Did you have a happy childhood?

[Londonladybird]

I am lucky I think mine wasn't too bad compared to many. I have an ok relationship with my parents..could be worse. But how do you give your kids a really happy life? How do you be the parents that your children love, and feel loved by. so if you have a great family life please share your wisdom

Mixed here. I never had the unconditional love that people talk about. My mother's approval and love was definitely conditional and she could switch her mood in a second. I clearly remember her cold, distant behaviour and how I would desperately try and get back the "loving" side to her. She was very good in a number of ways, but had never wanted children and essentially re-wrote history to justify how she'd brought me up. All my life I was told what a pain I was, how ghastly I was, how difficult I was. I have her diaries now and have started reading them, and there's a marked contrast between what I was told and what she wrote down.

My father was fairly aloof throughout my childhood. He didn't really get involved in bringing me up and remained on the fringes of day-to-day life. My mother took on the key role of looking after me. My father then died when I was seventeen.

The only time I felt truly happy as a child was after a couple of terms at boarding school. I felt that I had found a family structure of some sort - the older girls were like sisters to me. I felt happy and that I fitted in. Then we moved house, I had to become a day-pupil, and everything turned to shit from then on.

No.

My mother emotionally and physically abused me until my school got social services involved, and after that just emotional abuse until my perfect little brother left for uni and made her feel directionless. She did the same to my father, who even now I resent for not protecting me. I never knew what unconditional love really felt like, and even now I'm unsure that it exists.

In addition to the specific insults and violence was the constant refrain of how inadequate my brother and I were compared to all of her friends daughters, how boys were all violent and dirty (this woman slapped me senseless at the age of eight for sighing after doing a chore), how she wished she had daughters instead. This would be at the dinner table, in front of guests.

I was diagnosed with ASD at 15. It took a long time for anyone to realise I had this condition, despite my emotional and physical incontinence at that age, because I had been forced to learn body language and facial expressions to avoid her violent out bursts. Of course, her explanation for any difficulties I experienced day that I was stupid, lazy and selfish. Even now, the only expressions I can automatically perceive on people's faces are hatred, disgust and concealed rage. I can read others now, but those are all I see in public, walking down the street.

There were good points - my "Auntie" and grand mother showed me that strong independent women weren't all brutal and cruel, and I have had relationships filled with love, trust and intimacy. But in my head I'm still the little boy hiding under his desk, trying to dodge the kicks from the one person who should love him.