“We left the manual at the hospital.”

Started by Call Me Cordelia, June 12, 2019, 03:56:30 AM

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Call Me Cordelia

This was one of my NF's go-to jokes/excuses/rugsweeps. I know lots of you have heard it before. Saw it again in another thread today.

Well, dad, you had access to this amazing place called the public library. You know what they have there? An entire section of books on how to raise children!!! Crazy! I find myself referencing parenting books regularly, because yes I didn't have a good example at home same as you. I don't always use everything I read, but even following the kookier ones would have been an improvement over what I actually experienced as a child. Not a one advocates physical abuse, amazingly.

I'm constantly making the effort to learn. You could have made that choice too, to admit what you don't know and do something constructive about it, putting other people's needs above your ego. What a concept.

TriedTooHard

 :yeahthat:

Here's another one along a similar line:  "So and so was a good baby, so and so was a bad baby." 

fixingtofix

Quote from: TriedTooHard on June 12, 2019, 07:35:55 AM
:yeahthat:

Here's another one along a similar line:  "So and so was a good baby, so and so was a bad baby." 

Oh my goodness, I grew up hearing that I was a great kid until 18 months, then I was horrible ever after that.

EIGHTEEN MONTHS OLD. I was not in control of anything at that point, if I was acting out it was age appropriate.

Now that I have kids, I work hard to figure out the best thing for the child and work from there.

appaloosa

I always heard "You never liked to be held when you were a baby. Even your grandmother noticed it." That's the equivalent of 'bad baby' of course, since a good baby would enjoy being held. I heard this SOO many times. Like I was evil or something. I could probably sense that they didn't like having a baby.

Fiasco

BPDm loved to say, "we all wanted babies, by none of us wanted KIDS!"  Followed by cackling.

Call Me Cordelia

Yeah, I was a terrible baby too. Awful labor, cried for six months, too smart for my own good and asked too many questions as soon as I could talk. I was hopeless from the very beginning.  :flat:

Andeza

Yup, I didn't come with a manual either. M's favorite thing to say is "At least I didn't do x" X being some form of abuse she endured as a child, as if that makes what I did go through okay.

I was also too smart for my own good... Still am  :sly:

My two personal favorites, paraphrased of course: "I spank you because I love you." Tell that to my backside.... And "It's important to break the child's will but not their spirit." Well you didn't do either, so .... sucks to suck I guess.  :roll:

They like to make excuses for their behavior to justify what we experienced, and to make it all out fault.  :no:
Remember, that there are no real deadlines for life, just society's pressures.      - Anonymous
Lasting happiness is not something we find, but rather something we make for ourselves.

bohemian butterfly

Oh man, the classic "parenting doesn't come with a manual"   My answer (from now on) is going to be......"Well fortunately for me, TODAY there are several"manuals" on trauma bonds, emotional abuse, PDs etc that I can read to help me heal from the pain of childhood."

uBPDm:  wrote me a 3 page letter (when I started to un-enmesh) that started with "parenting doesn't come with a manual"

alcoholic/codependent father:  when I was 8 years old, he cornered me in the kitchen and started crying.  He said:  "BB, why don't you love me anymore??!!  When you were a baby, you loved me sooo much!"  Just wailing, heaving crying.  That broke me.

Man, that statement from my father still haunts me.  Jeez, I was freakin' 8 years old.  Now (age 42) I attract men that have either a PD, suffer from an addiction, and/or are codependent,  and when I try to break it off, they cry and then stalk.  Every. single. one.  Tears me open inside all over again.


foobarred

uNDad: "We did our effin' best".  Which I suppose was true, in a way.
uDPDmom (wailing): "You were such a GOOD baby... what HAPPENED?"  Well, your sh**ty parenting, for one. :roll:

They sacrifice our normal development in order to feel better about themselves, and when you confront them on it they whine, "Parenting is HAAARRD".

athene1399

QuoteThey sacrifice our normal development in order to feel better about themselves
:yeahthat:

I get that parenting is hard, but yelling at your kids for having feelings that you don't want them to have because it makes you feel like a crappy parent is kind of the easy way out. The hard part would be figuring out what is wrong, even if part of what is wrong is you, and then working to make it better. That's the hard part of parenting and that is not what was done in my case. M couldn't handle I was depressed and assumed I was depressed because of her so yelled at me instead of figuring out what was wrong. She couldn't handle being a "bad parent" so self-fulfilled that prophesy by not saying something as simple as "hey, you seem depressed. Is anything wrong?" Instead I got "You have no right to act like this. Your life is perfect." [paraphrase]  :roll:

Gromit

When S was born, she was a lovely baby, your enF wanted 6 more just like her.



When you were born he wanted to throw you out of the window and said, 'never again'.

Yep.

I found out later that my M could not cope as a new mother, actually spent my sister's first year sectioned having deep sleep treatment. Came back to my sister as a toddler, who could probably sleep through and eat solids. But, or course, the story we were told was how wonderful she was compared to me.

Andeza

Pardon my ignorance, but is "sectioned" another way of saying in the mental health ward?

Horrible that they twist the past to make an innocent baby into the scapegoat.  :pissed:
Remember, that there are no real deadlines for life, just society's pressures.      - Anonymous
Lasting happiness is not something we find, but rather something we make for ourselves.

Call Me Cordelia

Holy crap, Gromit. Talk about a story. Sounds to me like mom was trying to make herself feel better about checking out of motherhood and leaving your dad to do all the parenting for the first year. And then when she experienced mothering a baby, and it was (gasp) HARD, she projected all over your father again. But no matter if my theory is right or not, that story has absolutely nothing to do with who you and your sister actually are. But who knows what kind of damage telling you impressionable children that toxic sludge has done.

Foobarred said it, "They sacrifice our normal development to feel better about themselves." I think that quote says it all. Our development and needs were a non-concern.

And to those parents who had such lovely babies and then they *changed* :violin: THAT'S CALLED DEVELOPMENT AND YOU START TO REAP WHAT YOU SOW. If your 8-year-old doesn't have a good relationship with you, I guarantee the problem is not the child. Bohemian Butterfly, I am so sorry about what your dad did to you. That's so wrong to put responsibility for his feelings into you. My dad tried similar tactics on me when I was a preteen and pulling away. "I tried so hard, took you to camp and read you stories. And this is the thanks I get?  :'( I don't know what more I can do! :'(" "Well you could start with not yelling at me constantly..." "Don't you dare talk back to me, young lady!"  :blink: I bet your dad's tears were just as genuine as mine. What a dastardly manipulative thing to do to a child.