I understand what my mother did even less now that I have children. What about you - more or less understanding about their decisions and choices now you are a parent?

[thenewme]

Just wondering - no idea why this has suddenly come into my mind.

Thanks Tammy - I think in some ways I managed to be positive because I could to some extent escape by reading books.Reading about people who really achieved greatness despite of poor health or really terrible parents. I think reading made me feel like I could overcome the terrible home situation.

As to toys - I don't really remember any. I found that flashback pretty sad. I remember saving up to buy my own toys too. I remember buying second hand dolls clothes from an old age pensioner up my road, and she was great fun. I remember circling toy catalogues before Christmas knowing full well there would not really be anything ... but I still got excited imagining if any toys would turn up.

On Christmas Eve I would allow myself to imagine loads of different toy combinations. I remember being excited for class mates hearing what they got. I really must have been a born optimist! I remember going into toy shops and getting excited just looking at stuff.

I understand less.

I don't understand how a parent could be willing to continually live without loo roll offering fucking BOOKS to tear pages out of to use instead. While said parent had money for fags and chocolate.

I don't understand how a parent can chuck money away on nothing at all, while not taking care of the essentials. And they are still doing it. Total financial mismanagement.

You take care of your kids FIRST. That means making sure they have the things they need before you have chocolate and fags. And if there isn't enough money to buy loo roll/bread/milk/other fucking BASIC + fags/chocolate...

You go without the FAGS/CHOC not the basics.

I think I must have seen my childhood a game, my parents were the dark side, and I just had to win the game.

To do that, I had to be positive and bring positive people around me, to stop their negative draining bull shit. I was a jedi master!

Hecate. You don't understand that ever. I'm so sorry you had to put up with that.

Our stuff would just disappear unless you were physically attached to it. So if you were reading and put the book down to go to the loo it would be back in my room on the bookshelf before I got back. Any toys that weren't in your hand would be put away.
I remember db bringing home the girl who was to be his first wife and she moved a cushion my mum hated her from that day.
I still find it odd that no one found it strange that it was a house that had six children live there but there was no trace of us even in our rooms because everything was out of sight, we weren't allowed posters and dm chose the decoration and furnishings.
I have never ever managed to lie in bed late because I was woken every day at 7am weekends included by her wanting the sheets off the bed and hoovering the bedroom

And just to say a big YAY to all you mums out there who endured truly shit abusive upbringings yet somehow survived and are bringing up loved, clued up children and ensuring they are cherished.

It is really amazing to shower a child with love and hopefully understanding, especially when you didn't get it yourself.

I guess that our own kids will be answering this thread at some point. I wonder how many of them will feel that they had poor childhoods when as the parent, we think we did our best for them? :(

I escaped into books too, but mum would go into my bedroom when I was at school and take them away. I learned from an early age never to be seen doing something I enjoyed because it would be taken away/used against me. I also hid the books I was reading so she couldn't take them. She would even put library books in the bin, so I got banned from the library.

There was never any chance of me going to university, I was told in no uncertain terms that I would receive no financial support whatsoever from my parents, but they were too high earners for me to qualify for a grant, so I ended up leaving school at 18, and then working in poorly paid jobs (often two at a time) while I studied part time for the next 10 years. Graduated with a law qualification at the age of 28.

If I can support my children in their life choices then I will be a better parent than my parents.

I do want my DC's to look back on their childhoods to know that they were loved and wanted.

Swallowed a fly & Sonea: Books are an escape and perhaps we all used them as coping mechanisms.

I have to say Sonea that it is really fantastic that you qualified with a law qualification. I had to enter into horrendous students loans, but then lots of people I know did.

LyingWitchInTheWardrobe: Many of the posters endured abuse, and simply did not have parents who thought they did the best for them, far from it. As a child you are looked after (or not) as the case may seem by parents, who are in a position of authority.

I think all kids really want to know that their parents did the best that their parents could, but sadly in so many of the examples noted it is clear the parents did not try.

I am stunned by all the chilhood accounts on here. I have so much admiration for you all.

I worry every day about whether my dcs are having a happy childhood and what they will say to me when they're grown up. My own childhood was fine but there are things I definitely want to do differently, like someone already said, mostly around expression of emotion and feeling able to be yourself. My parents were and are very passive-aggressive and can be manipulative. I understand now that it's due to their own similar upbringings and they simply do not know how to express or assert themselves. It took me a long time to get this clear in my head though, and meeting DH and having our own dcs has played a large part in that process. They are, however, loving, supportive and patient.

I am still learning how to express emotion appropriately and help my dcs to do the same. My biggest worry is that I find it hard to find the "assertive" between the "passive-aggressive" and "aggressive". I don't want my dcs to remember a lot of shouting. I'll get there. I'm glad I can learn from my childhood and while I'm sure my dcs will change many things with their own children, hopefully they will have happy memories.

bumble

A lot of issues here are around parents being entirely self-centred and the actions and feelings that arise from that (neglect, self-esteem, not feeling wanted).

Maybe its a generational thing as well as an individual thing. On a much less abusive scale I always had a sense of 'interupting' my mothers life and she was always trying to get on with it despite us being there. I can imagine that feeling was normal when there wasn't contraception - children just happened - but after the 60's?

I always want my children to feel that they were wanted, are loved and will come first gladly. Well most of the time anyway...

Things I do understand; shouting and the occasional slap. I never hit dd but I do understand how kids press your buttons and slapping was common in those days.

Things I don't get; telling me how expensive I was;. Hitting me for being sick and wetting the bed. Er; mum telling me holw suicidal she felt. How is a young girl supposed to deal with that?

I do worry how I will handle dd learning that her dad isn't around. i have no idea what I am going to do if he comes back and I worry I will mess her up because of how I handle it if he does. i don't have a clue how to tell her I don't want him taking her abroad which is a concern of mine, without scaring her.

I've found myself thinking about this more since becoming a parent.
On one hand, I am grateful to my Mum especially as I now know its tough, plus she was very young and whilst she was married, my Dad absented himself for 3 years to go and do a degree at a Uni several hundred miles away and didn't take us with him.
What I don't really get is how she allowed other people to dictate so much to her, I apparently spent most summer holidays with my Grandparents (who were lovely) at my request, and when I asked my Mum (recently) why she allowed this - did she not want to spend time with me? She said she did, but had no real answer to why she let me have my own way.
Much more of this kind of thing happened with my Dad, they usually went on holiday without me (Dad preferred it this way) and even buggered off during mt A levels, leaving me to look after myself and the dog/cat ect. I gently challenged her about this and whether she thought it was a good idea and her only answer was 'your Dad insisted he needed a holiday'. I think she didn't really appreciate that I noticed and it bothered me. (There are lots more examples, but I won't bore you with them!)
Despite all the above, Mum and I are close and we get on really well.

I do and I don't
I had one very reliable , helpful parent who was/is too overbering and very critical.

And another who was a useless, selfish, aggressive piece of work.

my childhood was not nice, but because of this I do everything in my power to make sure my kids have a good one. so It did some good I think.

Mercedes I do not think it is a birth control thing. Some people bring up large families really well.

Beamure: not boring at all.

Bumble To hit you in a public place and not have anyone come to your rescue is like a cruel way of trying to impress on you that if you did actually complain nothing would come of it.

I haven't even had a child (yet) and I already don't understnad my mum's way of bringing us up.

We got alot of love and attention but she was bloody strict, slapped us(very hard) frequently for very little and screamed like a mad woman at us.

For example I remember once swearing at my brother at school, I called him a "fucking git" or something similar. It was bad and any child should expect trouble for that language. I was about 8. I'm thinking punishment wise the usual punsihments would have sufficed. Something you'd see on supernanny for a punishment. But my brother told her as soon as we got out of the school gates, she screamed at me ALL the way home down the street, not caring who looked and who heard her. When I got home all I don't know now how I got there but I remember lying on my bed with my hands up sheilding my self and she was leaning over me slapping the living shit out of me. She was screaming at me at the same time and each word coincided with each slap: along the lines of.... IF. YOU. EVER. SWEAR. AGAIN. I. WILL. KILL. YOU. So that's already 9 slaps. And there were many more before and after that. I was scared to come out of my room for ages.

She was like a woman possessed it was fucking mental behaviour. Parents would punish a child for swearing but she went way too far. It didn't warrant that.

But now I think she's forgotten it all. As far as she's concerned she as this awesome mum who never laid a hand on either of us. She called me a liar when I told her she was very handy with her fists.

That is something I cannot comprehend and you don't need to have had children yourself to not get it or not get it.

As with bumble, I could write a book.

But just think about it, and 8 year old experiencing that level of fear and physical pain when you've just got home from school, havne't had tea yet and have to go back to school the next day.

I remember being too upset to talk all evening and I think even mum knew she'd gone too far but that didn't stop her lashing out at us right the way through to teenage years.

I was slapped in public and in front of friends too. I never knew when it was coming either. I was terrified of her but equally she was my mum. I wasn't aware it was abuse either as I guess it's normal.

I'm very ashamed to say it but when I was about 17 -18 and we were having an argument about something, I was cheeky to her, as teens are, and she stopped in her tracks and turned around and started storming back towards me, that was the cue that she was charging over to hit me, she was always dramatic. Sure enough she slapped me bloody hard over the head and I got up and slapped her right back and very hard around her head and I said something like "lets see how you like it". I just snapped, I'd had enough of it. You cannot use brute force to make a 17 year old behave to your liking. I wasn't a badly behaved child either, my mum just too strict.

Anyway, that was pretty much the end of her hitting me ever again. Once she knew she might get it back, that was it.

Disturbing but true.