Parenting - where I went wrong

Ironically, I think I was (mostly) a good parent, but I had some mental health problems during my twenties and thirties so I often wasn't physically there for them, sometimes related to just bloody selfishness. That they have turned out so well is a credit to the 'community' of family and friends etc who helped to raise them. (Actually, they both do give me credit as well, but I am very hard on myself.)

I would love another chance with my much loved children; I wish I had enjoyed them so much more than I did, but life was so busy with other things at the time, as I had an elderly relative to vist and look after. I had no help whatsoever; consequently I was often tired and probably irritable. Well, definitely irritable. They are both loving adults, so I must have got some of it right but I so wish I could change those times when I made them upset or sad.

I feel exactly the same. Hinsight is great but we can't go backwards. I thought at least the kids get to enjoy the weekend . Thanks for sharing

There is some really beautiful self reflection, accountability and honesty on this thread.

Recently I read a story from a parent who was previously estranged and explained why and how they made the situation right again and reconsiled into a much healthier, happier relationship.

They got a bit hammered by some other estranged parents for being a bad parent. They were called abusive several times when what they had done was the opposite of abuse, it was love.

They weren't a bad parent. Bad parents don't admit to specific mistakes and they certainly don't make them right again. If they could, they wouldn't be bad parents.

Society as a whole has that so wrong I think. We shouldn't be putting parents who say "I am wonderful" on a pedestal. We should be celebrating the imperfect ones who are making mistakes, being honest and accountable, dusting themselves off and finding ways to make it right again.

Because as previously mentioned. No one is perfect.

Exactly, no one is perfect.

They got a bit hammered by some other estranged parents for being a bad parent.

That's very interesting especially as EP's are often accused of never acknowledging that it can be their behaviour that's resulted in estrangement.

It would seem that sometimes you can't do right for doing wrong.

Is there a link to this particular story? Was it here on GN?

I was only 20 when I had my DD. I was very unworldly. As my childhood was horrendous, all I wanted for my daughter was that she had what other children had. I wanted her to be clean, cared for, have decent clothes, to go on school trips, have holidays if we could afford it - none of which I had as a child. I had no ambition for her to excel, go to university etc. I just wanted her to be like other children. I did a lot wrong but she is decent and hardworking. She wants more for her own daughter academically than I wanted for her which is great.

Children are born with different personalities, and what happens when you are pregnant affects them and how they deal with stress etc. Everything that happens leaves its mark on children from the womb onwards, but bonding can happen as a baby gets older. Loving them does a lot of good, the more loving the more good, and remember as a child grows older there are others who can influence them, keep the lines of communication open, accept their emotions and help them to recognise them and hopefully, they will be able to share problems with you as they grow. Apologise and admit it when you are wrong. If there are people who are less than a good influence on them or whose behaviour is wrong, help minimise the effect of it on them and believe them. Try and look at your own childhood and don't do what your parents did that upset you, even if it is what people say you should do. Learn how children think which is not always how adults think and don't punish them for being children. Obviously provide secure boundaries, which will change as they get older.
Any time is the right time to do this even if you started off on a different tack and no one gets it right all the time but you can admit it and start again

Please can we leave estrangement out of this thread? It would be a shame to marginalise the discussion away from parenting and there are plenty of other threads where estrangement can be discussed.

Kate. Mr. S. had a great childhood and wanted our boys to have the same. Mine wasn't so good and I wanted our boys' to be better.

I agree Chewbacca and perhaps should have ignored that post.

I openly admit I was a terrible parent until I had my youngest who turned out to have ASD. It meant sessions with a child psychologist to help with behaviour issues and they were a godsend. By the time he started school his behaviour was almost perfect and no shouting, no smacking, just no anger (from me). It took a lot of work initially but it was so worth it. I wish I had been educated in how to deal with children this way before I had my first. Think super nanny on tv.

Chewbacca

Please can we leave estrangement out of this thread? It would be a shame to marginalise the discussion away from parenting and there are plenty of other threads where estrangement can be discussed.

Agree

Pantglas2 quite right about there always being someone out there who could do it better.
I loved my children and did the best I could, though there must be some things I would do differently if I was doing it again and there were plenty of folk to tell us what we were doing wrong, though thank heavens we didn’t have the internet brigade to rub it in!
It’s a bit like C19, with hindsight we all know how to do it better, but for each new parent it’s a new job to tackle. Even if you’ve seen it done by all the experts, getting it perfect yourself is a different matter.

My regret was my grandaughter my late sons daughter.
She was staying with us over the summer school holiday (2007) and my son was murdered by his partner our gd mother. She was 6 at the time nearly 7. Mum was sentenced to 8 years and also 10 years outside of prison which will be coming to and end soon.
She is a lovely child and we managed to get a guardianship for her she was fine until she hit puberty and secondary school. She became unhappy and suffered with mental health issues she went to CHAMS which helped her but we had little understanding of mental health issues. We had a difficult time with her and I regret that I don’t think I did enough to help. She was also mixed race so we had problems with her identity too. We are white her her mother is black.
We love her to bits but it’s been a long hard road and having raised two kids, daughter too we found her harder to deal with
Clever and bright girl but so many issues.

I had to smile when I saw this thread today. My 100 year old Mother in law died in the early hours of this morning.
In the 43 years I’ve known her I have never heard her say anything nice to my husband (her only child) and she was positively evil towards me. My two sons grew up dreading their weekly visit to her and won’t be shedding many tears at her funeral.
However, my husband has turned out to be a kind and caring husband, dad and grandad, if somewhat aloof on occasions. Knowing her death was imminent I mentioned her eulogy, the only positive thing we could think to say about her was that she was a great cook.

HolyHannah, you may not realise it but your comments don't paint you in a very good light. It's a gross insult to so many to suggest that children always imitate their parents; if this were the case the number of men abusing their partner's would be twice as many (or even more)!

Children learn from many sources; my female role models were my aunt & my English teacher as my relationship with my mother was strained. She was a Christian Scientist who tried to make me the person she wanted to be but wasn't. She was very passive aggressive and in hindsight was probably not very mentally well. Nothing my father did was ever good enough either.

Unfortunately, my mum wasn't a very good grandmother either. She continually undermined me with my elder DD, indulging her while virtually ignoring my younger DD and their cousins. Oddly, she was a great friend to other children & young people, just not good with her own.

The most telling thing was when I said there were things I'd done as a mum that I regretted, she said she'd always done everything right because it was what God wanted her to do!

HolyHannah, you reminded me of her with your complete lack of understanding of the difficulties many mother's have even when doing their best in sometimes trying circumstances. Most parents who can see their shortcomings are good enough parents who are able to be honest with themselves and their DC and can change negative behaviour. It's often the parents who think they are perfect who are not giving their DC a good upbringing but are too hidebound to see it.

I often think that hindsight can be a curse. It's easy when you get to the end of something to see how you could or should have done some things differently.

Not all of our children are the same, what 'worked' with one wouldn't necessarily have 'worked' with another.

thank heavens we didn't have the internet brigade to rub it in absolutely Mollygo.

Oops "mothers" blooming
autocorrect

Don't you think there's an element of truth in Holy Hannah's remarks? Don't you think you've been a bit harsh?

It's not just as a parent we look back and wish we had done certain things differently.

However, we did the best we could at the time and that no-one can take from us.

My heart goes out to you Sheilasue what a dreadful thing to happen to your family. You have been a wonderful Grandmother to her and did your best under extremely difficult circumstances. You have nothing to reproach yourself for, mental illness is so difficult to deal with,

I watch my son and Dil with their children and wish I had done things differently. She is so patient, rarely (if ever) shouts. He gets cross really quickly. I know they are both doing their best, as we did, but I sometimes wonder if he is copying his own upbringing.

I put my hands up, there are a lot of things I would have done differently and I appreciate the phrase "horses for courses" one of mine has been "challenging" and still is to a certain extent and with my other, thank god, pretty plain sailing. Sometimes I wonder whether my son's personality was shaped by his entry into the world, difficult, forceps delivery, I also had pre eclampsia carrying him, thankfully, in my ignorance didn't really appreciate that's quite a dangerous condition and do wonder if babies can be affected in the womb by what's going on with the mother during pregnancy. Anyway, I know from my own mother, my late brother, also forceps delivery damn difficult person, my best friend, her eldest again traumatic forceps birth, by far the most troublesome of her three children.............and Frank Sinatra, not that I knew him allegedly his entry into the world was not easy and I think from all we read about him, his character suggests he was a difficult sod! So yes number one has been hard work one way and another, our relationship tends to ebb and flow and he's had to have a lot of help both emotional and financial. My other son is so much easier and his transition through childhood, teen years to adulthood has had a few of the inevitable peaks and troughs along the way. Calmed down when he went to university and has had a happier time altogether with his choice of partners. Graduated, eventually managed to establish himself at work, bought a house with girlfriend who he has happily lived with for five years or so now. Unlike brother, early fatherhood, broken up and down relationships, periods of calm before the next inevitable bout of turbulence which seems to be the nature of how his life pans out.

I'm far from the perfect mother, and yes I'd have done things differently, but quite honestly most of us don't know what to expect and have some idealised notion that parent hood will be wonderful and we'll do it differently and far better than our own parents. Well for me being brought up as a strict catholic, I knew that was at least one thing I wasn't going to foist on mine. I was early 30s so when I gave up work, I felt I was ready for motherhood and for my life to take a different direction. I did try to pour myself into keeping them amused as children, usual stuff swimming, other sporting activities. Read to them for hours, got number one son reading before he started school, ironically, number 2 son resisted that a bit in the early days but he is the avid reader of my two now. I still have loads of their childhood books, my granddaughter has enjoyed some of them, and my grandson a couple.......but sadly they are children of their time and it's the age of the screen Both my boys got heavily into roller blading and skateboarding, My husband and I often look back on that time when we see other kids doing exactly what they did wearing the obligatory "Nivarna" t shirts we sigh remember "The Skateboarding/Nivarna" years that seemed to go on forever. Kurt Cobain had recently ascended it to immortality providing the anthem "Smells Like Teen Spirit" when number one son took it up, that was and possibly still is the anthem for that rite of passage between childhood and early teens with some boys. We took our kids abroad quite a lot whilst they were growing up, mainly to France, Italy and the US, but also lots of places in Britain, Scotland, Wales and the West Country. They both tell me now how lucky they were, but at the time didn't appreciate it. Both also tell me that they had a great childhood and my older son, laments the fact having split from his childrens' mother they won't have the nuclear family around them as he did, their lives are more fractured than his was at their ages. Although at the time, from where I was standing it was a period I had to get through!

Sheilasue How dreadful. You sound as though you've done a great job with your granddaughter.

Sheilasue I'm very sorry to hear about your DS and the ensuing heartache from that. I hope that your DGD receives all the help she requires but just wanted you to know that I admire all you GPS out there who are parenting their GC, in frequently very sad and difficult circumstances. Not an easy row to hoe.