Self -awareness/ self-counseling.
All who have had a bad childhood, please raise your hands.
I would not say I had a bad childhood, I think I had an 'ok' childhood, quite normal for those times. My main source of anxiety in my growing up years stemmed from my mother's differential treatment of my sister and myself. I have not attached importance to it (I try to downplay them) but as Freud and Erikson have endorsed, bad things that happened in childhood does affect your life and thoughts in the future. In this now, it is mostly what NOT to do with my own children.
I am the middle child, neither the 'youngest' child nor the 'oldest' child, not the only girl but the 'older girl'. These are labels that my mother seemed to attach different values to according to her old-fashioned upbringing. My sister was the pet and favourite and forever 'too young' even when she was in her twenties, my brother well he was 'a boy', the oldest and so for those 'valid' reasons I had to carry the weight of more chores and be more responsible.
So perhaps that was why I felt that I needed to study harder
(buried myself in school and study where I could) to gain approval, to prove myself and kept quiet without rebelling. My sister was allowed to keep short hair from an early age while I was not allowed to cut it until I was 16 (I'll keep that hair story for another time). As a consequence, my sister was bolder, asked for anything she wanted, I was timid and did not ask for things, I was concerned with budgeting, which somehow my mother always impressed upon me. Mixed into all that of course there were feelings of inferiority that did colour my early years of interaction..
[self-conscious]).
The one thing that worked in my favour, was that I was the only one to get to the University, ... that got approval.
Lately I have been reminded of these memories because of my words/actions with my kids. I have said to my girl a few times she is lucky that her mother (me) is not like my mother. My girl like most teens does not seem to appreciate that she has so much more and seems to take some things for granted. I get irritated when the kids seem self-absorbed and are unable to see beyond their own needs, that you cannot have everything you want. But then, the kids themselves have their share of horrid memories to carry with them, so therefore I have to find a balance but not over-compensate.
I am not distressed by these early memories, I have overcome them is many ways, I am a different person from what I used to be, I have grown into my own so to speak. I am less bothered by the things my mother says these days than the fact that she still thinks along the old-fashioned vein. Old habits die hard. I have come to terms with her as she is. [
My mother].
In the past few months I realise too that I have been subtly raising these issues through reminders with my mom in incidental situations but she merely brushes it aside 'so long ago ....really.. ..don't remember'. What am I trying to do, I have no idea - hoping for a realization, purple heart, compensation, to blame her for my present situation.? No, I don't want to cause her any grief.
Why am I telling my story, perhaps it is to
effect a catharsis for myself or perhaps I wish to raise the awareness that stereotyping, favoritism is not right. Such thinking still exists today.
I can leave well enough alone, but I think I still have to
let it out somehow to let it go, bring those nagging thoughts to the forefront.
(..dissolve them or expel them ?).
What I do know, is that a child is capable of seeing, hearing and feeling that some things are not right but may not understand or express them. Unless they verbalize it, they will never know but keep it within.
