lightbulb moment - not my job to make her feel like a good enough mother

[desertpine]

I'm reading a book about mothers who are not able to love. And yesterday I had a big light bulb moment: It never was my responsibility to make my mother feel like a good enough parent!! Time and time again my mother has blamed me for her feeling inadequate as a mother. But it was not my job as a child to admire, praise and adore her so that she felt good about herself. There have been so many times she complained that nothing she did was good enough for me, when all I had done was express my own desires, preference, likes/dislikes about something. As a teen and young adult, if I wanted to hang out with my friends, she cried to me about her friends not being good enough for me and so I was a bad daughter for rejecting her.
In her mind it seems that if she has low self-esteem it is because I am a bad daughter who is not giving her the approval or admiration that she is entitled to receive.
Reading this book I realized that it is the mother's job to build up her child's self-esteem, self-confidence and foster a feeling of being valued - And if the mother does not feel these things herself, it is her job as an adult and as the parent to do the work/healing of these wounds.
Bam - this is a game changer realization !! wow
 

[Cat of the Canals]

So much of the PD parent-child dynamic is the reverse of what it should be. The CHILD is the one that should be given validation, encouragement, and unconditional love. But with a PD parent, it all gets flipped on its head. They are emotionally still children, and they end up creating this totally dysfunction system where the child is expected to fawn over and reassure the parent.

[moglow]

Go ahead and try to tell her that, I'll wait   
She sounds like mine - everyone exists to look after and take care of her, your/their own stuff isn't important. 

[NarcKiddo]

Oh boy, ain't that the truth. My mother still expects validation that she is a good mother even now (in her late 70s with children in their 50s). I could write a novel on the subject.

She became monstrously troubled a while back when she was financially assisting a child. On the one hand she was loving it because it kept the child tied to her apron strings. On the other hand it was becoming annoying because she wanted to spend the money on herself and everyone else was becoming visibly tired of her martyr "I am the poor, put-upon mother" act. She started complaining about how she had to keep coughing up this money but had no choice because she was the motherrrr and had to help her child. I dared to point out that her giving of the money might not actually even be helpful as it seemed to me it was simply enabling the child to reject perfectly suitable jobs because they were deemed not good enough.

That went down like a bucket of wet cement.