Childhood Issues Resurfacing and Aging Parents

[Midlifemusings]

I have parents who are very well intended and have kind hearts. They are both now close to 80. They both grew up in environments that in different ways did a lot of damage. They also didn't have a lot of exposure to the broader world and so they brought quite a bit of unhealthy thinking and practices to raising their kids. I was always loved but there were a lot of things about how we were raised that were far from ideal.

For most of my adult life, I just trucked on and believed that I was fine and not really impacted by it all. I was confident and capable and lived a pretty full and happy life - albeit, I have never really been able to get emotionally close to people or to be open emotionally. But there wasn't much impact of that in day to day life. I am now in my 40s and recently I find myself upset and even tearful about things that happened 30+ years ago.

My parents are very sensitive in some ways and get very sad and guilt ridden at having made mistakes as parents. Whenever they would ask if they had been good parents or been supportive, I always just said yes. They really cherish that validation and keep cards / notes up that we have given them over the years. The couple times I had tried to speak to what wasn't great, they were just devastated to have hurt me and in some ways I actually felt worse for saying anything. Nothing can be changed about what has happened in the past and so bringing it up to cause more pain seems pretty futile. However it was my reality that I have never been able to talk about and I feel that since they are good people that I should just not say anything.

Recently however I seem to have less of a filter and on two occasions, I made comments that they wanted to know more about and then it led to them being sad and upset and crying and apologizing and it wasn't even anything major. They are close to 80, have their own health issues and I just feel guilty now for saying anything. I am not sure why I have this internal angst now all these years later and on some level I think I want them to know that my childhood wasn't amazing but then I just feel even worse.

I should probably do some therapy to work through it but I am curious as to how others handle saying things to aging parents that might be hard to hear. On one hand they are still competent adults but on the other hand, we are slowly shifting into me helping them and the roles changing and it feels wrong to upset them.

@Midlifemusings I would seek therapy and discuss it there. At this point if it wasn’t anything deliberate on your parents part, I’d feel like I was just upsetting them for no reason, particularly as it doesn’t sound like they’ve provided much clarity/help on the 2 occasions you’ve already raised.

It wasn't anything deliberate but as I became an adult - some of it was, how could they not have known. On one hand I know they were very sheltered and were in some ways just trying to do things differently than their own parents - but on the other hand some of it was quite neglectful in ways - although not intentionally. They didn't really put any effort into learning how to parent in healthier ways.

You are right though, I don't know what I even want out of telling them or them knowing how it felt to be me. I don't think they emotionally can handle it and they can't go back in time. It came up because they were still doing things now that were hurtful that they had done when I was a child and I said something about it. Normally I wouldn't have but recently when it happened, it just brought up a lot of feeling that this is still happening (although now as an adult I can take actions) and I got emotional about it and said something.

I am 51. I have daughters in their late twenties and have friends with similar dynamics and we often talk about this.

When your adult children tell you things that they felt were wrong during their childhood, all you can do is apologise. No one is born knowing how to parent and it's constantly changing as the children enter different ages.

I know that my parents handled things when I was growing up in ways they I never would.

Part of being an adult is understanding that sometimes other people do things differently. As long as you were cared for then you need to just stop looking back and overanalysing. Maybe try focusing on all of the good/normal day to day caring that they did for you instead of picking out bits you are upset by.

Just to add, one of my daughters says that she wasn't allowed to express emotions growing up. When I asked her about this, it stems from a time that I was upset about a friends death and my then pre teen daughter made a joke about pushing the feelings down and not letting them surface. We all had a giggle about it at the time and from then on it became a silly family joke where if any of us said they felt something, someone else (including her) would say push that feeling down and everyone would giggle about it. All issues were talked about after and I thought, sorted. Clearly not.

Sadly my daughter doesn't really remember the origins of it and just remembers being told not to express emotions. 🤷🏻‍♀️ what can you do 🤷🏻‍♀️

I do understand people do things differently and until recently, I haven't been looking back or analyzing at all. I just accepted they were who they were and life was what it was and as an adult I create my own life. I overall have had a pretty good life compared to many. I see them often and it just was a non event until recently,

I don't know what happened, if it was too much time along during Covid or if it is pre menopause hormones or what but recently when things get said or done that are reminders of things from my childhood I get emotional and upset about them. And I am finding it hard to always act like they were amazing or that it doesn't bother me when I have these resurfaced feelings.

I would be happy to just go back to how I have always been and not really care that much and not address anything - but I am not sure how to do that!

What are you hoping to get from them by raising the issues now?

I have similar issues with my parents who are much younger than yours, I’ve accepted that they weren’t able to provide what I needed when I was younger in terms of support but unfortunately when I’ve raised these things in the hope of an open discussion it’s resulted in denial and gaslighting and actually made things worse for me. All I wanted was for my mother to say ‘I’m sorry you went through that and I wasn’t there for you’. She couldn’t.

The approach of my therapist was to understand what I expect or would like from them, accept their limitations and provide what I need through self compassion. It’s a really hard thing to do xx

You know you need therapy. But haven't done it. Why?

I think you need to see your relationship with them and the habits and beliefs your upbringing gave you as entirely separate things.

You can work on the latter, come to understand the impact on you and change internal beliefs and habits etc, without having to change your relationship with them.

See them as people who loved you and did their best. Finding out more about parenting wasn't that easy in those days, now there's a whole world online and it's a mindset that you should consult advice about childraising. Back then you'd have to go to a library or bookshop, there wasn't a whole culture of thinking about how to raise kids.

People were more gung ho about everything. They let their kids ride in the boot of the car or without seatbelts because it was normal and no one took the risk that seriously. They also did the emotional equivalent.

What did your parents do? Can you give examples?

@Midlifemusings I do think that you should think about counselling for how you can come to terms with whatever it was. You say that your parents get upset but what parent wouldn't be upset? I am upset when my children tell me things that they feel I did wrong. But I apologise as it's all I can do. They may well be thinking that's not enough. But what else can be done?

Do you have children yourself?

Yes, what were they still doing today that is upsetting ?
It's very difficult to say without knowing.

OP, your post resonated so much with me that I've just set up an account to reply.
I have some deep seated issues with my mum, who is 70.
Like you, I and my sister were very loved, but couldn't say for sure that my mum was 'loving'.
She was profoundly judgemental, totally emotionally closed (and still is), hyper critical of everything we did/said/wore/ate etc etc. She wanted daughters like Audrey Hepburn - pretty, refined, elegant, poised (mum's not like this at all though!) - and we could never measure up. As she's got older, she can add to these issues being increasingly small minded, living in a tiny world, and being totally unhappy with her lot in life.
My entire childhood was focused on her enabling me to better myself, but now I have a good career and a comfortable life, I feel like she hates me for it.
I've never been allowed to celebrate achievements - or even my birthday (this to mum is too 'showy') - and that's given me some real confidence issues that I've had to unpick through my life.
Anyway, I could go on, but how do I handle it?
I've had several bouts of counselling, which was amazing. The counsellor gave me some great coping strategies - such as, if mum isn't interested in my life and achievements, then stop sharing them with her. It sounds simple, but I hadn't thought of it before!
I do an awful lot of 'grey rock'-ing with her. When she's throwing a pity party or saying something I don't agree with, I just say "mmm", "Oh right" and look vacant.
I manage my exposure to her and always have. I see her for a weekend only about once every 2 months. We have a nice time - I actually have a really good relationship with her - because it's a short enough stint for me to cope with. I phone her once a week. She is horribly routine-focused and expects this to be on a Sunday, but I increasingly phone only when I'm in the right frame of mind. If I'm feeling shitty, I don't bother and leave it until the next day.
Another coping strategy and something that gives me a little thrill is doing things that she disapproves of. For instance wearing an item of clothing that she hates, eating out too often (and 'wasting my money'), letting my windows get dirty (she hates this!).
I also make sure I absolutely don't turn out like her. I work on myself constantly. I make sure I'm open minded, self-reflective, vulnerable around people, kind about people, happy for others' achievements and so on. This way, my challenging upbringing actually becomes a gift.
Fundamentally, I think the biggest 'punishment' for my mum is in being herself, and having two daughters (my sister has been even more damaged than me) who keep her at arms length in this way. How awful that we love her but can't think a warm thought about her.
For this reason I'll never try to tackle this subject with her. She's so emotionally closed it would literally be impossible, and I don't need to ruin the final decade or so of her life by putting this on her. I think fundamentally her upbringing made her the way she is, so she's a victim in her own way, not that it excuses how she is.
Sorry, what a rant! I hope there's something in here that you can draw on OP.

@yogafairy. This is exactly what my sisters is issue is. Well there are more but this is the main one. She goes on and on about how bad our parents were and lists almost everything they've ever done but has no consideration of the times we were brought up or massive struggles they went through. It's hard to hear and I agree what can they do about it now. Well one has died so not much on his part. She hasn't been to counselling but reads about it online all the time. She has children of her own now and brings them up "perfectly" in her eyes but there is no discipline and the kids rule the house and I dread going out with them because of their behaviour now.

@ScrumptiousBears this is why I asked the op if she had children. Your sisters children, when they become adults will look back and think some of the things were wrong even though she is doing what she see's as her best. What can she say when they say you brought us up with no rules and no discipline and that hasn't helped us in the world?

When any of us look back to things we did/ thought 30/40 years ago we all know that we could have done things differently.

We are all just doing our best with what we have 🤷🏻‍♀️

It interesting that there’s an expectation that our parents should have somehow been perfect when raising us!
We are all flawed in some way and our own parenting is shaped by our upbringing (whether we emulate it or choose to avoid it) . My children are young adults now and I know there are things which they will choose to do differently when they become parents themselves.
To berate older parents who are now in their 80s, who you have said yourself were doing their best seems a bit unfair. I would acknowledge it and concentrate on how you will improve your own life, and if you have children pay attention to how you are raising them.

I don’t think the OP ‘needs’ therapy

And as for ‘Why?’ perhaps the fact that therapy costs around £40 an hour may be a factor.

I can sympathise with this, OP, because like you I had parents who I think meant well and were in their own way well intentioned but there are also times where I wonder what the hell they were thinking.

I did go through a stage of quizzing my dad about it, probably more aggressively than I meant to, in my late 20s (mum had died at this point) and he got really upset and accused me of ‘ruining his memories’ which I do understand because clearly in his mind we were a lovely happy family who had so much fun together.

It would actually have helped me to hear ‘to be honest, I don’t know why we did that but it was the wrong thing to do, we should have …’ but there’s absolutely no way I could have done that for everything and even so I found memories to be a bit like Medusa’s head where you cut one off and another springs up!

I didn’t personally find therapy helpful.

My dad died eight years ago and I’ve found most of the resentment has gone. I’ve just accepted that in some ways they were odd people with odd ideas about children. I’ve also since had a child myself and I am slightly more sympathetic as I’ve certainly made mistakes and I’m sure I’ll make more!

@ImplementingTheDennisSystem

Thank you for sharing and I am glad that you found counselling helpful for you. I have done many of the same things you have where I limit my time with them and try for the most part to just enjoy that time. I am not sure why I feel differently recently. My mother has always struggled to manage her own emotions, she was very emotionally immature in a way and so I always wanted and worked to be very strong emotionally - and so this new emotion creeping through that relates to childhood things isn't something I really know how to deal with.

I never expected perfection, I don't berate my parents, and I haven't spend years acting victimized. I am just struggling right now with this and trying to figure it out.

Thank you for those who understood and shared their own experiences with their parents.

I can understand exactly how you are feeling, for I'm 53 and for the last few years I've been experiencing the same thing.

The difference is, I'm NC with my father (for 32 years) and LC with my mother (26 years). The reason being, they made massive mistakes, bad choices/decisions and ruined mine and my two brothers childhoods, and have never expressed the slightest remorse for doing so. My mother is a narcissist and an emotional terrorist, she emotionally blackmailed myself and my brothers into going NC with my father when he left her for OW. She's now 80 and has if anything got worse as the years have gone by. Extremely defensive, aggressive and always ends up resorting to personal insults if you even dare suggest she's anything less than perfect. I wasted the whole of my divorce settlement from my 1st husband resettling her back in our home country...she took financial advantage of me at one of the lowest points of my life, when I was only 23. I will never forgive her for it.

So for me personally the only way to cope was to move to the other side of the world and have as little contact as possible. I tell her virtually nothing about my life beyond surface chat. She is literally the last person I tell if anything serious happens, she's never been able to give any sort of support to me as an adult.

Sad and angry is how I feel now. The realisation that things will never improve or get better, that she will never have a Damascene moment and apologise has depressed me...and we are not talking about accidental bad choices/decisions here - it would (and was) obvious to others that my parents were making selfish poor choices that were going to badly affect their children.

I think I totally get what you mean. I reflect on things that happened in my childhood and teenage years now with a lot of sadness bur couldn't bring myself to bring it up with my remaining parent and don't see.waht good it would do. I do muse over whether people were more angry in the 70's as most kids I knew seemed to be beaten at home and school regularly and it was just normal.

Maybe write her a letter? Long and fuelled.
Then burn it.
Cheaper than therapy!!

I sympathise op and going through a similar situation at the moment.

I'm in my late 50s and it's only in the last few years that I've looked at my childhood and seen it for what it was. There are differences with your situation of course. I don't think there was much love expressed in our family and decisions were made that didn't consider the impact on their children. I can see what an effect that has had on aspects of my personality. Things I don't like about myself.

Like yours, my parents are elderly and their attitudes and stubbornness are causing real problems for us at the moment. I'm really struggling with the past and the present right now and the lack of emotional attachment I have to my parents. I can honestly say that I'm not sure if I love them and that's a hard thing to admit. It's not like they were abusive, just emotionally unavailable.

I would never tell them any of this. In many ways they are both a product of their own unusual upbringing and can't help how they are. I've considered counselling, but not sure if I can bring myself to spend the money when retirement is looming.

Sorry, that probably wasn't very helpful, but wanted to say that you're not alone. I would definitely talk to someone professionally if you can possibly afford it.

It took therapy for me to deal with this, and it was a few years after that I spoke to them about it. Mine are a bit younger though.

The therapy taught me that they never intended to cause me pain and have life long issues.

I think a lot of it is about intent. If they intended to cause pain they are to be admonished.
If they didn't intend to cause pain then it's more about forgiveness and moving on

@ImplementingTheDennisSystem What a wise post. What you describe is what I've been trying to work towards with my own mother.

OP, I think what has helped me has been acceptance, by which I don't mean saying everything was ok (it wasn't) but rather-

-mentally accepting that what happened, happened;
-understanding that it wasn't my fault, ie that there was no way I could h somehow have called forth a better version of my parents by being a better child.

I think (for me at least) the many years I spent searching for reasons were a way of putting off acceptance- that I felt on some level that if I could just find the reason, everything would fall into place and it would be as if it hadn't happened. The truth was, to the extent there was a reason for any of it, it was a complex one unconnected to me, and that my parents would never be able to articulate it- if they had been able to do that, they wouldn't have acted as they did in the first place.

OP, I think the fact that your parents feel guilty about their mistakes means that they're several steps on from how a lot of parents might react- it's very common for parents to completely deny things happened or deny that your feelings about what happened are legitimate or to respond with anger. It sounds like some therapy might be useful. I'd also recommend a book called My Mother, Myself.

In terms of talking to your parents about it all, it's worth thinking through what it is that you would like in the way of response and whether they are capable of giving it to you. It's quite possible that they simply can't give you an explanation, in which case it might be easier for you to accept that than to keep looking for one. I was very struck by the wisdom of @Implementing's remark above- "if mum isn't interested in my life and achievements, then stop sharing them with her" and think it has a much wider application. Repeatedly looking to our parents to provide something which they are not capable of providing simply perpetuates the hurt.

Apologies for such a long post! I wish you well.

Reading through these posts have been so helpful.

OP, are you a parent? Because it’s not at all easy, and because we are human, we all make mistakes. I know I made mistakes as a parent: there are things you do in the moment that afterwards you regret or would do differently if the situation arose again. There are also things you say to your children that they interpret differently from how you meant them. I say to my daughter that for sure, there will be things you din’t like about your upbringing that you think, “I’ll never do that with my children” - and you won’t - but you will do something else that your children will take exception to. It’s just not possible to get it right all the time. Most parents do their best, and there’s no such thing as the perfect parent. As you say, you din’t want to upset your kind and loving parents - so don’t. Either seek counselling, or chew it over with your friends - there is absolutely nothing to be gained by going over it with your parents at this point.