What is one mistake your parents made that you struggle to forgive?

Yes. I love my mom, really I do but I needed someone to look out for me and at the time police were not about to take a child out of a home unless the child was being abused. Verbal abuse was and still is really not seen as abuse even though it can create huge issues.

I could have lived with my grand parents. (did during the summers) They were happy normal childhood days. I hated having to return to living with my mom and stepdad. >.<

Maybe it would have woken my mom up to leave the guy if CPS had come in to take me away.

Absolutely not, but for a long time I was upset with the extended family for not being emotionally close enough to us kids that they either could figure out that something was wrong, or that we would have felt free to say something.

Years later when some of the family found out they were appalled, as they never suspected. They said that had they had a clue they would have stepped in. We kids also learned more about the generations that came before our parents on both sides, how we could trace what happened in our house back at least three generations.

I am firmly of the school that my parents did the best they could, although their best was pretty shitty. I also am determined that the chain stops with me. Had the collective destroyed our home by removing us kids we would have been worse of, the trauma of distroying our home would have been worse than the trauma of living in it. Now if the collective would have had assistance to offer our family, had been willing to use a light touch instead of using a sludge hammer to solve every problem, that would have been a good thing.

One would very much hope so!!!!

Glad you at least had your grandparents.

I think emotional abuse IS taken EXTREMELY seriously by those who work with kids....but, given the resources, you are quite right, it's the physical abuse that gets the authorities moving...and it is easy to prove in court.

Sadly, at least where I live, getting judges to comprehend the profundity of the effects of emotional abuse and neglect is a difficult job.

Also, getting families where such abuse is perpetrated to engage with therapeutic services, and having services with sufficient skill and time to really help such parents to understand and change their relationship with their children is difficult.

I wasn't physically abused, but I was certainly affected by the situation in our house.

I never understood why my mother didn't divorce my father. We'd push it occasionally and she'd say something lame like she didn't want us to come from a broken home to which we'd laugh and say not to do us any favors.

She told me later that the real reason was that she was afraid to be a single parent. Even though we saw him as a net negative to the household, she saw him as another adult. And, then, they did have a nice life together once we were all out of the house, so maybe she was thinking along those lines all along.... dunno.

I never wanted to be removed from my parents. I wanted one of my parents to be removed from me.

Yes.

Not from abuse, but due to the volatile environment surrounding my parent's fighting prior to their divorce, I was removed when I was 12. I left at least. I told my parents that their fighting was too much for me and I asked to live with my Aunt.

What is most interesting is that this memory was hidden from me up until I was 22. It was ten years later, and I was with friends when I it hit me. I believe this is what is referred to as a suppressed memory. Prior to that moment I didn't even know there was anything hidden at all. It was quite shocking.

back to the story...

So I lived with my Aunt for a summer on the shore of a lake in Iowa. I fished, had fun with her. I did art projects, and played with neighborhood kids. At the end of the summer, my father came up to visit. He told me how much he missed me. He told me he wanted me to come home, but not if I didn't want to. He said I could stay with my Aunt if I wanted. I was so happy. At the time, I thought it would mean that my parents would stop fighting and things would be good. I went home. A few years later, fighting became more regular, my mother's mental health became questionable, and she became more dangerous. A few years after that, they were separated.

I find it interesting to think about how different my life would have been had I grown up in little Spirit Lake, IA. What would I have become if I had stayed there? How long would I have stayed?

I find it interesting that my mind locked this memory away. It seems like it would be unforgettable, but I had lived without the memory of this for a decade. Certainly it was suppressible. I can only guess how my mind then suppressed it.

In my mind, it was that ride back to Missouri. It was my father and I, just us. Talking and telling jokes. It was me explaining my ideas about rockets and airplanes. It was my father telling me about surfing and about our grandfather. In my mind the catalyst event that suppresses that memory is the mindset of 12 year old me, riding home with his hero, thinking that he'd never need to remember his summer away from home; that he'd never need to remember a time when things weren't good at home.

T
K
O

Spending most of the dough.

Yes; its a beautiful thing to see,
when a father or mother is kind and loving to a child.
Once or 2ice, I have made a point of verbally recognizing
that good behavior on the part of the parent. More ofen, in public,
u see them being coercive & demanding, confronting the kids with ultimata.
In contrast, I consider myself to have been well off, as a kid in that regard.
My parents were not rude nor intrusive. From age 13 on, I had my own
independent apartment in one of our houses. I was free.

In the 1970s, I took an "intensive" seminar/workshop offered by
psychologist Nathaniel Branden (Ayn Rand 's pal).
I admired the creative brilliance of his mind, from his literature.

I 'd been obsessed by a particular blonde, blue eyed young lady named Joyce,
with whom I 'd gone to school many years in the past
and I looked forward to his professional assistance in resolving those emotions.

However, much of the weekend 's endeavor was devoted to people
with negative parental issues. Dr. Branden said that he himself suffered from those.
It became very easy to appreciate the stark differences between the horrors whereof
the other attenders complained, as distinct from my own familial history.

Branden had all of his attenders imagine that thay were on their death beds
in hospitals when one parent enters, such that it was then or never
as to getting anything off of their chests to tell that parent. Thay were directed
to proceed with that for 5 or 10 minutes, after which (in their imaginations)
the other parent entered, switching with the first one, for the next cycle.

There were shrill screams of obscene, resentful denunciations from all directions
of the hotel ballroom, as thay imagined this. I had gone thru this FOR REAL,
with my mother on her "death" bed in the hospital, but in an ambience of harmony, love and gratitude.

I took the opportunity to recognize a job superbly well done THANKING HER
for her affection and for the libertarian environment in which I grew up.

It is satisfying that I had that opportunity.





David

I don't suppose it's appropriate for us to disagree?

Multiple chuckles.

The operative criterion is the joy with which my life was injected.





David

True enough!

The one mistake my parents made that I struggle to forgive?

Not giving me a normal loving supportive family life; instead giving me a violent, physically abusive, alcohol-ridden home life that culminated with being permanently locked out of my own home at 15 years old, and having to fend for myself.

This thread would suggests that was the norm. ( I had similar, but the fortunate escape of boarding school at age 12)

The only well adjusted kid in the room seems to be OmSigDavid.

If true, that's not saying much for the general state of affairs when it comes to parenting skills!

I'm sorry that that this happened to you, Chumly. I'd really have to struggle to forgive that, too.
How did you actually survive at age 15 & onward?
Do you have anything to do with either of your parents now?

I had an uncle who became involved in a dispute with my English grandfather,
his father, qua proper English table manners & whether he woud conform thereto.
My uncle took a more libertarian vu than did my grandfather, as a result whereof,
he was invited to join the homeless when he was 12, in 1910.

However, my uncle had been born in NY during my grandparents' yearlong honeymoon.
Accordingly, he was an American citizen by birthright.
He told me that he boarded a ship and came to NY at that time
and got a job. About 15 years later, the rest of the family followed.
In consequence of that migration: I am an American citizen by birthright.

Hence: I set great value upon that 1910 dispute qua table etiquette,
in whose absence, I 'd only have been an Englishman.





`

There's a good question. When I was a child I fantasized about them dying in a car accident so that I could be an orphan. But knowing what I know now about what kinds of things went on at the time in foster homes, no, I don't think I do wish I had been removed. There were a lot of us kids and we would have been separated. As it is, our quantity was sort of our saving grace.

Interesting. I found out years later that others in the family knew about it and didn't approve. I visited an aunt a few years ago with my husband and kids. After hanging with my kids for a bit she beamed at me "you broke the cycle!" And began to tell tales of us as kids that even I hadn't remembered, and how it broke her heart.

No. They're children, not consumers of parenting. They do sometimes say nice things about their parents to other adults, though. I take that as encouragement.

How old r thay ?

I remember about maybe ten years ago,
in a social situaton, in my presence, a man apparently in his 30s
was present with his 2 boys aged maybe about 6 and 8.
I was very impressed with how kind and gentle he was
with his boys. Later in the day, when he was alone in my presence,
I remarked to him, recognizing his exceptionally good parenting
and we discussed for a while. Much more ofen u see, in public,
parents being confrontational and threatening their kids; sad.

Parents define what thay are and will be remembered for it.
It appears to be the case that, for good or ill, parents impress upon
the subconscious minds of their victims -- no, no, I mean children -- how to parent.

In other words: parents define, designate and select how their grandchildren will be raised.



David