“I know you better than yourself” my parents say like it didn’t take them 5 years and my therapist outing me to realize I was serious about liking guys x3
“I know you better than you know yourself” claims the mother I haven’t spoken to in ten years and doesn’t even know where i live
No way
How horrible was that
It was certainly an interesting conversation haha :3
I’m not saying a parent knows your inner feelings, but I am saying that after watching repeat behaviour patterns you notice stuff. And with younger kids they don’t really connect these dots. So yeah, to some extent we do know our kids better than they do
But this all has limits. And expiration dates.
“You never tell me anything!”, they complain.
I vaguely remember that I was generally quite chatty in like, kindergarten, in stark contrast to today. Though to be fair, it might not have been my parents, or at least not only my parents, who fucked that up.
My mom and I actually talked about this. We love each other very much, but, outside of horror movies, most of our interests are different. On a car rise we went thought some things. Favorite song, movie, etc. As I’ve gotten older and gotten the language for it, I’ve explained what overwhelms me and when I need to be alone and our relationship has gotten way better. We actually had a fight last week and it was pretty… Normal. I had said something snippy, and told her soon after I didn’t even feel that way because I was upset and was snapping at her, which is why I wasn’t ready to talk to her. She actually let me cool off and we spoke later, explained ourselves, and made plans for if the situation happens again.
My mom has put a lot of work into understanding me and giving me the space to make mistakes. I learned a lot of her quirks and preferences through trial and error as a kid, but she had to do that with me as an tight lipped adult. It’s not 100%, there are still things I prefer to discuss with someone else, but the work as really been paying off for us.
However, this only works with certain parents. 👀
My mother was constantly telling me what my thoughts, feelings, and needs were when I was growing up. She never tried to get to know me. When I would explain my actual feelings or opinions, in detail, she’d accuse me of lying. I think she was actually just projecting everything she didn’t like about herself, and sometimes her mother and sisters, onto me. Some of the qualities I supposedly had were mutually exclusive, or just didn’t make sense when applied to the life stage I was in. She was telling me she hated how haughty and arrogant I was since I was 3 years old, at least. When I was a teen, out of nowhere, one day she started to tell me how sad it was that I was so insecure. I was like, I thought I was arrogant. How can I be arrogant and insecure at the same time? She said I’m arrogant because I’m insecure. But, she’d been characterizing me that way since I was a small child. What small child thinks or acts that way? Little kids are notoriously honest and straight-forward. What 3 year old has the emotional sophistication to behave arrogantly to cover up insecurity, and what does a 3 year old have to even be insecure about?
A good parent often will know more about their child than the child themselves. Unfortunately, many bad parents think they know more.
It’s also ages dependent. Till the late teens, children often don’t have a good handle on their internal state. They can often get there by 10-12, then teenage hormones do a number on it again.
Finally, it’s down to the parents to teach the child how to understand what they feel. This also requires open and honest communications. You can’t help and train them to cope appropriately, without knowing what’s happening. You can’t know what’s happening without communication.
Dear parents, if you’re always romping around your house ranting about your convictions, your politics, your religion or your opinions of other people, your kids are NEVER going to be open and honest with you.
If you have ever told your kids “You can tell me the truth” and then proceeded to lose your shit when you heard the truth, your kids are NEVER going to be open and honest with you.
If you do this and you think your kids are just the sweetest, kindest and most obedient and well-behaved kids in the world, you’re DEFINITELY going to end up in a home.
If you have ever told your kids “You can tell me the truth” and then proceeded to lose your shit when you heard the truth, your kids are NEVER going to be open and honest with you.
This is one of the things I told myself I would never do, and I’ve stuck to it. I’m a father of 5, including three daughters. When they started going through puberty, I made it a point to let them know that they can come to me with questions if they wanted to, and that I will never, ever make them feel weird about it. My eldest is 14 now and has held me to that promise.
And to make it crystal clear - trust doesn’t magically reset as soon as a kid hits puberty. If you’ve been dismissing them and their concerns throughout childhood, they aren’t going to suddenly come to you with their problems, no matter how much you tell them they can.
I remember my parents ignoring my complaints as a kid. Then around the age of 12 or so, it was like a switch was flipped. I was being told frequently that I could “come to them with any problem.” Cool, just one question - where was this attitude a few years ago, when all my issues were “silly kid stuff” to you? I was basically trained throughout my life to never to bother you with my problems. You can’t just undo that by saying a few magic words over and over.
My dad was borderline abusive when I was young, but as soon as I hit puberty he stopped being like that and started saying “you can come to me about anything”
Is he a better person now? Yeah, probably. Do I trust him more now? Yeah, probably.
Will I ever go to him for help before exhausting literally every other option? Absolutely not
I’m quite convinced that linear-minded parents just project everything they hated about themselves as children onto their own children without even thinking about what the kid is going to remember or not. My earliest memory, like age 3, was my dad getting angry for no reason and pushing my face in the dirt when my mom wasn’t looking. It was my first formative memory and still as sharp in my mind as when it happened, because it confused me and made me feel betrayed and forever unsure what was going to happen in the future.
edit: And what happened in the future? A lot more sneaky abuse and psychological torture. Until I finally went no-contact at 35. He eventually died alone from alcohol overdose after having alienated everyone in his entire life or driving them to self destruction. I say again, you reap what you sow.
My mother, now that she is old, frequently asks if I remember random things: people I used to know, places I’ve been, hobbies I used to enjoy. And when I say yes, her response is, “Oh, but that was so long ago!” or, “But you were just a child then!” I think what she actually wants to know is if I remember all the horrible things she said and did to me. 🙄
My mom’s the opposite. I bring up memories to her and she doesn’t recall them. She claims not to remember any of the shit she said to me during my formative years, which leads to her now with the “missing missing reasons” whenever my siblings and I don’t talk to her.
Mine loves to reminisce, but she also claims to not remember actions that make her look bad, or she claims they never happened and I’m lying because of my “insecurity.” But I think her preemptive “oh, but you were a child!” suggests that she actually does remember these things. If she didn’t remember her actions, she wouldn’t be trying to make me doubt my own memories of them decades after I stopped arguing with her and just distanced myself.
Ugh, that’s gotta be so frustrating. At least my mom knows my memory is better than hers - she admits it during neutral and pleasant times, like when sharing old stories. But when it comes to things she said or did that hurt me, she goes from “Yeah, that sounds right,” to, “I don’t remember that.” I don’t know if it’s a subconscious block, conscious denial, legit memory lapse, or what.
I know the tree remembers what the axe forgot and that my mom has never been one to self-reflect on her actions much, so it could go either way. Which reminds me, she absolutely expected me to master certain skills as a child that she still has barely grasped even today. Skills like anticipating others’ emotions, being able to laugh at one’s self, recognizing when one is wrong, and so on. Things that she insisted I do, but never set an example of how. She legit has told me, on numerous occasions, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Ohh, don’t worry, Ma, I’m way ahead of you. Why do you think your grandkids (my nieces/nephews) ask me to hang out all the time instead of you?
“Do as I say, not as I do,” was a common saying in my family, also. It sounds like she wanted you to be an adult while she still felt like a child. I think some parents never grew up.
This just makes it seem that in order to enjoy tumblr, you had to have shitty parents.
Seems about right.
Aw shit. My kid is constantly on Tumblr :/
Well, this is awkward.
I’m personally sad for the person that posted that. Not every parent is a bad parent.
Way too many, though, and even the ones who are good or at least neutral on the whole might still not be cool about a lot of topics.
You tied my brain into a knot.
way too many
I’ll grant that; if only one bad parent existed, it would be one too many. Yet this will drag us into defining what a bad parent is. And by extension:
even the ones who are good or at least neutral
What defines one and the other and what separates one from the other?
might still not be cool about a lot of topics
Which ones? Give me an example, please. And are all people supposed to be open or receptive or knowledgeable about every single topic?
A surprising percentage of the world is okay with making their children homeless if they are any variety of LGBTQ+.
Where? Because I would go straight to jail if I tried to pull that stunt in my country.
Abandonement, deriliction of paternal duties, abuse, mistreat… these are just from the top of my head. The list can grow longer.
Child abuse and neglect are illegal, but not always enforced in my country. United States.
I was a gay child that was medically neglected and later homeless. Even more frustrating, they claimed me on their taxes when I was an adult and got money for caring for me even though I didn’t get any support. I knew a girl that was beaten by her parents and social services didn’t do anything because she was fed and housed and the foster system was overwhelmed in her area. I even knew someone that was removed from their home because they were beaten by their parents so bad they went to the hospital. Their siblings were not removed (so they remained living with an abuser) and they were forced back to their parents after six months. No jail for any of these people.
I grew up in Oklahoma, and the cops showed up once when I was around 7 because I was being abused. They said my stepdad was allowed to hit me and made it understood that I was the one disturbing the neighbors and I needed to behave.
The Oklahoma board of education is just now this year making legislative headway into a law banning teachers from hitting disabled students. Not all students, just disabled students. They’ve been arguing about it for years because there’s enough parents saying that being allowed to hit a kid with crutches is part of their religion.
You are very lucky to have grown up somewhere other than the US. I can’t wrap my head around this level of abuse not being normal. It sounds wonderful.
Speaking from experience, this culture is just as common outside the US, and outside Christianity too.
People with even halfway decent parents don’t realise how lucky they are.
Almost like people online who can extrapolate your whole horrible personality and belief system from a comment they don’t like.
That’s why I like to put my horrible personality and belief system in my comments so no extrapolation is needed. Keeps things nice and simple.
BTW I think we should eat babies and I’m a grumpy asshole.
That moment, when something on the internet triggers traumatic memories and you’re tempted to tell them to the randoms, but all you want to do is to look at pink fluffy unicorns instead for 10 hours straight.
I don’t mean to tell you how to live your life, but maybe if those unicorns happened to be dancing on rainbowe they’d help you calm down even more. :)
Indeed, they do. 🦄🌈
As the years go by and I approach my {redacted}'s, I am frequently reminded of and learning of ways in which my parents were both smarter and stupider than I ever could have known.
My mom can accurately describe a dozen different behaviors that I expressed throughout my childhood that indicated add or autism or something, yet still she was (and still is) adamant that I am a perfectly normal human being. I can’t tell if she’s just trying to be supportive in her own dysfunctional way, or if she can’t accept that she produced a defective offspring. She is responsible for the quote “I don’t need a doctor’s permission to be weird”, and I fucking love that.
From someone who’s on the spectrum to another: To classify a difference in focus or a difference in processing as a defect is inaccurate. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will go through life believing it is stupid”. There are things that come naturally to neurodivergent brains of which neurotypical brains are utterly incapable. “Hyperfixation” is just a way of saying that we become subject matter experts faster than other people. Even the reviled “attention deficit” is just our mind getting bored of things we’ve seen before. You are an explorer of the cosmos. If someone else says you are less, just because you find it difficult to care about the meaningless monotony of social constructs, that is a limitation not of you, but of them. Fuck 'em. Find your superpower, and follow it.
I figured out that I am preternaturally talented at classifying bits of knowledge and drawing them together to form syllogisms and comparisons. This has made me find my life’s work in teaching chemistry. I get go be paid to be an alchemist, teaching the arcane secrets of the universe to students, showing them how we have learned to bend the very fundaments of reality to our will. I think that’s pretty neat.
It’s an inheritable condition. It’s very common for parents of autistic/ADHD kids to think they’re ‘normal’, because their idea of ‘normal’ is themselves or their own parents, who also have them.
I feel very much that the gap of what is normal have narrowed a LOT in my 50 years. Especialy in school. While there are laws that say everyone should have adapted teaching, it is just more and more classrom and less and less practical work. With a lot more burocracy for teachers. (Norway)
I was always jealous of most of my friends parents.
Mine were fine as parents, but we never got close because they’re Baptists and I rejected their church as a teen. I self censor a lot around them. Which is tiring, so I don’t try to see them more than a couple times a month.
Most of my friends, their parents took up more of a close friend role I noticed in our 30’s.
Edit; I guess it bothers me more now because I know they’re not around for much longer.
