Lady Lee and TeenYuck
I learn so much from you two!
Tammy
Do You Feel That Your Parents "Did a Good Job" Raising You?
by minimus 51 Replies latest jw friends
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Lady Lee
thank you swan
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nowisee
NO.
my mother too, apologized to me as an adult, that she had been a bad mother. she was. i have not excused her, but i do understand her situation. she really was a baby who had a baby and didn't have a clue or a prayer, and got herself deep into a marriage and religion which she could not fight. she just didn't have tools, knowledge, or wherewithal.
my father did the best he could in many ways, but my upbringing was always tied up in his self-absorption. he failed in many respects but succeeded in some also. if it were not for my father i really don't think i would have survived as he gave me my only nurturing and semblance of normalcy.
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fairy
definitely YES!!! my parents did the best they could .....bringing up 12 kids wasnt easy for them, and my mother who was the one going to the meetings was the one taking us to all the meetings on her own......she did the best she could and so did my dad....i love them both very much..but now, they are in a better place
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Cassiline
no
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fraidycat9
Yep! Yep! Yep! and double Yep!!! Love 'em, Love 'em , Love 'em!!!!! Trying our darndest to do the same for ours!!!
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jschwehm
Hi:
I was raised as a JW. And, I would have to say that given the JW background my parents did the best they could. Of course, both of my parents were raised in situations that were abusive themselves. We did not have the physical abuse but the mental and spiritual abuse that we received from the JWs through them was not pleasant.
Jeff S.
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ninecharger
I don't think that any parent deliberately does a bad job raising their kids.
Good parenting skills and bad are learned at the breast. If your parents did not love you, you would have died as a baby. Everyone does the best with what they are given.
Unfortunately WT gives a lot that damages otherwise good parental instinct - mussnt touch it demons watch your naughty bits etc.,
Before he died my father said the only people in this world he really loved were me my brother and my mom. He got married to hide he was gay, and then abandoned us, to go off and have his fun.
Of course this begs the question about the Big Daddy in the sky. He seems to be very good at killing people to solve problems.
A WT once said even if you were raped or abused that was nothing compared to an eternity of not being raped and abused in the new world.
Just ranting...
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Bendrr
Yes, but not like you think.
I know they did love me, in their own WT-influenced way, but that didn't translate very well into real life.
I grew up lonely because of my mom's hangups. I love my momma like crazy but she's not the most sociable person around (understatement). When there was the opportunity to befriend other witness kids in the congregation, mom always managed to find fault with them and their parents and regular association outside the KH just never managed to happen very much.
We started out pretty poor and managed to maintain that. Even when my [step]dad was making decent money, it was all on paper. Never many toys at all as a kid, always hand-me-down meeting clothes, always shitty k-mart and outlet store clothes for school. Mom insisted on giving me haircuts until I was about 15 and finally talked her into letting me use a professional.....and then, oh boy did she ever nit-pick that to death! Up to then it was a "bowl-cut" and me making it look totally fu*ked up trying to style it myself.
I'll give them credit, they didn't physically abuse me though.
Only once did my [step]dad whip me hard enough to raise welts, and he kinda sorta apologized later for that but it was still ultimately my fault. It was all emotional with those two. I was ALWAYS wrong and I don't think I ever got to finish a sentence when they were "talking to me". I say "talking to me" but what they really were was what I called "gripe sessions". For an hour or two they'd sit there and go on and on and on about what I was doing wrong and how bad I was and keep on until I was reduced to crying. "Your attitude" was the old fave. I'd just listen and then ask "well what did I say/do that brought this up? Tell me so I know and can work on changing it". That would be the only complete sentence I'd ever get out. Then it would devolve into things that were either petty trivial stuff that I'd always apologize for and say "I wish you'd said something then....", stuff that they actually made up on the spot, or shit that had happened years ago. Seriously, when I backed them into a corner they'd start bringing up stuff from as far back as when I was like 7 or 8. What I hated worst was when my [step]dad would serve on a judicial committee with other young folks. It could be a different congregation and I may not even know the kids, but he'd go into a tirade and basically treat me like I was them. He even resigned as an elder once and blamed it all on me.
So why do I say they raised me right? Because they did. Kids learn by example, good or bad. I learned by example, by a bad example, and fortunately I've been smart enough to learn the right lesson from the wrong example. I learned that you bring stress on yourself and taking out your frustration on others doesn't fix anything. I learned that I don't want to have kids because I might very well turn into my [step]dad. I learned that every little infraction doesn't require immediate harsh punitive response, that sometimes simply talking things over calmly and with an open mind fixes everything. I learned to handle problems when they're small instead of letting them turn into big ones. I learned to admit when I'm wrong by watching my [step]dad never once admit he was wrong and I was right. (and he argued with me over some really stupid bullshit, believe me. Like once he didn't believe me that my bicycle tires carried 80 p.s.i. of pressure. He actually ended up literally yelling at me and threatening to put me on restrictions if I was wrong. Once I showed him the words imprinted on the tire, he just walked back into the house and didn't say another word to me that whole day. And never admitted he was wrong) I learned fairness by watching the big difference between how they treated my little brother and how they treated me. I learned how to listen by never being allowed to finish a sentence. And I learned that I'm not nearly as bad as they constantly told me I was or how I'd turn out to be.
So yeah they did a good job. Not the right methods, not by a long shot. But a good job if you take the view that it ain't the method, it's the result.
Mike.
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Lady Lee
This has been bothering me since I read it and I just have to say something - sort of like the need to scratch an itch
ninecharger
If your parents did not love you, you would have died as a baby.
Sorry I don't agree. Care-taking doesn't have to involve love. Some parents do the bare minimum. Love doesn't enter the equation. They dont have it to give. My mother never cuddled her kids. I can't recall seeing her do that with any of the 5 of us. I remember her idea of giving the baby the bottle was to lie the baby in the crib or playpen snuggled up to a pillow with the bottle resting on the pillow. All care-taking was matter of fact. Bath time was a nightmare. She would use the scrub-brush you use to clean the wax off floors on our feet and legs. We were rubbed raw after a bath. Combing my hair was torture. She would pull so hard I thought it would come out and got headaches. And if I cried I got hit. We were to be seen and not heard and if at all possible not seen. We were locked in our room as little kids (I was 7 and the oldest). The two youngest (2 and 3) were tied to the bed. Just so my mother could put a pillow over her head and sleep in. We were left alone with me to take care of 3 little boys when I was 7 and 8 years old - they were 3, 4 and 6. And then when I didn't take care of them properly I got the beating. And I do mean beating - whelts and all
Just because I survived my childhood doesn't mean my parents loved me. I survived in spite of them