SERIOUSLY, parents who decided to do better than their own parents, and raised children how they deserve to be raised, you all are saving the world. It's the hardest job I can think of to mold another person.
@RickiTarr I hit “great parents” and my mom definitely parented to break awful cycles of serious serious abuse. Her grandfather threw her father out a window and broke his arm. Her father was…terrible. She never hit me. She always gave me space to be myself. She told me her main goal was to make sure I felt safe. And I did. I am so grateful. And now that I’m a parent I just can’t fathom how hard it is to parent in a totally different way than you were parented.
@RickiTarr
I may not be saving the world by trying to do better than my parents at parenting my kids but at least they have grown up feeling loved. I felt my parents hated me for not being able to fit their ideal of a 'normal girl'. I didn't want that for my kids.
@RickiTarr This! I am so impressed with my dad who was repeatedly spanked by his parents. Only once did he lay a hand on me (not bad). He did have a crazy temper, though, so it’s been my goal to not repeat that with my sons. I fought my own temper for years until it suddenly clicked that it wasn’t about me being right but about them feeling safe. Don’t know why it took my so long, but they claim they don’t remember me being angry with them at all so maybe it was mainly in my head?
@RickiTarr my parents gave me a very messed up childhood. but i will give them credit for improving upon their own experiences, which were pretty hellish based on what they told me but prolly shouldnt have
how many other people basically functioned as a therapist/emotional dumping ground for their v screwed up parents?
@RickiTarr My parents divorced when I was 2, or thereabouts. My mom loved me and did her best, but struggled with alcoholism all her life and was in and out of hospitals as long as I could remember. She passed when I was 15. My dad and I have a strained relationship, he wasn't really around. He refuses to use my new name or pronouns. I usually hear from him on my Birthday, Christmas, etc. but this year my birthday came and went with no word. There's nothing I want from him anyway.
@RickiTarr a mother who loved us but was selfish, a father who was a drunk and had no business being a parent, and a step father who was an abusive drug addict and had no business being in society, let alone a parent.
Surprised I made it through tbh, but the fact I did I owe to my being raised by someone who taught me morals and empathy, even if she didn't always have them herself, and recognising the male role models I had were what not to do.
@RickiTarr While my mom took a few tries to find the right match for her I have to say all three of my dads are/were great in their own ways. Also there were a few times all three of them were at events together and they all got along. Probably the best lesson I got from my mother: do your best to choose well and break up on as good of terms as possible.
@RickiTarr it's hard to find a category that fits.
My parents said they loved me, but they didn't, they loved an image in their heads.
My parents had no idea about regular social interaction, so couldn't teach me how to function in society. I'm pretty sure they were both AuDHD - undiagnosed of course given they grew up in the 50s.
My parents had a dysfunctional relationship, in that my dad had been my mum's stalker. So I didn't exactly have a good role model there
@RickiTarr I always thought my parents were great- not perfect, but pretty damn good. I'm wondering about that more after both my parents died and I watched my brothers become jerks.
Not right after they died, that could be forgiven, but slowly as each hit the mid 50's.
@RickiTarr I thought I had great parents until my father died, my mother started cleaning house, and all the skeletons she had been protecting me from as a child came out of the closet as an adult.
While I have sympathy for my mother, I concluded all of that had nothing to do with me and I kinda just moved on, went to therapy, stopped drinking, “finished” therapy, and am trying to do even better still.
@RickiTarr Bio mother never told my father I existed & gave me up for adoption. Adopters claimed they were my parents but didn’t do any of the things parents are supposed to do—not even the most basic things. So … no parents. #Ugh
@RickiTarr There are so many different replies in this toot. With me, I had time in care,, that wasn't something I look back on fondly. Mum did her best on a very tight budget but still managed to find money for booze and tobacco. Dad was an abusive drunk who had a thing for violence and control. I left home as soon as I could. I'm the youngest of 8 and really glad that none of the family keep in touch.
@RickiTarr here's a story that few people can tell.
1/3
I was adopted. My parents were "good" conservatives, who were screened and vouched for by somebodies. My father was a cop, my mother was a stay at home house wife who wanted a child as is her role, which she willingly accepted. But, being prescreened didn't prevent him from cheating on her the first chance he got, with the first insecure woman who threw herself at him when he got a position of authority (he won an election to be Sheriff).
My mother was indignant, this was the supreme insult to the role which she had adopted. She filed for an immediate divorce, $100 child support a month, and took me as she fled across the country to her birth home of Pittsburgh and left me with her sister for a month while she had a "nervous break down" in a psych ward. She forever after complained that no one would prescribe her Valium.
From my age of 5 until I left home at 18, she lived on child support, welfare, and...
...subsidized housing. The government occasionally forced her to get a check stand job, but she was belligerently ignorant, and always laid off within a year. She never tried to develope a career she could support us with, and nursed her resentment instead.
There was some light physical abuse of me, but more importantly, she kept a suitcase packed and occasionally threatened to leave the 5 year old me, until I was clutching her legs and sobbing at the front door. The catholic..
..school she got me into (scholarship for the poor little white boy) never wondered why I cried so easily, but those cranky old nuns threatened to spank me plenty.
I lived with my dad for 7th and half of 8th grade. He was as unapologetically racist as you would think an excop would be, despite having a respectable job as head of security at OSU.
Neither of them put anything aside to help me go to college. I was a smart, nerdy student, who was bullied a lot in school because...
...I never hit anyone back, because I was told it was wrong, despite the authorities never standing up for me.
I entered adulthood having dropped out of 1 college almost immediately, spent a decade working for minimum wage as I tried to finish a two year degree part time, and never married.
My point? I don't know. I struggle with confidence even to this day.
But adoption didn't save me from being raised by a single mother.
I wish I could offer you the hug you need, though more importantly would be the support and compassion you deserve by virtue of being human.
It is disheartening that so many of us grew up in abusive situations.
I would suggest the book “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.” It was a hard read for me but extremely insightful as to why I have so many scars and pressure points my peers lack.
@Urban_Hermit@RickiTarr I hope you know this in your bones, but let me just reiterate: you deserved so much better as a child. Every child is an absolute treasure and should be loved, protected and cherished. You deserved to feel safe and stable. You deserved to be free from the burden of your parents’ baggage, which was their own to bear. And you, as an adult, deserve repair. Even if you won’t get it, you deserve it.
@RickiTarr Almost feel like I need multiple choice. My parents decidedly had no business being parents. I often say they would never have gotten to be parents if merit was a requirement. I feel like they did try in their own ways, they weren't malicious, but oof...
Family of five. I'd just been looking at the picture of that house yesterday. I lived in the attic. It was pandemonium one floor below. But we all survived.
Teachers were essentially my second parents. That's why I get so pissed to see how they're mistreated by students' parents today.
@RickiTarr
I am currently in a fellowship called Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. I just left a meeting bc I couldn't stomach the serenity prayer. My life has become unmanageable.
@RickiTarr my ‘rents were imperfect people who did a great job of raising 4 very different kids as best they could. We were solidly middle class but had a hell of a lot of fun, and I knew my parents loved us even when we argued vehemently.
The older I get the more I appreciate them. I tell my mom that on a regular basis, still. Dad died in my 20s.
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