New poster; long long time lurker!
Essentially, I want to be the mother that my children love and want to see when they are adults. I want to know how to have a wonderful relationship with them and not push them away. My concerns that this won’t happen stem from my relationship with my own mother. There have been incidents throughout my childhood that make me feel this is a unique situation and won’t be repeated, but, on the other hand, I am her daughter and definitely have some similar personality traits. Here goes.
My mother has suffered with anxiety, and probably depression, for as long as I’ve been around at least. She had a difficult childhood, grew up quite poor with an unwell father, and lost her brother in a motorbike accident when she was about 10.
She has always said she wasn’t any good at anything (except drawing – she’s an artist) and as a child I was embarrassed and confused by her inability to swim or drive, for example. It felt like she didn’t want to spend time with us, when she wouldn’t come swimming or to the park. As an adult I now realise that she probably didn’t learn to do these things out of fear/anxiety, unfortunately because I have also suffered from anxiety in relation to things like this. I still can’t swim, although am planning to learn this summer, and despite huge panic attacks and believing I’d never do it I learnt to drive 10 years ago and am now confident and enjoy it so much.
There are other things too – she was or is emetophobic, another fear which I have. For me this is improving with each children’s sickness bug we end up with, but as a child at home it was constant reminders to chew our food properly, not run around after dinner etc etc. I still hear myself saying to my husband ‘don’t tip him upside down after his dinner!’ about my son, and hate myself for it. Once, I was mildly ill in the night after too much sun on holiday. My mother was beside herself that she’d poisoned me by not properly cooking breaded chicken, despite everyone else being fine! I think there is another food-related issue here, as she went through a period of restricted eating as a child, and as a mother really resented cooking for us. Again, I think now this was probably born out of fear of being responsible for illness. We mostly ate inedible dry meat with boiled to death vegetables, or spaghetti with a tinned tomato sauce. She liked convenience things like beans or soya mince, again because I think she thought they couldn’t make us ill. She left all food shopping to my father, who would take us girls with him. Every week we got back home to hear that we’d bought the wrong things, there was nothing to make a meal out of and so on, but she didn’t contribute ideas, just always said she was fed up of cooking. My dad cooked as often as she did, but wasn’t a natural so would often add ‘secret ingredients’ to stews and sauces (nothing radical, just a squirt of ketchup or some such), but this caused my mother to absolutely lose it at home, screaming that he’d made it inedible and we’d all be ill. I’ve gone the opposite way, and love cooking. As soon as I was old enough I started cooking for all of us when I could. I wanted to be a chef but she convinced me to do A levels instead, mainly by scaring me about how horrible kitchens in restaurants are.
Her extreme reactions (hysterical tears and screaming) were not unusual to many other things throughout our childhood. I was always on edge, not knowing when she’d react in such an embarrassing and public way – think screeching at my dad in public places and storming off. After my second child my hormones were a bit wild, and I actually did similar. It came completely out of the blue to me, and made me think that perhaps she suffered from extreme PMT, as the rages seemed to come and go with gaps in between. As soon as I realised what I was doing I marched myself off to go back on the pill and have been fine ever since, but it scares me as I swore I’d never turn into that screaming, embarrassing mother in public. Fortunately my children are small, so I hope they won’t remember that incident. My husband had not done anything wrong at all that time, it was all hormones. I can’t vouch for my dad, as I don’t remember, but he was a mild mannered and easy going father as far as I can remember. I think his passivity may have caused my mother’s rages sometimes, but embarrassing your children like that in public is completely uncalled for. For what it’s worth, my sister and I were studious, well-behaved, quiet girls. I can’t think of any behaviour from either of us that would have been extreme enough to warrant the screaming, and unfortunately there were episodes of smacking too, as well as threats to. I don’t know if this was only done to me, or to my sister as well, and am afraid to ask to be honest, as I don’t really want to think about it. The last time I remember I was 15, and it was the morning of my mock GCSE English exam. It was also the day of my grandmother’s funeral (dad’s mum). We (me and my sister) weren’t allowed to attend and had to go to school as normal. I have no memory of what happened except that she had my arm and was chasing me around the kitchen trying to smack me. I think I stood up to her, having realised that I was bigger than her and that this was absolutely ridiculous. Again, as an adult I can recognise that it was probably a stressful morning all round, but this can’t have been an excuse to hit me. I don’t know how often she smacked me, whether it was isolated or frequent but I think I can remember at least 3 times. I don’t know if my dad knew she did it, he certainly never hit me. He raised his voice only once or twice, and apologised afterwards. He died 10 years ago so I can’t ask if he knew. He did once suggest she go to anger management classes, but I think that was based on the screaming. She blamed a lot on hormones and I think did calm down after the menopause. I am ashamed to admit to having screamed at my two babies similarly in the fog of sleep deprivation of 2 under 3, and hate myself for it. I make sure I stay on the pill to keep my hormones even, and I read about parenting techniques all the time. My children are easy and wonderful, and I have no need to lose my patience. I am angry though that I have no good model of behaviour that I can remember, and that I have to work so hard to learn how to be a good parent. I am worried that one day I will hit them, as that is how I recall being disciplined myself.
The last thing I wanted to mention was verbal. My mother has said odd things to me over the years. After one argument when I was 18 or 19 she said she wished she had never had me. Her apology came later, after I refused to come downstairs for dinner– I do love you you know. It’s the only time I recall her saying she loved me. On passing my driving test, she said, oh I didn’t expect that! Not well done, congratulations. When I told her I was getting married, she asked if I was sure. We’d been together for 10 years, living together for 7! She hadn’t voiced any concerns about the relationship before. When I told her I was pregnant, she said ‘I did wonder. You look bigger’, and with the second ‘will you cope with that?’.
When she heard he was a boy, she said, ‘Well, I’ll try my best’! Who says things like that?! Not one congratulations amongst the lot. Several odd things from childhood too – children always love their grannies more than their mums. I didn’t realise how weird this was until I casually mentioned it to my husband after my daughter wanted to play with her gran (his mum) rather than us one day – he looked at me like I had two heads, and told me that of course it wasn’t normal. He has an excellent relationship with his mother, who is exactly the mum I wish I had had.
The main reason for posting is that now, as a married adult of 35 with small children of my own, I am desperate not to repeat history. I am so angry and irritated when I see her nowadays. I am so upset that she didn’t try to get help for her issues, as I am sure that she would have been a different parent had she had some grief counselling and probably medication for anxiety. She won’t accept any help from me, be it advice or practical (another trait I work hard on to not copy). She will allow my sister to help her on occasion, under the guise that she doesn’t have a family to look after, but it feels like a smack in the face. I cannot bring myself to hug her when we visit
and I just absolutely dread going there. She must feel the hostility from me but we haven’t ever
discussed it. I can’t bear the thought of seeing her emotional and martyrish anymore, it just reminds me of childhood. I don’t know whether these feelings can be helped by therapy, or just whether I should continue striving to do the things that she didn’t, and be the mother she wasn’t. I don’t particularly want to remember all the little details. I’d rather move on and learn how to be a mother that my children want to visit and spend time with when they’re adults.