar.

That is just the sort of thing my father would do. It might be worth getting your father checked out for Alzheimers or similar. Part of that is the boundaries breaking down and my father will say whatever comes into his head regardless of who is listening. His attitude has always been 'I am the master of the household, I do what I like' (direct quote) but he doesn't care what the children hear now. And trying to get him to watch his mouth, as my mum does frequently, just makes him worse. He is like a child half the time.

And then we get the tears. 'I don't know what I have done to deserve to have such a great family', wiping tears from his eyes. Then in the next breath he is telling me that all women are stupid, fat and smell and are a complete waste of space. He used to say such things pre Alzeheimers but it has defintely got worse since he got ill.

As you say, our poor mothers.

"they fuck you up your mum and dad" Love that Phillip Larkin poem....

True though.

I feel endless guilt about my feelings for my mum and dad. My dad was a good man, until he drank when he was violent and I grew up in fear of his unpredictable outbursts. It meant we were socially isolated as we (my sibling and I) were not allowed, ever, to have friends over. Over time, we just played with each other.....and we didn't get invited to stuff cause we could never reciprocate. Other kids thought we were odd or stuck up.

My mum did nothing to protect us. She couldn't I suppose and always said there was no help for single mums in the 60's and 70's and we'd have been destitute. I know it was hard for her. And yet.... it left me vulnerable, insecure and socially, criplingly shy until my adulthood.

My mum, to this day is critical of me and my sibling. We are both sorry excuses for "kids". Everything's about her and her lack of everything. I try to see her as often as I can but, lately it's become so draining. I feel guilty that I actually don't like her, at times. I love her, she's my mum but as a person, I see nothing much to like. My dad died years ago.

Do I sound hard as nails? Hope not. My DH tells me I'm a good person. Kind and funny and clever. My mum always told me that I was "not very clever; attractive though not pretty; "like your father" (worst insult imagineable!) and selfish.

Perhaps you should step back from this relationship? What's it giving you?

RitaLynn - I am sure that is true but if my children don't like me, it will be my fault not theirs. I am the parent and the adult and if I do such a bad job of parenting them that they don't want to know when they grow up then I don't blame them.

Hopefully being aware of what bad parenting is, my children will still be close to me when they grow up as I am try very hard to not be anyething like my father.

notamummysgirl your mother wasn't a very good mother to you when you were a child.

Now you are an adult you can choose what sort of relationship to have with her, if any. Don't waste your time and energy with guilt as you have nothing to feel guilty about. If it suits you to never see her then this is what you should do with no guilt at all.

You are an adult now with your own children to think about - you should concentrate on your own family and yourself. You owe your mother nothing.

"He is a controlling bully but does even a controlling bully deserve to die alone?"

Hard one to answer that but these people do not feel any guilt or obligation to their own kin like you do towards dad. This is because you're kind, responsible and caring and they are inherently not. You also take responsibility for your actions unlike them.

Young controlling bullies become old controlling bullies just as toxic parents more often than not become toxic grandparents.

Goosey - for what its worth I think you won't act like your Dad because you also have a quality that he does not and never has had - insight. His childhood was likely to have been very unhappy itself (he learnt all this from somewhere; likely his own parents) but you are not at fault here and you did not cause him to act this way.

My Dad has tried to play roughly with my own son on occasion and I have no compunction about pulling him up on it.

You do need to rid yourself of this sense of obligation you feel towards your dad although that is so easy to write and hard to do. What may be easier to achieve is to put in place firm boundaries over what is and is not acceptable re this man's behaviour.

Even though you have a family of your own he still wants to rule the roost over you all.
Look at the effects he has having on your own family; he dislikes your own children, complains about the noise they make, their friends don't come over unless told in advance he won't be there, he treats you like a slave and he shouts at your DH. Currently you are allowing him to do so because of this sense of obligation you feel towards him. He also does this because he can. If the positions were at all reversed he would not act the same towards you.

You would not take this crap from a friend, your dad is no different in that regard. His old age and infirmity is no excuse for such inherently poor behaviour.

I sometimes think that the mothers of such men described also enable them to continue and act themselves as bystanders within the relationship. They act out of self preservation and want of a quiet life.

People from dysfunctional families end up playing defined roles.

Niecie,

why would it be your fault if your children didn't like you? You can't control how they turn out, and maybe they're not pleasant people.

I just hesitate a little when I see threads like this, because apart from the extreme cases, in my personal experience, most bad parent - children relationships, it's a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other. This isn't a comment on any specific case in this thread.

I don't like my parents.

Have been no contact since just before Xmas.

I think after 40+ years I have just given up wasting anymore energy in trying to maintain a relationship that they obiviously don't want.

Why they used to feel the need to visit and then tell me how crappy my house is/how wayward my children are/how inadequate my husband is and how lacking in abition I am, lord only knows? Why visit if you don't like anything about me??

I realised that the only time I actually feel guilty is when I DO have contact with them. THEY make me feel guilty about everything!

Left to my own devices I don't feel any guilt...which is a huge achievement in itself, considering I had a strict Catholic upbringing!

For me no contact is the best thing I have ever done...now I am allowed to, relax, smile and be happy being me.

Attila - thanks for that, I so hope I won't be like him.

Oddly, I think I know exactly where dad's behaviour comes from and it sounds a bit like something out of a soap. He hada terrible car crash when he was 19. It resulted in almost total memory loss and he was in a coma for week. Now there would have been intenstive therapy and lots of neurologists involved. Then (1950s rural America), when he came round they regarded it as a minor miracle and carried on as if nothing had happened. My grandmother was determined to look after her boy and nothing and no one was good enough for him after that. She also had the opportunity to recreate his childhood memories for him with her cast in the starring role. The memory loss has (I think) made my dad adept at recreating the past to suit his own ends as it was something he had to do at the time. Every event in my childhood has been rewritten by him. It is only recently that I have realised this is not really normal behaviour.

"Why they used to feel the need to visit and then tell me how crappy my house is/how wayward my children are/how inadequate my husband is and how lacking in abition I am, lord only knows? Why visit if you don't like anything about me?? "

---------

Quoting myself as misreprented what I wanted to say!

...just to add...my house is an end terrace modest abode and not crappy, my children aren't wayward...my husband has a decent job and is a good guy and I do have ambition...it's just that whatever I do or achieve in my parents eyes will never be good enough.

RitaLynn

Why is it the parent's fault? Because most of us have had to put up with bad parenting as children. We don't like our parents because they are not very nice people. If I treat my children badly I wouldn't expect them to like me same as I wouldn't expect my husband to like me either. Difference is that he can walk away and children, when they are small can't do that. You are supposed to love and nurture your children and, if you don't, children put up with it. However, adults will often realise, eventually, that the way their parent is behaving is not normal. That is why we end up not liking them and I don't think that is the child's fault.

If I mess up the upbringing of my children so they don't turn into very nice people and I don't like them, that is my fault too. We are a product of our upbringing and to a certain extent our genes. People don't turn out to be who they are by accident.

Similarly, if I spoilt my child, make them think they are the centre of every universe, not just mine, and they expect the rest of the world to spoil them too as a result, that is also my fault.

gramercy - yes exactly the same with me when it came to University. My parents wanted me to leave school at 16 without A Levels - like they did.

Although I did go to boarding school I was made to feel I OWED them and there was an explicit agreement that I had to work in the holidays on my Dads farm to cover my fees. They paid nothing towards my University education and did not acknowledge anything to do with it.

I was made to leave school at 16 also, went to work in a factory...finally went to college under my own steam when I was 21...then did further study with the OU at 35.

My 'lodge' when I was working paid for my sisters monthly clothing allowance that she needed for her college course.

Niecie

I'm not sure I agree with you. We're a product of our genes, our schooling, misfortunes that have hit us along the way, and our parents.

Surely, if bad parenting makes bad people, does that make you (and others in this thread) a bad person. If not, why not? Because you're a product of other things.

If your kids don't like you, it's not necessarily your fault. It might be, but it isn't definitely.

I think this parental determinism thing I see here is a bad idea - it makes parents worry, and it absolves sons and daughters of their responsibility for anything.

But we are talking about parent/child relationships mostly, rather than being bad people through and through although I admit I did bring that up in the sense that if I don't like my children they are what I made them.

I am not a bad person because for one thing I had my mother to counteract the effects of my father. For another, I realised, as a young adult I increasing came to realise that my father wasn't normal and I have made every effort not to be like him. Sometimes it takes an enormous amount of effort but I am aware that I run the risk of picking up his traits and passing them on to my children and I don't want to do that.

Genes have a part to play but they give you a predispostion to behave in a certain way. They aren't the main driver and you can 'override' their impact.

Why shouldn't parents worry about their parenting? I would go the other way and say that parents should be worrying and it is those that don't who end up being parents like ours who do harm to the relationship with their child and to the way their child turns out. Trying to pretend that parenting doesn't make any difference to what your children become is a cop out and patently untrue! I only have to look at my children mirroring my behaviour, mannerisms and speech to know that parenting matters. They are 10 and 7 by the way so not babies and yet they still do this. Read any of the books on personality disorders and you will see the impact of parenting on the development of children. School of course has an impact and friends and other family but the die is cast by our parents. Their influence is the greatest.

Whoops - garbled second para graph. As a young adult I increasing came to realise..... would be better.

I think the thing is Rita, good parents do make their DC's aware of their responsibilities, particularly in relationships but they don't make then responsible for everything, or blame or criticise, or control, or manipulate,

Actually when DS was very young I was a 'bad' parent as I parented in the style of my Father, often mirroring his words. I am ashamed because it played such a part inn the damaged young individual that he started to become.

But it felt wrong. Even though as an adult my Father was still behaving the same towards me and I held myself responsible for not being a good enough daughter to please him, and it clicked.

So yes, parental responsibility is the keystone to how a child develops through all the other external influences that you mention.

We provide and nurture their core being, and I suspect that whilst there are indeed exceptions, the majority of children raised in a healthy balanced loving environment will grow up, healthy and balanced.

My brother is a twat, and it is most likely that in so many ways he is a copy of my Dad.

Recognising it and monitoring your own parenting is perhaps the best way of not taking on the baton of abusive parenting.

Was she a single parent Bumble? It sounds like you took the brunt of a lot of her pent up feelingsd.

I had counselling for 18 months so far for a number of things.

It is or can be very hard work and then suddenly it felt like the sun coming out after a long period of grey and I felt clarity.

I hope it works for you x