This is really chilling, I think

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Namechanged for this, as potentially too identifiable to FOO stalkers.

I am NC with FOO, for a variety of reasons, none of which I particularly want to rehash here. Occasionally I lurk on a FB forum for parents of estranged adult children, because I find it morbidly fascinating and actually quite validating to observe just HOW bonkers the mindset is.

Today I found this post on there, which sent shivers down my back because it is SO similar to the kind of thing my NMother has sent to me:

The last time I wrote my daughter...a few years ago, I stated the following: "When a person is charged with a crime, the accused is presented with a list of grievances. As your mother, I feel I am entitled to no less a list of grievances in support of your claims of hatred towards me." I've never received a reply, because she has none. We as parents shouldn't accept responsibility for our adult children's short-sightedness and bad behavior.

As ever, it's much easier to see the crazy when it's not your own personal situation being hashed out, but OMG at the demand that the adult child justifies her emotions with a bullet-pointed list of grievances before there can be any question of her being permitted to feel her own feelings. And these people wonder why they are estranged. You'd think round about the time you wrote about your entitlement to a list of grievances to support your child's claims of hatred towards you, you might get a glimmer of realisation about why your adult dc didn't want to be around you. But apparently not.

The replies here have been so insightful and even after all these years, they are making a difference to me. This has turned into a very useful thread and I hope it is helping others too.

Why thank you Merd. I was worried it was another self-indulgent ramble tbh. And yy, the bollocks that comes out of one's own mouth in one's mother's distinct idiom... Hooray for understanding DPs.

I have those moments with DH too. I say something and he looks at me with that confused look. :o It has happened all my life actually and not just with DH.

I remember telling someone, aged 18, that I could not go to a hairdresser because I have dermatitis on my scalp. They were and and made me book an appointment there and then.

That 'I am who I am' attitude smacks of arrogance and unteachability. It is a total unwillingness to examine their own role or behaviour and positions them as right and everyone else as wrong.

Totally agree. That is what I got too. "Well this is just me, I am sorry I am such a disappointment to you. Is there anything else you would like to criticize or are you done ripping me apart?" At that point in the argument I realized it was never going to make a difference.

Huh - have just seen a PM from someone mentioning that the GN mods have actually only changed one set of names not gone through the whole history. Would it be weird or pointless of me to ask MN to talk them about this? (Or shall I stand back and assume that any train-wrecks are not our responsibility?)

psygodmawr There's some good stuff here. There's also a very good book, Toxic parents, which many people find has a lot of accurate stuff in.

Take it easy, it sounds like you've had a shock (perhaps in a good way, but still a shock)

merd - I don't know how inter-involved MNHQ and GNHQ are, but it can't hurt to drop MNHQ an email - it's entirely up to them if they act on it! At least you'll know you've alerted them to the situation. :)

Can I ask a question while the discussion is touching on the way that dysfunctional parenting can affect the next generation and, in turn, their parenting?

Dh is really normal - a lovely, engaged, emotionally available, thoughtful dad. His db and dsis not so much, particularly SIL who is MIL's mini me. Certainly some of that is because she's a girl and MIL and FIL are massive misogynists.

But my kind of 'go to' theory about Dh is that he just got less parenting - being youngest - and so less damage. He's definitely NOT GC - BIL is.

Any thoughts? Not necessarily about birth order in relation to this but about how/whether someone can just escape the real damage that this kind of parenting does?

whether someone can just escape the real damage that this kind of parenting does?

The youngest of my siblings was basically ignored. There's a term for this - it might be the 'Lost Child'. I don't mean he was neglected, but wasn't subjected to the rollercoasters of expectation, punishment & reward that the rest of us had. Our collective view is that I got the worst of it as the eldest, then it decreased in intensity and focus with subsequent children. He was parented as much by us as by Mum & Dad - dysfunctionally, for sure, as we were our parents' children, but probably with much more tolerance and love.

He is by far the most stable, least chaotic, and most uncomplicated of us all.

My gut feeling is that no one escapes completely because the dynamics of the entire family organism are unhealthy. How things are presented and reacted to, what can be said, and in turn what can be known or thought, about past events and their cause/origin, and about the toxic parent, etc - it's all fucked up, and no one escapes that. But I do agree with the idea that birth order or other circumstances that are particular to a specific individual can change the extent to which someone comes out more or less unscathed. I think that particularly where a golden child and a scapegoat or cinderella child have already been identified, there is an opportunity for subsequent children to defy categorisation, and that this can potentially help them to keep well out of the really toxic stuff. I would say more but am a bit worried about outing myself. Your DH has probably done a lot of work on himself too - he must be quite aware of what went on for the others if you've got as far as identifying the stereotypes in his family.

Related to your post, I wonder a lot about the role of gender in toxic families. Very often, the narcissist/emotional abuser seems to be female, and sons seem to be golden while daughters are scapegoats. That was broadly the story in my family, although one daughter was also golden. Do people agree/disagree?

That's an interesting point, Pockets. I don't know enough about it, but Garlic's response seems to bear your thoughts out!

OP don't have time to read the thread but thanks for posting that. Actually had me laughing! My mother, I'm sure my mother wrote that and it's so good to see the fuckwittery crapola that they think spouted elsewhere. I wish them all the happiness they can find in their warped online groups..which no doubt at some point they'll stop using because a) the other users aren't as clever as them b) they get into an argument with someone.

Been having a crappy few days because of my NC"d"M and this has cheered me up no end!

Yes Dh has done lots of work on understanding it. Probably more than I give him credit for - he really is a wonderful selfless father and he has NO useful familial model for that.

I think garlic has it spot on - he was basically brought up by his siblings and ignored a lot (apart from the constant nagging) interestingly he first realised how poor his relationship with them was in his early teems which would have been when BIL and SIL moved out.

I think gender is massively important in his family. MIL cannot get her head around the way we share housework/childcare etc. She is still trying to shame me with digs about making his lunch for work (I don't), ironing his shirts (I don't) etc etc. It simply doesn't occur to her that you can't shame someone about something they seriously don't give a rats arse about!

Her advice to me when we had dd and were struggling with all the newborn/new parent shit was 'you can let the house ho a bit you know - maybe just scrub your paintwork once a week'. I still have no real idea what subbing paintwork might entail...

" maybe just scrub your paintwork once a week"
You lazy caaaaah!

This thread is so illuminating. MrsLupo very good post.

MyPockets my dh is very emotionally open etc. too, but I think it's because he's been the sg, and felt that as he was damned anyway he might as well do what he wanted. After lots of issues he was sent to a psychiatrist who was in fact a friend of his ea father who told him there was nothing wrong with him, it was his family. He said the scales fell from his eyes and was considered beyond redemption, I think he was then left alone quite a bit and definitely in fault hood decided he was going to stop being like his parents. Bil was more the gc and he just can't seem to move away from those behaviour patterns, he and his dp seem to have a very unhealthy dynamic, quite similar to pils. Sil was gc until bil came along quite abit later. She has had years of therapy and yoyos from mil is great to she's awful.

We saw mil at the weekend, we are not nc with her atm, but 2 other family members. She came out with a corker, "You had an idyllic childhood really. You could ride your bikes on the field and play football in the garden" Dp and I just looked at each other and laughed about it afterwards. I would think most dcs in the 60s who lived in a village could say that, doesn't matter that they had a neurotic, controlling mother and a cold, ea father...

Yy to mil should have got therapy years ago. She did have a very fractured childhood, so therefore the fact that her children had a family means they should be grateful...

Sorry, that was rather long.

maybe just scrub your paintwork once a week

Is that a euphemism?

I don't think anyone escapes undamaged from toxic, dysfunctional family dynamics. It has taken me decades to start to even understand it, let alone work on myself to start repairing the danage.

It is the same in my family, sons golden, daughters scapegoat, with all siblings being played off against each other, horrendous rivalry, all contact controlled and channeled through narcissistic mother and her fostering a truly toxic environment where she plays dictator and my dad is her enabler.

I could cite multiple examples of her appallingly ignorant behaviour but I actually don't think people would believe me!

Apparently, I'm very lucky that dp does his own washing and ironing. Erm, he's an adult .

Sil is very lazy because she cooks for the children but bil cooks dinner when he comes home from work.

Mil is stuck in the 50s. She never had any help and had to do it all herself (apart from 2 children at boarding school, a daily, a gardener...)

lizKeen

Totally agree. That is what I got too. "Well this is just me, I am sorry I am such a disappointment to you. Is there anything else you would like to criticize or are you done ripping me apart?" At that point in the argument I realized it was never going to make a difference."

Totally identical to my mother. Same pattern. Any attempt to not meet her total control or to draw any boundaries or point out unacceptable behaviour, is met with the victim complex and I am apparently a bully. She never, ever has any role or responsibility in anything.

A lot of that generation will have lived through ww2. I often wonder what that did to them, really. Absent parents, traumatised parents, being evacuated away from family often into situations that were neglectful or even predatory, air raids, houses being bombed, dead bodies perhaps, god knows what else. Their locus of control, as we would now call it, must have been ever decreasing. I wonder if that's part of what so heavily foregrounded control issues that generation seems to have struggled with, and the victim mentality. Might explain the 'epidemic' they mentioned on GN.

is that a euphemism?

It's just really really scary how similar they all are isn't it? And how until you meet other people who know what it's like you wonder if it is you or it seems like a lot if the stuff is so trivial. For me it boils down to whether you can put other people - your kids, your grandchildren - first.

Quirky it's good to see that the cycle CAN be broken :)

Yes, Lupo, context is important. I wrote a long post on GN about generational trauma - which was acknowledged by all of one poster. And I bet she's an undercover MNer!

I'm an idiot. My 'trauma' post was on here. I put a different version on GN, which was ignored. I've run out of patience with them, anyway

Yes, I can see that. My Dad was 13 when the war ended, and my mum 3. Both of them went to boarding school as well. My Dad was frequently told that he was an unwanted child. My mum was a little more loved, but her Dad was in the RAF and they moved all over the place, until she went to boarding school and had some stability.

My Dad has NO friends from his childhood. I don't think he was ever allowed to have friends at the time, just made to come straight home and do chores. My mum's friends are all from her boarding school.

In fact - for both of them, the people they are closest to are the friends they had as young adults, around the time that they got married. They both had the same friendship group and those people have stayed in their lives ever since, even though they moved.

I was about 20 when I suddenly realized just what an unhappy childhood my Dad had, and I can still see times when his reaction to things is an emotional response to that. It makes it much easier to deal with him from my perspective, almost like watching a toddler having a temper tantrum. I might not like the behavior, but it doesn't have the same emotional impact.

Epidemic.? did you mean of children estranged from parents?

Not got time to read whole thread can anyone explain briefly the interaction with gransnet please?