How to learn how to mother when yours wasn’t great

[wantspringnow]

I’m quite nervous to post this, but feel like I need to get some help.
my mum wasn't great. If I’m feeling charitable ‘she did the best she could’.
i always felt unwanted, in the way and an inconvenience.
My dad wasn’t around much through long work hours. He was fun dad, but also scary at times with his mental health.

I’ve got 2 kids, 3 and 6years. I don’t think I’m a good mother to them. I find myself being like her, speaking like her.
Im not as bad, I don’t belittle them/shame them like she did me, but I’m also not what I want to be.

has anyone been through this? I feel like I wasn’t shown how to love and care for small children, and I’m falling into how I was parented.
baby stage also wasn’t great, but I had PND and thought it was that.
how do you learn to be a better parent?

I thought of all the things I didn't have as a child. All the things I was embarrassed or humiliated about or felt unsupported or belittled in, and made sure I didn't make those errors.

So my ds has plenty of warm, clean clothes, I help him get to school on time. Our house is always open to his friends. He has two out-of-school activities a week, for which he has all the right kit.

I made sure he learned to swim and ride a bike (and that he had a bike) so he could join in with the other kids. That he has basic confidence in himself.

Now as a teen, I make sure he has access to personal hygiene and skincare products. That he goes on school trips. That I listen to his thoughts and opinions. Show respect for his wishes. That I've taught him how to cook and care for himself.

That, and regular displays of love and affection seem to have done the trick. He is a happy, healthy, well balanced teen, doing well at school.

Still plenty of time for things to wobble but I'm hopeful.

I had a shit mother which actually taught me how to be a good mother. I knew from an early age how not to parent.

I think this summary from @Suetcrust is brilliant

It’s a massive spectrum but a good daily routine, stories at bedtime, one on one time, loving hugs and kisses, and a calm home environment, trying to “see” the world through their eyes, is a good place to start.

Try working on those things (if you aren’t already) and you’ll have done your best imo. Authentic attention, love and stability - it’s all children need, even if it’s a bit rough round the edges!

When they get to the teen years, seeing things ‘through their eyes’ and being a mentor rather than a parent is essential. (They still need the love and stability too!)

I was almost falling in to the pattern of being my mum, trying to control situations, how I ''needed'' them to play out.
When my daughter was using logic and reason to argue back with me, we had a brief period where I fell in to the pattern of just shutting her down in a martyr mode, but then luckily I had an epiphany, just stop trying to control this situation, have faith in her to find her own path, support her to do that. be curious about who she is. I know it's hard to resist the damage that having a mother who gets angry if you try to connect with her does though.

@MintJulia I think that is a brilliant post and so true x

The trouble is if you don't know what "good enough" looks like, how do you know you've achieved this? My parents insist they did their best. Maybe they did, but it wasn't "good enough", so that's not really good as a benchmark.

OP - for me, it's helped to think what my parents would have done in the same situation, how I/my siblings felt about it and what the long term effects were. Generally this means I do the opposite of what they would have done, but it's equally had the positive effect of making me understand (sometimes) why they did what they did even if I don't agree with it even with hindsight. And sometimes (not that often) I have come to realise that actually what they did wasn't that bad.

I've read parenting books a lot.

I also find reading MN great :) If nothing else when people pose parenting problems, I so often realise that my view is so different to the general consensus that it makes me think a bit more about why I've been conditioned to think as I do.

I've just started (long overdue) therapy for this. My daughter is only 7mo but I'm terrified of being sucked into the cycle. My father is emotionally distant and my mother was a very hands off, uninvolved parent. My therapist deduced in our first session that I never felt important when I was a child, and I don't now, either.

So that's where I will start to make the change. I will parent the way I wish I was. I will make my daughter feel important, loved, listened to. I will acknowledge and validate her emotions, all of them. I won't let her be groomed and taken advantage of. I will protect her and always put her first. I'm not saying I will be perfect but I will hopefully bring her up to know that she can always, always come to me, and that she is important and worthy of love.

I find MN a goldmine for this actually. Winging it myself but being able to ask other people is good. Asking other parents IRL how they do things is good. Asking your child what they need also good. Being in the company of other families and seeing what they do. Doing the opposite of your own mother around the stuff you hated tends to work. No doubt it’s a pendulum and you swing between extremes of repeating the past and avoiding it but no parent is ever perfect. Good enough is what you need to aim for, not perfect.

Same here.

I decided to practice opposite parenting- whatever I knew my mother/parents did/would have done, I did the opposite.

I haven't spoken to my mother for 11 years. My children and I are incredibly close and have a great relationship.

Read "The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read" by Phillippa Perry

@Ooompaloopa, here's a few ❤️

Sternasuissa
Thisisyolandarenteria
Curious.parenting
ablackfemaletherapist
Themompsychologist
Nedratawwab
Neurocompatible_parenting
Raisedgood

Thanks - so will get stuck in …

All power to you OP.

You've taken a big step to acknowledge where you are. You sound like a decent, caring and thoughtful person.

I think you're going to achieve this. It's starts by knowing you could do better. And we all could really. Your children are lucky to have you.

👏🏼

You’ve asked on here so that’s a great start.
You turn up and you try, even better.
Agree with what everyone has said so far on here, it’s great advice.
I struggled when mine were younger. I felt I wasn’t a natural parent and followed the example set to me by my own mother. Weird thing was, she was present in my life in that I felt loved, clothed, cooked breakfast every morning etc. but she was never there emotionally for me. I was a late unexpected baby and I can get that it would’ve turned her life upside down but I never felt invested in. More get me to adulthood and then breathe a sigh of relief.
it was only when I hit certain milestones with my own two during the turbulent teenage years that I realised how I had my kids’ backs in a way my own mother never had.
I read a lot about Childhood emotional neglect (CEN) and The Mother Wound. I am the cycle breaker in the mothering patterns in my family. It makes it a bit harder and I still feel like I’m facing the storm alone (and I do have a great DH who is invested in the kids too), but I’ve learned to sail these waters by trusting my instincts as to what feels right and thinking trying to see things from the pov of the kids.
Good luck and good wishes OP, sounds to me like you’re doing just fine x