A
female
age
51-59,
anonymous
writes:I would appreciate advice, please, about an issue related to my daughter who is now 32 and in a steady job, has a long term partner (7 years) and who I generally have a good relationship with but who I am concerned about. I may be enabling disrespectful behaviour towards me by not doing anything and I am concerned that, although she is happy, she has had problems with depression and what she calls 'mental health issues'. She sometimes doesn't treat me very nicely - it's not worth going into, but I've often felt very disrespected and quite 'blown away' by larger and smaller things that she and her partner have done. It will sound petty, but one very small example is when she sat and ate a whole bag of crisps right next to me, without offering me one. When I made joke of it and said " are you going to give me one of your crisps" she said "no, get your own crisps". It really hurt, because I really have bent over backwards and gone without pretty much everything so that she could have them instead; in my twenties and thirties if I needed new shoes, I had to go without because she needed them - ditto everything. I had no life, nothing. It all revolved around ensuring her happiness. Anyway, I honestly am confused about the things she has said in the last few years and recently, and have done my best to empathise with her and not judge her, but I am worried that this, in itself, may be causing problems and that it is because I shied away from reprimanding her or disciplining her when she was younger - not that she really needed it at all, we mainly just got along and, if she did anything upsetting or whatever, I would usually just explain to her, logically, why it was not a good idea to do that.I apologise for the long explanation:My concern about this has been fairly long-standing - actually, thinking about it, there have been signs of this ever since she was a child.She is now pregnant - it's a planned pregnancy. She has a serious health condition which means she is 'at risk', so I can't say or do anything that might upset her.My daughter remembers aspects of her upbringing in ways that shock me, and which I perceive as something like exaggeration of facts or a 'confusion' of different facts brought together, in her mind, to generate something that did not actually happen. I am probably not wording this in the best way because I am very acutely aware of being abused by my mother and being even more hurt when, as an adult, I tried to explain to her some of the things she had done that had constituted abuse. My mother would quite literally state, in a very condemning way: "You're a liar". I cannot describe how much pain this caused me - like another layer of abuse on top of the original abuse. I don't ever want my daughter to experience that pain, so I am never going to say to her that she is "lying". I am also very aware that she was abandoned by her father - I married young and had my daughter about a year later and her Dad literally abandoned us when she was around 5 years old, never supporting us in any way. He cut off from us entirely for a whole year, and my daughter was very upset and confused (as was I). I did my best to comfort her during this time and, when he finally did get back in touch, I did all the 'running' - paying money I didn't have and using my weekends after working all week to literally deliver her to his doorstep and then collect her again - he lived miles away, and the journey took about 8-9 hours return. These days, she has no contact with him. I am not sure if what my daughter says is somehow a result of this trauma. She says, for example, that I told her that if she ever cut her hair I would throw her out of the house. I know for a solid fact I would never say this to her. I DO remember telling her a real life story of someone I used to work with having long hair like hers and she told me that her Dad said to her that, if she ever cut her hair, he would throw her out of the house. I DID help my daughter with her hair as she was growing up - when she asked me to. As soon as she left to go to university, I remember the first time I saw her and she had cut her hair very short and died it peroxide blonde. It really suited her and I told her so.Another thing she has said is that I once threw things at her - ie. a lot of things. Again, this is not true. We very rarely argued at all when she was growing up. Once, when she was about 13-14, she upset me a lot. We were sitting on the sofa and there were some of her soft toys around us. I got up, very upset, and there was a soft toy right next to where I was sitting. I grabbed it and threw it in her direction and burst into tears at the same time. This is not perfect behaviour, I openly admit. But it is the one and only time I ever did anything like that and I apologised very soon afterwards.Another thing she has said is that I used to make her do her homework over and over and over again. Again, this is absolutely not the case. As a young child, I helped her a lot with her reading, which she loved and still does, and she really excelled in this, and I was generally 'hands on' in helping with her homework. However, when she was a bit older and I was at work, this changed. Usually, after being at work all day, I would be absolutely exhausted when I got home and - to my shame - was not the best Mum at helping her to do her homework. I always asked if she had kept her homework up to date, and there were times when I did help her when she asked me to or when she was really stuck. The one time I do remember very clearly helping her in an 'emergency' was when she told me she was worried about her Art GCSE and the 'homework' part of that. Her drawings were not good enough for her to get a pass (I lecture in the arts and I knew there were some obvious weaknesses). I did not say this directly to her but pointed out where these weaknesses were - they were basic things like line drawings showing very weak handling of the pencil and, in a last ditch attempt to help her, I showed her how to improve the quality of the lines. This took a few attempts until she understood how to handle the pencil more carefully. The work had to be handed in the next morning and it was an 'emergency' situation. As a very young child, when her Dad left, I went to parents' evening and the teacher treated me very strangely. My daughter was an extremely bright kid and well nurtured at home, intellectually and creatively, but we were very poor back then and I couldn't afford to take her to 'fancy' places - it was mainly the park to play, and sometimes to the cinema to see her favourite cartoon films, sometimes swimming. She had plenty of friends nearby. However, her teacher was polite but weird with me - she said things as if in code, such as "Children say all sorts of things" and gave an example of her own daughter inventing a story when she was little - but it was like a signal to me that she was concerned something may be wrong. She also said I should "take her out, take her to the theatre" and to "laugh things off". Again, this was very weird and very alarming. I could definitely not take my daughter to the theatre but we were always laughing - my daughters abiding memory of that time is that, despite everything, she remembers me being happy and us having lots of fun.Now, as an adult, I noticed something very strange again. My daughter absolutely loved ice-skating when she was little and when she was a teenager. She would travel sometimes even on her own, across the city, to an ice rink, just to skate. As an adult with her partner, she has put on a lot of weight now and I think this kind of exercise is harder for her, due to this and her health condition. We were all talking about his love of ski-ing and how he has tried to help her to learn to ski - and she stated, in front of me, that she was always terrified of ice-skating, so she will be even more afraid of ski-ing. I did not 'call her out' on this - I just very gently said "but you used to love ice-skating" - to which she replied "well, I was basically a different person back then". She looked slightly ruffled / embarrassed.I don't know what to do about this. I am currently receiving a limited amount of counselling - it's a specific kind of writing therapy aimed at helping the person to overcome inappropriate guilt, which has been 'dumped' on them by others through no fault of their own. It also focuses on the inner child and learning assertiveness in connection with that. I don't feel it is fair on me for these accusations - which are ultimately false but which have some sort of basis - to hang over me ; for me, because I was falsely accused of so many things by my abusive mother and other abusive members of my family, I want to 'put the record straight'. I lack assertiveness and don't know how to do this for myself. AND, importantly, I want to do this for my daughter's mental health - so that she is not affected by what may (or may not be) false memories. I don't want her behaviours to somehow be based on having these bad 'memories' in her mind, because I want her to live her very best life; she has been struggling with this after moving far away to live with her partner. Another thing is that I don't want to upset my daughter because she is pregnant and has a health condition. But I also don't want a grandchild to grow up with some chance comment along the lines of "My mother threatened to throw me out if I ever cut my hair" - this just feels wrong.Can anyone help me to make sense of this please? I am really reluctant to 'give my daughter a problem' by suggesting, for example, that she may have false memory. At the same time, I don't want to enable more of this kind of 'exaggeration' - I am not sure what to call it - by staying silent and passive. Her partner is nice in many ways but - I think / worry - almost encourages her to treat me disrespectfully. He adores her, which is great in a way, but he centres everything around his own needs and I have felt extremely excluded and pushed out of her life since they have been together; again, I won't go into it, but there have been several occasions when he has done extremely hurtful things and I've just let it go because I don't want to cause any upset.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (24 December 2020): I really hate to say this but maybe she is right and you are wrong.Maybe?? There no about it.
A
reader, anonymous, writes (24 December 2020): Typo corrections:
"Letting their kids drive them to an early grave!"
"You have flashbacks to your mother."
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (24 December 2020): There is a peculiar style of parenting executed or acquired by people who hold a resentment for their own parents. If they suffered abuse or some sort of childhood-trauma; their whole life is about getting back at their parents, or erasing all memory of them. In an attempt not to be the kind of parents their parents were, they sometimes try to make their own children their friends. They avoid properly disciplining them. Even believing admonishing them for bad-behavior is a form of abuse. Inadvertently bringing-up the meanest, most disrespectful, discourteous, self-centered, and cruelest brats the world has ever seen. The weirdest thing...it's to their surprise!
Proverbs 23:13
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
Proverbs 29:15
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.
Of course hitting children isn't the preferred or accepted modern means of discipline; but there are effective ways that teach children that there will be consequences for bad-behavior and disrespect for authority. Long before they grow-up...and law enforcement, a judge, or a meaner-person than they are; teaches them what those consequences can be! Playing super-nice and gently "explaining" to a nasty out-of-control spoiled-kid is rubbish. You say you and your daughter got along? If you were busy being nice, maybe you were too passive and permissive to acknowledge her misbehavior. You felt you had to be super nice to her; because her father abandoned her. He eventually proved himself a lousy dad, and an awful person. Well, he spared you and your daughter a life of living with him. Then it became your goal to be a perfect mother, and make it all up to her.
How did it all turnout in the end? No account for her difficulty with recalling incidents as they actually happened. Her "selective-memory" remembers you as being cruel, not being nice. It may be her cruel and deliberate way of messing with you; just because you irritate her with being so annoyingly sweet! You can attribute some of it to "mental-health issues;" but it can also be identified as just plain "meanness!" She just isn't a nice person. That's not your fault. It is a matter of character and choice. Just because a child is loved and well cared-for doesn't mean they won't turn-out contrary to all they were taught. Like criminals who grow-up with siblings nothing like them.
Sometimes timid or passive-people have difficulty with being assertive; so they resort to passive-aggressive behavior. They have an aversion to conflict. They don't confront issues directly; instead they "nice-nasty" their way around things. This can put people at odds with you. Perhaps your daughter may have felt that to be the case when dealing with you. You had emotional-outbursts or small tantrums; but didn't use your parental-authority without guilt or apology. She assumed the role as the parent. Now she bully's you! While you're handling her with kit gloves! You can't stop her from recalling things as she wants to remember them. Just correct her and remind her of the facts. A lie is a lie, and calling it that is what it is! You're the one who got tore-up about it! You can't protect your daughter from life or pain. It's coming for her just like it comes at all the rest of us!
Undisciplined-children will turn your household upside-down; and when they become teenagers, they will have policemen at your door. You'll be paying fines, always finding yourself defending them ("not my kid!"); and they will drag your name through the mud! This continues until they're adults. Parents sometimes don't change either. Defending them to the very end! All for wanting to be a chum and their buddy, or always being nice; but offering them no parameters or discipline. Letting drive them to an early grave!
Once they're adults, it's too late. They are the final-product. You had the chance when she was a child, you were forewarned of her tendency to misrepresent the facts by her teacher. Who may have experienced her propensity to exaggerate, or flat-out lie. Now you don't even seem to know your own daughter. Now you think she's fragile. Boy, is she going to milk that for all it's worth!!!
You're still trying to kill your daughter with kindness. She isn't recognizing you for your gentility and kindness; because she is not a pleasant individual. She and her partner are not the kind of warm and cuddly people you want them to be.
You have to learn how to stand firm and be the parent; and stop coddling your daughter as if she's made of delicate crystal.
Stop projecting yourself in her place. She's not going to spontaneously miscarry if you don't tiptoe around her on eggshells. You have yet to learn, you have to stop behaving like she's totally traumatized; or abused like you believe you were by your mother. Her father abandoned the two of you, but you've both somehow survived. It must have hurt, but she was so young she adjusted to it as most kids do. She was too young to understand; unless you made it a mission to always remind her how awful it was for her dad to have left the two of you. If he never was the ideal father thereafter; she'd have to adjust to that too. Apparently, your mother was anything but a TV-mother; and she angrily called you a liar when you confronted her. Most people don't like being told how terrible they are! It's a normal human-reaction to criticism. You don't want to be told you're a terrible mother either! Apparently, you never got over that; and now you see those similar traits in your own daughter. It triggers you. You have flashbacks to you mother.
Stop blaming yourself. People don't only develop their personality from their upbringing. They are influenced by the environment they live in, exposure to the world, what they are taught, and through their daily experiences. Some turn-out to be loving and kind, and some don't.
You know you never abused your daughter, but you're allowing her to abuse you. Just stop looking at life through the eyes of yourself as a timid little child. You're the mother. Your daughter has some unpleasant ways about her, and she has memory lapses. Take her and her partner with a grain of salt. They may not like your regular presence in their lives; so make yourself scarce. Make your visits and contact less frequent. Then you won't subject yourself to a constant stream of rudeness and unpleasant feedback.
You have a life now. Go make yourself some friends; and maybe start traveling or dating when the covid-19 pandemic has lifted. Let-go of the past, and pursue some happiness for yourself. Your daughter is a grown-woman, let her live her own life. Most of the drama and tension you're perceiving is self-induced. If you don't like the uneasy climate you feel around your daughter and her partner, then avoid it.
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A
female
reader, Honeypie  + ♥, writes (24 December 2020):
 I don't understand why you are so passive, OP
If she says I remember that you told me you would kick me out if I cut my hair -why didn't you immediately tell her no, That was never a thing. I think you remember things very different from what actually happened. What really happened was me telling you a story about this guy who told his daughter this.
I wouldn't tell her she has "false memories". Because it's NOT a false memory. You TOLD her about a guy who said this. In her mind she might have thought that YOUR story about "some guy" was YOUR way of telling her:" DON'T cut your hair".
Nothing false about it. Just not the whole story. She remembers some but not all details.
As for not wanting to share crisp/chips with you... yeah you are petty, you are a grown woman and can go GRAB your own. She is right. Is it nice to share? Sure! Maybe because you always put her first, she never really got good at sharing? Or even considering others?
Not that it's a BAD thing to put your kid(s) first - I think most moms do this, especially if they have limited finances. I do it with my kids too. But an only child often don't notice stuff like that. They don't HAVE to share with siblings.
Her partner only know about you from HER. So, she might not always have painted you in the best light, which might reflect on his he sees you. And some guy don't want a MIL who is important in their wife's life. Who knows how his relationship with HIS mother is.
My thing is this, IF she says or does things you don't like, address it, gently without making a big deal out of it.
If you daughter is being disrespectful TO you, take a step back. Let her know that is not OK. And then set some boundaries. Healthy boundaries.
IT IS natural for a GROWN woman to have her own life. And she is, so maybe it's time for you to focus on YOU now. Hobbies, interests, friends etc. She is out of the nest.
Keep working on your own self healing and betterment. You can not CHANGE your daughter or son in law, but you can learn to set boundaries and not accept crappy treatment from others.
Being assertive is hard if you haven't really done it much, so BABY steps.
I think we all have memories that are colored by how an event made us feel, not just WHAT happened. It's like eyewitness accounts. 10 people seeing the same thing but feeling differently about it color their memory of it.
Also, maybe let some of it go. Minor things. It's just not work holding onto. For you or her.
But IT IS OK for you to speak up for yourself. Stand up for yourself.
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