You know what's the worse?

[GuideMe]

Yes there is a lot of good stuff in this thread. Gold. Treasure. I think it will not only help me, but for the thousands of parents who come across this thread right here now and in the future. This is the best advice ever. There is nothing like it out there on the web for parents who feel the way I do right now. It has helped me greatly, I can't even possibly respond to the ions of good advice here even though I really want to. Instead, I will do like a I normally do, save it, in my book of threads , especially for when I need it again to remind myself. These emotions of guilt is what keeps me and a lot of other people co-dependent and unable to detach from difficult children. The guilt is the biggest hurdle more so than anything else, so it is important that we battle it for each other. There is no such thing as the perfect mother or father, and it is up there with unicorns and fairy's. I know one thing, I did try my very best, I know this without a doubt in my mind. I was just more or less saying that my difficult child , even though she knows better , the anger will come out onto me when it boils over because I am the mother, I have to accept I can't change that even though I want a better relationship with her. But I can change how I feel, such as someone who said earlier which was brilliant: how my difficult child treats me is not who I really am. I can refuse being the punching bag for anger any longer because it helps no one. I also can change it by separating myself from her until she has time to work and just heal her own issues. I also can change it by separating myself from her until she has time to work on her own issues and then realize this:

Here is a comforting thought. You ended that paragraph writing about how young your child is. And she is still so very young. How wonderful a thing would it be Guide Me, if you could (and if I could ~ better late than never, right?) sincerely understand that our childrens' anger is something we are beautifully equipped to help them cope with once we see that, though the anger is directed at us, though it may even be destroying us, it is not a real thing.

This is my greatest hope for her to realize this ^ one day in the future. It's more than I can ask for. Until then, detachment.

And your right MWM. My family is toxic and dysfunctional. However, it was better than her being on the streets or being a gypsy going from friends house to friends house. My brother loves my daughter and even though he has major problems, he wouldn't harm her in any way. He is very protective of her and sure as hell beats being on the streets with no home which was where she was going. It's like picking between the lesser of two evils. But I totally get what you're saying, I just don't really have much choice.

 

[BusynMember]

GM, my family could have been worse too. I've heard worse. And my kids could have gone through worse. Some kids are not believed by their parents when they talk about t he stuff my kids had to talk to us about, but we did and acted quickly in their behalf and against the offenders. Jumper and Sonic's abuser was punished and they saw it and know it. It could always have been worse.

My family provided for me as well. We had food, clothes, medical attention, even braces for our teeth. What we did not have was acceptance or unconditional love, but there is worse. Verbal abuse, day after day, is not as bad as some forms of abuse. But our early years always take a toll. All three of us have had major problems (my sister, my brother, and me). And in the end my family of origin decided it was all my fault. "All" means everything that ever went wrong in our family. And I do mean everything. But I either moved on or was bitter and angry forever, trying to please my two siblings who still are on earth with me. I could have stolen, taken drugs, made my mental illness worse...done things to make myself even worse, not better. We all have this choice. And it is OUR choice. All of us have that choice.

I used to also say to myself, "At least I was fed and housed and not physically hit or sexually abused." It had to be enough. I could not say, "At least, in my heart, I know my mother loved me the best way she could." Because she didn't love me. And that is never ok to any human being, but it is something you can overcome. You can use it in a positive way as in, "I will use my mother as a role model of how NOT to parent. I can choose calmness and quiet in my response to my children instead of shouting and words I regret. I can always tell my kids how much I love them, whenever we have any interaction. I can tell how well they are doing, how proud I am of them, instead of where they fall short and what losers they are. And I will not always succeed, but I can do it most of the time. It's up to me. I can get the haunted mother out of me and be my own person. I am not her. She is not me."

My mother has traumatized me more than anyone else emotionally, but she had lessons to teach me too, even if it was how not to be. And I refused to let her behavior force me so inside of myself that I hated all of humanity or trusted nobody. I would not let her steal my soul that way. I am socially awkward and not comfortable with groups of people, and I don't have many close friends. But I don't hate the world or think all people are bad or have a chip on my shoulder. This was chosen because I did start out that way. I just kept telling myself, "I will not look at the world through the lens of anger and hatred because of her. I won't let her do that to me." It took lots of therapy and hard work, but it paid off royally.

As for my relationship with my kids, Scott left our family. Period. He didn't give any concrete reason, but we did not adopt him until age six. In the end, I choose to let him go, since that what he wants, and remember the memories and not focus on this or think I am a failure because a child who spent six years in an orphanage could not bond. It is what it is.

I have REALLY good relationships with Jumper, Sonic and Julie and not really a bad relationship even with 37. I just had to learn to accept him for who he is in order to enjoy what he has to offer. He isn't always in a bad mood and I cherish the good times and, yes, I tell him I love him after every phone call, unless he hangs up on me...lol. Well...ok. Almost

GM, you can get the monsters off of your back too. You can do this. Yes, I am pushing you because I care about you and hope you will decide to be good to yourself and get the help you need to appreciate your goodness. Whatever bad may have happened to you or your daughter...it was not your fault. You did not ask for it for yourself or for her and I know first hand that there is no method to 100% protect your children. You can be a great mom, very involved, even a stay-at-home like I was and still not be able to protect your kids. You can make them feel loved by you, but you can't stop Joe Jerk from next door from bullying them or abusing them in other ways especially when they tend not to talk to us about it...mostly, I have learned, out of fear of what the abuser will do to their loved ones if they tell anybody.

Half the kids in this country (my son told me that his family lawyer told him it is actually 53%) will live with single parents. Their parents will divorce. It is now part of our culture. Your daughter is not the only single parent child. Thankfully people are no longer ostracized for living with a single parent.

When you think about your daughter, do you ever think that part of her personality is probably genetic? You never mention her father and I get that you did not allow him to raise her, which sounds like a good idea. But your daughter can not get rid of him as easily as that. Half of her DNA is his. If he was temperamental, had a quick temper, self-destructed...well, your daughter may have a lot of his DNA going on and that has zilch to do with you. It is not just about your DNA connections. It is about his as well.

It is time to stop blaming yourself and stop accepting crumbs and thinking it is ok. It is not ok that your family was unkind to you or hurt you or whatever they did. So what if they housed you? Most parents do. Some abusive parents try to keep their kids at home as long as possible to prolong the abuse. They get something out of feeling powerful. I don't excuse my DNA connections anymore. I don't hate them. I don't love them and wish they loved me. It is what it is.

But all this came by seeking out help. I simply did not have the capacity to do this myself. It is too much.

I wish you the haappiest life and a decision on your part to one day stop blaming yourself and start loving yourself. By your kind heart, I'm sure most of us already care for you very much. You are a worthwhile, important person and you deserve to be happy. You are still young and, if you can heal a bit, perhaps you can even make strong loving connections, may I dare say...maybe marry a wonderul man one day? Yes, they exist! My second husband is wonderful!!!! My first, not so much.

You have a wonderful Saturday. Be good to YOU. You so, so, so deserve to be able to find peace with yourself because you have so much goondess inside of you.

 

[SuZir]

I too have mommy issues of my own (and daddy issues, but those are bit different.) My mom did love me, I don't doubt that and I loved her, but she did screw up in some things in the way, that I still don't think were okay. I have forgiven her, but that is another matter. I have to say I needed to take some distance to her when I was around my twenties and during that time our relationship was strained. It did get better before her way too early death though, but first I did need to heal a bit and then I was able to really forgive her.

What I was very angry to her were mainly that she failed to keep me safe physically and mentally, and that she really didn't make enough effort in those areas in my opinion and she even caused some of it by her selfish choices. My mom came from somewhat wealthy family and had strained relationship with her parents. Looking back, tried in every possible way to annoy them. She was also very opinionated and principled. Hippy and communist. She despised her parents values, lifestyle, heritage and so on and was adamant to do everything differently with me. While she felt she had too strict upbringing, she tried to do Summerhill upbringing with me, where she felt her parents had been too status orientated, she wanted to bring me up anti-materialist, where she felt her parents were sticking too much with 'their kind', she wanted to make me scoff to our heritage, where she felt her parents had had too strict expectations for her, she often told me,that I could do anything I wanted with my life.

Of course it didn't work like that. Okay, Summerhill-thing she was able to do at times, but even with that, she actually didn't that much respect my free will, but tried to manipulate me to freely want what she wanted. Her ways of trying to make me believe that material things don't matter, made me security seeker (after spending years really scared about if we would have something to eat or place to sleep do that to a person, even though we actually seldom did go without, and looking back my mother was well aware that we really wouldn't, or only if she really, really wanted to.) But in fact that constant fear and worry left me with much worse marks than those few nights I did go to bed hungry or we really were without place to sleep.) In stead of scoffing to our heritage I very much embraced it and that and need for security were partly the reasons I married someone like my husband (whose my mom didn't like at all, by the way.) And while she was very vocal about not having expectations for me, she unverbally made very clear what the expectations were, and they were high. And she also made it clear, what a displeasure it was, that I failed to fulfil most of those expectations.

By the way, I of course decided not to do same mistakes my mom did: Now I have one kid who scoffs to the white picket fences I have made so much effort to maintain and who I failed miserably to protect and other, who tends to complain how I have way too high expectations for him.

The things I had hard time forgiving my mom was how she forced me to be a grown-up in our family from early on, to worry and take care about financial matters, food, schedules and structure, all kinds of grown-up things way too early. And not just for myself, but also for her. And she let me be scared about our surviving, when she actually always had options in her back pocket, even if we didn't have any money left and no food in cupboards and rent had been due five days ago already and I was going frantic, she actually had options. She had skills she was able to turn into money in short order and also as long as it was me, who was about to go hungry and homeless, her parents were willing to give her money, if she just asked. But I didn't really know that, so while for her it was play, pretence of being this poor, proletarian person who was suffering for her ideology, for me it was real. I'm not sure if she ever really understood that. In her ideology children are just small adults who should be treated like adults, maybe she really thought I was capable to adult reasoning and seeing, that we really never had any danger to go lacking.

My mom also never settled down, we were always moving around, for example one school year I did go to four different schools. She also had about half a dozen husbands and countless boyfriends and we lived with many of them too. I totally lost count how many 'step-fathers' I have had. Some were nice, some I liked a lot, some were not nice. Few were physically violent towards my mother, few were substance abuser, few yelled and said horrendous things to my mom or me, few were criminals and couple were physically violent towards me too. One badly so. That one, and not leaving him even after he beat me good couple times, I was very angry to my mom for a long time. I was never really sexually abused by any of her men, but one did harass me. He probably didn't consider it so, it was mostly just implying and verbal harassment masked as jokes, slapping my butt or touching my breasts also as a 'joke', but it certainly made my young teenage self really uncomfortable. But that my mom never really saw, so it was easier to forgive her.

But maybe the thing I had hardest time to forgive her, was her keeping me from her parents in whim. She did let me visit, even let me to their care for months, and once almost a year, when it suited to her, but when she got angry with them, I wasn't allowed to meet them or have contact with them. And while I do believe they may had been very strict and even harsh with her, and while I do believe she had some legitimate beef with them, they were different for me. They were older, had thought things through and of course your own kids and grand kids just are different thing. So they were very doting grandparents and I adored them and safety and structure they were able to provide me. And her taking it away from me as a whim, was very hard for me.

I apologise for long-winded sob story, but my point is; few have perfect parents and gripes tend to go through whole family tree, small changes, but often issues stay similar. There are some quite functional families and some more dysfunctional and some downright tragic (with me, that down right tragic family tree is on my dad's side, my mom's side is just having an erratic functioning profile ) but in the end we just have to play with the cards we are dealt with. Some get better ones, some downright horrible (if you happen to born as a quadriplegic child of a Bangladeshi street prostitute, you really don't have much chance, most get at least a bit luckier), but it is, what it is and in the end we just have to do our best to make the best of what we have been given. You do, your daughter does. Understanding and accepting that and learning to forgive is a key to being more content, but even that can't be forced, but a person actually has to get it themselves.

When we are in our young adulthood, we are supposed to go through things that happened in our adolescence. Look at it all with adult perspective. As children, we are powerless and our survival depends from adults around us taking care of us, and kids instinctively know that and will do absolutely everything to please the powers that either keep them alive or don't (even though it doesn't always feel like that if we have been able to provide our kids enough safety that they dare to oppose us. But kids who are lacking even basic safety do not dare to do that.) When young adult, person is not as depending of the parents any more and it makes them able to critically look back. And if there has been more than little dysfunction, it is normal to become angry. Taking some distance, going things through and trying to figure out why things happened is often needed for us to get over and heal from dysfunctional elements in our childhood. To learn and grow. And often true forgiveness can come only after that.

 

[GuideMe]

I truly feel honored you all would share your experiences with me. Suzir, my daughter would relate a lot to you. She feels the same way, about the struggle and too much pressure on her, except I wasn't like your mother by choice. I wanted the money and stability, just didn't have it. That's the only difference. I would never want that for my child. I would never do something purposely like that, although, I'm sure your mother felt she had her good reasons and her own experiences which haunted her. I'm so sorry you went thought all of that. But I get the message, my daughter can overcome these things, just as I have and just as all of you have. Who really has the leave it to beaver life? Very few and far between.