Is it normal to still feel resentful about this?

[Tinyterrier]

My 13-year-old daughter has recently started her periods. She was fully prepared, knew what to expect, and told me when it happened. We went shopping for pads and I took her for ice cream as a little celebration and we had a really nice day. However, it’s brought up a load of resentful feelings and a surprising amount of anger and hurt about starting my own periods at the same age. I must’ve buried these feelings pretty deep as they kind of took me by surprise.

I was also 13 when I started my periods. My mum had never spoken to me about them or about anything to do with puberty or sex, which always puzzled me because she was fairly open and progressive in many other ways. I think it was more laziness than anything else. This was in the late 90s, so not exactly the dark ages when nobody uttered the word period out loud. Shortly before this, she started an affair with a work colleague and abandoned my brother & I for a few months while she moved into his house in another town half an hour away. So I started my first period at my dad’s with only my dad and little brother there, my dad was absolutely not the kind of dad I could have told. I remember crying my eyes out in the bathroom for hours because I thought it meant that I’d bleed every day until menopause. I didn’t even know they only came every month. I missed my mum so much in that moment and desperately needed her there but I was too scared to phone her in case her new boyfriend answered (it was pre mobile phones). I had no pads, nothing. I stuffed toilet paper in my knickers until I could sneak out to the shop. I never did tell my mum and she never asked. She did once give me some pads “in case I needed them” when I was 16…i tried not to laugh.

Apart from the running off with another man, was this fairly standard in the 90s? Or was my mum especially shit? AIBU by suddenly feeling so upset about something that happened decades ago? We have an ok relationship now but she irritates the hell out of me. Is this actually because I resent her for abandoning me I wonder?..

Your mum was a bit shit, yes. Sorry. Your dad too in fairness - like you say it was the 90s, he should have stepped up.

And it's normal to experience upset and resentment. Here's you, taking care of your daughter, helping her to understand and be prepared. Naturally you reflect on your own experience where you didnt get those things. It's a painful comparison.

Yeah that’s shit, I started mine in the 80s and knew all about them partly from DM but also we had a lesson at school.

OMG that so sad, and your feelings are totally valid. Your Mum was shit to leave you like that. I sometimes feel sad for the teen me and some of the crappy parenting that happened back in the day. So it is perfectly normal to be feel mad. Did you every tell her what happened

Hold tight, I say. Having teenagers really threw things up every ten minutes from my crappy childhood. 💐I think you don't notice your parents are crap until you're a teenager and then if course every time some teenage milestone crops up for your kid you remember how rubbish your own parents were about it.

I'm sure it's normal but it's not much fun so if you can find some therapy or something I recommend it.

Yup, that's pretty shit and not surprising at all that now you're revisiting the parallels with your own daughter.

It could help to write it all down in as much detail as you remember, it can help with processing it all. It's also a bit of a shock when it unearths how much benign neglect is revealed when parents have alot going on, would talking to your mum, dad or brother about that period help?

That is mega shit that she left- she abandoned you and that will be a trauma.

As for the specific period thing I too am confused by my own mother’s attitude to puberty. She never took me to buy a bra and never supplied anything for periods and I never told her I had started.

i have asked has about this now i am an adult and she said she waited for me to tell her or for me to ask and as I never did she never said anything. So passive. she had a very distant relationship with her own mother so maybe she didn’t know how. Saying that I have done the opposite for my daughter and am very proactive.

op maybe go and have a few therapy sessions to talk about your mum. It’s wonderful to get it all out to someone who is an expert at listening.

Yes it’s only when my own children became teenagers I realised how neglected I was. It’s hard. Can you get some therapy? If you have an Employee Assistance Program you can get it for free and it’s confidential also.

It might be worth airing.

That’s awful. Could you talk about it with your mum? She might apologise.

I started having periods in the 60s, in our last year of primary school, all the girls watched a film about periods, I do remember being horrified, as it showed a baby being born. We were also given a leaflet to take home. As we moved to secondary school, we discussed it among ourselves as we were all getting our periods.

Standard level of care in that period, girls being told absolutely nothing about sex or periods. It was a car crash for me in both those areas

honestly get over it and try not to engage in that generational bashing thing that so many young people do which helps no one (how is your resentment chewing you up today?!) and fails to recognise how she in turn was educated and taught (or not) to be a good mother.

Revel in the fact you got it really right!!!

Your feelings are valid OP. It seemed to be like that in the past, with a taboo still existing in some families around periods. I started mine in the early 2000s and my mum never talked about them or gave me any pads in preparation, so i had to use tissue when i started them at school. I knew what they were but was still so embarrassed because the subject always embarrassed her. She also said I shouldn't be having them at only 11 🙄despite that being a normal age.
Maybe talking to somebody about your feelings will help? Your mum did really let you down in many ways.

Your mum was a bit shit.

i started in the late eighties and my mum talked to me.

How upsetting op, your feelings are totally justified, and it might be worth a calm conversation with your mum about it once you are feeling less emotional about it. Give her a chance to apologise or explain. But yes that was pretty crappy parenting even by the more hands off standards of the time. And your dad too.

And the fact that your mum offered you pads at sixteen shows that you couldn’t confide in her properly and that you weren’t remotely close for all of those years. You probably had to grow up to be hyper independent which takes its toll,

Entirely natural for parenting/developmental milestones to throw up inadequacies from your own past, OP. My own parents have no idea they were hopelessly inadequate. I tell myself (correctly) that both were themselves from deprived, dysfunctional backgrounds, and were never properly parented. All I can do is to do my best with my own child to be an attuned parent.

Standard level of care in the late 90s? No. I am 65. My mother really struggled to talk about anything difficult, especially emotions, because it's not how she was brought up herself, but she steeled herself to explain the facts of life to me when I was coming up to puberty, including what to expect when I started my periods. She made sure I had what I needed, remembered to take pads on holiday with us and when I woke up one morning in our self-catering house and found the sheets soaked in blood she washed the sheets and my nightie and got them dry for the evening with not a word of complaint. That was the early 1970s. She was always sympathetic when I had period pain in later years. That's what I think was standard then. There were adverts for pads, tampons and Feminax (painkillers) in all girls' and women's magazines.

By the nineties most girls wee told about periods, at least in school, and did know they happened every month. My mother was not like this, but I have heard lots of stories of girls not feeling able to tell a parent their period had started, so while not common, I wouldn't say it was uncommon sadly.

The celebrating and talking about it was not normal. I was an adult in the nineties and knew some feminist and hippie type mums who did this, but it was seen as the equivalent then of a woke thing to do. It was more normal just to give you pads and painkillers.

Yeah that's shit.

My mum gave me one talk about it. I misunderstood much of it and it was never mentioned again. She bought me a pack of pads. That was that. I didn't tell her when I started, but I needed a way to get more pads so I told my granny who sorted me out.

Very different experience with my girls.

Thank you for these replies ❤️ I just remembered my mum taking me shopping for my first bra at 12 and trying them on in the changing room and showing her and everything. That was right before she fucked off with her new man, so it wasn’t about being embarrassed or not knowing how to talk about puberty I don’t think. It was pure selfishness and being too wrapped up in her own life. The more I think about it the angrier I feel at both my parents. During an argument a few years ago I did actually mention the period thing to my dad, he clearly felt bad but the argument was about the fact I chose to go and live with my mum a few years after she’d moved in with the new man (I don’t know how we started arguing about this as we’d literally never talked about it). But he told me he’d never been so hurt in his life and I’d hurt him more than anyone in his life by choosing to go and live with her. I tried to explain that he was horrible to live with at the time and living with her was only a slightly less worse option and that I was only a child. He just said “you were old enough”. That just left me feeling guilty so that just goes to show that there really is no point in talking to parents about their past shitty parenting. I know my mum would just make it all about her if I did bring it up with her

I'm really sorry OP.
I'm a lot older than you but I remember vividly one day when my mother was laying the fire and I came into the room - I was probably about 12, - and out of nowhere she told me that if one day I found blood in my knickers then that would be me starting my periods and to tell her. She said this with absolutely no explanation and she was totally embarrassed and rushed out of the room. I was left shocked and perplexed and confused. This was the 1960s. That was the sum total of her discussing anything about sex or women's health or development. Anything else I had to learn from my friends and the sex education lessons we had at school when I was 15. It was an all girls school.
And actually my parents taught me nothing about personal hygiene, relationships, personal grooming etc. I was left to flounder around get on with things and I felt such an outsider because most of my contemporaries were so confident and assured and " knowing" compared to me.

Absolutely OP these things stay with you and are magnified because you know you would never treat your own DD in that way.

I was a teenager in the 90s. I don't recall having any specific talk about periods with my mum but we had a lesson in primary school, it was covered in PSE lessons in secondary, the scientific side was also covered in Biology, we had a talk from a lady who worked for Tampax, articles in teen magazines, I definitely wasn't short on facts by the time I started and I'd assumed that was typical for the time.

How cruel of him to make it about himself and not the child at the centre

Mum gave me the "talk" at around 11. We went shopping for pads. and she was very impressed by the stick on versions, having had a belt type when she was younger .This was the 1970s .She had started her own in the late 30s ,had no idea what was happening to her .Nan had not told her anything at all.This was surprising as Nan was very good in other ways .This was the era when saying "pregnant" was practically seen as a swear word!

I had a similar experience, my mum was neglectful and distant and when I started my period I thought I was dying. Literally. Eventually went to the library at school on day 3 or 4 and looked it up in a book and then took the book to a teacher, who gave me a hug and a huge amount of pads from the 'san'. To this day (I'm now mid 30s!) my mother has never mentioned that I might have periods and has never provided any sanitary ware at all!!

My daughter is very little still but knows all about periods. I heal by being the exact opposite to my mother and letting the safety of my child be bigger than the grief I feel, but it is seriously fucking hard.

I agree, I started secondary school in 1966 and we had discussions about periods in Biology lessons, almost from the beginning of the term. It as an all-girls' school, so that might have made a difference but my mum had made sure that I knew what to expect and had everything I needed.
It's simply poor parenting not to prepare your daughter for puberty, no matter when she was born.

She was really shit.

As shit as any parent - mum or dad - who ditches their kids for their sex life.