Beating this drum again - I think neither of my parents could handle my emotional needs, right from the get go. They both 'abandoned' me repeatedly, I'm guessing *most* of the time. I was left to depend on my own emotional resources long before I had any such resources whatsoever. The bullshit idea that an infant can 'self soothe' reflects a failure on the part of parents to grasp the most basic essentials of child development.
The human brain learns and develops its 'patterns' based on the quality of its interactions with other humans. Plain and simple, no ifs, ands or buts. If a child doesn't get what she *needs* from her parents? Then she learns that her needs don't matter. Straight up, no bullshit. It's not a matter of 'deciding' to simply overcome adversity; a child who doesn't receive the emotional support she *needs* is, quite literally, disempowered.
I think, as a child, I became a 'goody-two-shoes', a pleaser, a 'teacher's pet', because I was absolutely terrified of getting in trouble.
My parents' perpetual scowls of disapproval, of which I now believe they were entirely unaware, frightened me. I felt that I could never please them.
And so, in self defense, I *never* lied (having no confidence that I could get away with it); I *immediately* confessed all sins, so as to get any 'punishment' over with as quickly as possile (I *hated* waiting for the other shoe to drop.)
I became a 'know-it-all', partly because this was the *one* thing that *did* seem to win any approval from my parents. Although, even *this* backfired, because if I was perceived as trying to 'one up' my parents (rather than just simply trying to 'jump' high enough to win anything remotely resembling positive feedback), I was shamed, humiliated, smashed down in the mud. Or, worse? *Accused* of having foul motives, of trying to make the parent in question look or feel bad about her/himself. Gah.
Monday, November 29, 2010
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2 comments:
I am so sorry your parents were what they were.
I pick something and when I comes up comment that it is a myth. I don't know why. I guess hoping I make a difference.
Right now I am trying to dismiss the myth of mothers intuition and maternal instinct. When you think about it thinking that a mother knows what to do is putting a pressure on the mother. They do not always know what to do not do they always even try.
My parents seemed to have a thing where they could not stand me doing better than they did. It started at a very young age. I could figure stuff out that they could not and for some reason it upset them.
When my daughter at age 6 understood that you can not divide by 0. My father is a math teacher so I told him of her accomplishment. He told me that actually you can it is just indeterminable. Had my daughter told him directly he would have been thrilled. It is some sort of special case with me and what I say.
My sibling all took music lessons. My mother said to me "You do not want to take piano lessons do you."
Thank you.
Yes, I know that mothers often don't know what they're doing, and fathers too. They're often (usually?) operating without a map, and little knowledge of the territory except what they experienced from their *own* parents.
The hope is that a parent *recognizes* that the BABY is the expert on the baby's needs, and proceeds accordingly. After all, the little bugger isn't exactly a fully sentient being just yet - she starts out as a blob requiring input and producing output. And not much more - a 'bag of dirty water' that excretes and shrieks and thrashes its little arms and legs about vaguely, seeking contact, connection and safety. That's about it.
So: I'm spending more time with my mom lately, after about a two year hiatus.
She's learning. So am I!
I'm sorry your mother left you out. Is that what you felt, or am I misunderstanding and/or projecting?
I wonder if perhaps *she* misunderstood *you*, and *thought* you were expressing something you were not?
I've found this to be the largest communication barrier between my mother and I: We just simply speak different languages, emotionally, and it often seems that the twain rarely meet.
But - with time, and an *insane* amount of patience (actually, this is something ♥ gives me - he is *incredibly* patient, almost mind-blowingly so, sometimes), we *do* eventually manage to find common ground.
I found that the path, for *me*, was something like: Recognition; disbelief; denial; anger; more disbelief; frustration; rage.
Then a long stretch of 'get the f*** away from me, you *ss*****!!!!
And now? finally, there seems to be some peace with it. But it has been a *looooong*, weary stretch of time. I am resting a lot these days.
A useful term/idea I've seen used is that of 'parent/child mismatch'. Some things I've read suggest as many as 1/3 of all children are a bad 'fit' with their parents, that the parent and child just don't 'get' each other.
This is especially prevalent in countries that have adopted the 'nuclear family' model, where most children have less access to extended family and other, possibly nurturing, outsiders. This keeps them (the children) from being able to get what they need from other sources when the parents fail (often through no fault of their own) to be what the child needs.
This 30% (roughly) figure matches my 'observations' (? anecdotal, guesswork, cherry-picking - call it what you like :-)
In fact I'd say it's even worse that that. I don't know if you've ever read Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child, but she talks about that, in fact the title is really about the ways in which children are 'gifted' in the sense of adapting to their *parents'* emotional needs so as to survive those relationships relatively intact.
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