I don’t even know where to begin…my brain is so wrapped around the what goes around comes around mentality when raising our kids. Oh…there are some who break the cycle and there are so many extremes to the problem. On the one end, my mother, with a narcissistic personality disorder, raised me to be a people pleaser, to take care of her needs by manipulating me and everyone else in her life that she “loved/loves”. So I really wonder what made her this way. My aunt, her only sister, has a touch of it also except Aunt Frances is loving and reaches out to everyone ie. at 92 totally gave up her life to move into my 90 year old mother’s house to take care of her and my mother treats her like dirt; I really believe that my mother has no idea what she is doing…I believe that she thinks that she has had this hard life and no one does anything for her or respects her for everything she has done for everyone…uh huh. Something happened to those girls back in the early 1900’s to totally screw up one and mame the other. “His” mother is 82 and has raised 4 children – they have responsibility issues, no self motivation, can’t disagree in a nice way and 3 of them with significant marriage issues. This is not to say the fathers don’t affect the child rearing but I see these things in the mothers. His mother is terribly selfish and thinks it is all about her..nothing new..always been this way…the kids just figured it out in their 50’s that there was something not right about “mama”. My friend, Kim’s mother has terribly dependency issues and Kim pretty much plays the mother and her mom plays the daughter – she is in her 70’s. I question whether it is a generation thing. I started off parenting doing what my mother did…by expecting immediate obedience and not allowing her to be a baby…I’m not sure what happened when she was 2 or 3 because I figured it out and vowed never to do what my mother did. I have also since apologized to my oldest daughter (several times) that I just didn’t know and am so sorry for any of it she remembers. So…I broke that cycle but still have the inner voice which has me insecure and untrusting and I certainly picked a job which would bring out my compassion, taking care of people and people pleasing.
Back to the initial question…what are we doing to our kids. What kind of mother will my daughters be. Was I too strict with one and too lenient with the other. They are both very successful girls…the youngest is still in the making as a college student. I could not ask for better kids but what will they take from their growing up years into their relationships with their kids….and on and on.
My first two calls of the night involved teenagers and drunken/mental fathers. #1 had to listen to the parent’s fighting until an officer arrived on the scene…nasty stuff coming out of both of their mouths. I stayed on the phone to try to keep everyone calm so the officer didn’t walk into a dangerous situation. #2 call of my night was the woman who needed an officer to get her drunk husband out of the house..she and her 16 and 17 year old sons were able to get him into the bathtub protect them because he was too drunk to get out. What are we doing to our kids?
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Ninasusan 