Parents who provide zero guidance and support
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Anonymous
| You only have one life, no do overs! So learn as you go...grow? |
Anonymous
Could be autism. My autistic / aspergers relatives (a) never know what to say so don’t respond, and (b) trained themselves to think everyone else is crazy if they don’t stay home or eat or do the same things they do. They simply cannot relate to other people or other peoples experiences. Only their own— which is no eating out (too confusing), no vacations (they say too busy or costly but really they can’t figure them out), and no sports (can’t follow them). |
Anonymous
Ugh, I’m sorry. I once gave the MIL l occitane lotion and she gave it away to the cleaning lady. Right in front of me and we were staying there for a week. Whatever! We brought them on a beach trip and paid for their weekly condo unit in Bahamas, and when asked how they liked this beach week they responded: don’t know, haven’t been to other ones. We drive them around on fun day trips and they have nothing to say - not about the dinner, the sailboat ride, the naval academy tour. Nothing. No thoughts. No thank you. Now I do nothing. They get no utility out of anything, why bust my balls buying stuff or tickets or arranging the day. My kids, now older, don’t know what is going on. Everything is so check the box. Society said to visit, we visit, say hello, say good bye. Like robots. |
Anonymous
| XDH’s mom provided zero guidance. She’s the sweetest woman imaginable, but she has severe ADHD and probably bipolar (XDH and his brother have formal diagnoses of both). It’s too bad because no guidance for ADHD kids is not a great combination. |
Anonymous
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I'm a little confused by how this question has been posed. The lack of guidance made me extremely independent, self-reliant, and resilient. I made some mistakes, sure, but I learned from them and came out stronger, as cliche as that sounds. The main downside is that I struggle to ask for help/open up sometimes, and I am a bit controlling because I'm not used to relying on people.
I've had friends from the other extreme (helicopter parents) and I'm really glad I didn't end up like them: anxious, lacking self-confidence, poor coping skills when stressed. Sorry. |
Anonymous
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I don't think lack of guidance is what people here think it is.
Did they want you to have good grades? To have activities? Did they want you to apply to college? Did they listen when a friend upset you? Every time they put food on the table they offered one sort of a guidance. When they drove you to school, guidance was there. Plus, let's all remember that when we are teens, we do not want to hear anything at all. I don't remember my parents saying, you have to go to college, it was always understood, and clearly understood. |
Anonymous
I think you may be the one misunderstanding what guidance is in a parenting context. Putting food on the table and making sure your child gets to school isn’t guidance, it’s the bare minimum expectation for meeting a child’s physical needs (and not getting CPS involved). Guidance is teaching a child to navigate through social and cultural norms and to set goals either through instruction or example. Some of us with immigrant parents or those who were preoccupied with getting food on the table were not able to give us these tools for navigating the world or gaining any “soft skills”, which is the focus of OP’s question. Whatever the various causes for the lack of guidance may have been, the reality is that some children get built in role models, and others have to find them or flounder. |
Anonymous
No you don't get it. Parents put food on the table but it was often unhealthy or undernourishing. No they did not drive me to school. When I was a teen they wanted me to stay home and do my chores and resented that I had friends or activities that took me away from chores. They expected good grades but there was zero support in getting them. They definitely didn't listen when a friend upset me. When I applied to college I did so on my own and when I asked them to fill out paperwork or provide info I needed for applications or financial aid they would not provide it. You probably went through a phase of not appreciating or even resenting your parents as a teen or even in your 20s and now you think when other people say negative things about their parents they are just in that ungrateful phase you went through. You don't understand that a 40 year old saying "I did not receive the fundamental guidance or nurturing I needed from my parents" is very different from a 15 year old who is annoyed about a curfew or mad that they are being asked to clean their room. Those of us talking on this thread are older and often didn't understand what we were missing at the time -- we didn't complain about this stuff when we were younger because we didn't even know it was lacking. It is only being in the world that we have realized what was missing and how much it harmed us not to have it. We though "well I wasn't hungry so my parents didn't neglect me" but then later realized that a diet of doritos and soda and grilled cheese with Kraft slices before sending us to watch TV until bed was maybe not that good for us. Good parenting is about more than just ensuring your kids don't technically starve. |
Anonymous
The "generational" excuse is often offered in dysfunctional families to justify bad behavior. I heard this a lot from both my parents and my older siblings -- oh it's generational and this is just how families were in the 70s and 80s. No. Our family was dysfunctional do to generational trauma and a legacy of substance abuse and domestic violence. LOTS of people who grew up in the 70s and 80s had parents who offered functional guidance and safe homes. This has nothing to do with generations. |
Anonymous
Well said. Sometimes I heard "I always put put food on the table" as if that absolved them of doing the actual parenting work. Amazing, huh. |
Anonymous
Same. Though I *did* understand what we were missing at the time. On top of the dysfunction, growing up with shame is a heavy burden. |
Anonymous
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I’m a 32 year old woman. I was raised by a single mom, with one of my older brothers.
My mom was almost completely emotionally neglectful or emotionally absent throughout my childhood years, teen years and throughout my earlier twenties when the effects were really damaging to my mental health and to my overall development. Some of my other family members were also emotionally abusive or verbally abusive. I was bullied at school as a child and I mostly felt isolated, alienated, misunderstood, attacked, and picked on throughout my childhood years. Throughout my childhood and teen years, my mom hardly ever spoke to me. She never really asked me about my thoughts, feelings, ideas or anything like that. She may have asked me, every now and then during my childhood years, “How was your day?” but she never really tried to have an in-depth conversation about the most important ideas of life such as worldview, politics, her beliefs or her values and her expectations for my life and how she would support me in meeting those expectations, etc. She never really talked to me about anything important and she rarely spoke to me at all. She mostly ignored me and then she focused on watching T.V. or being in her own world. She didn’t show much interest in my thoughts, feelings or experiences. She treated me like I didn’t exist unless it was time to feed me or it was time to go to school or go to the dentist. My mom never offered guidance or advice about anything related to applying for jobs, gaining work experience, importance of gaining work experience/importance of building a solid work ethic, enforcing personal boundaries with others, maintaining healthy friendships, establishing healthy romantic relationships with others, maintaining healthy romantic relationships with others, applying for apartments, moving out of the house, buying a car, career choices, developing positive coping skills to face life’s challenges, marriage, children, family life or anything else. She never offered any guidance, advice or expectations about any of life’s transitional phases or important areas of development even throughout my childhood, teen and young adult years. She never tried to teach me about positive coping skills or resilience. She never discussed these things, at all, even during my teen years and during my twenties. After I started exhibiting a lot of psychological problems and behavioral issues (like social isolation, failure to launch syndrome, getting into abusive situations that could’ve been avoided, low self-worth, etc.) and after realizing that my mom showed other problematic behaviors during my twenties (showing up to my dorm room without my permission several times, becoming overly involved and overprotective in my personal life, sabotaging my potential romantic interests, enabling me to stay at home with her while I was chronically unemployed and unmotivated to move forward in life, her yelling at me and blaming me for being raped when I told her an older man raped me while I attended college undergrad, etc.) I chose to study psychology and I’ve learned more about codependent parents, childhood emotional neglect, failure to launch syndrome (which I was a failure to launch person until I overcame that), how to have healthy relationships with others, etc. I blame myself for the many bad decisions and self-sabotaging decisions that I made during my teens and earlier twenties. I don’t believe in blaming my mom or others for the my failures as an adult. I think I’m responsible for the problems in my life because I made foolish choices during my teens and twenties. But a lot of the low self-esteem, lack of personal boundaries, failure to launch syndrome, foolish choices, lack of self-control, addiction-based compulsive behaviors, lack of coping skills, and overall emotional immaturity can be blamed on my trauma from experiencing severe childhood emotional neglect and also trauma from my mom’s codependent, clingy, overprotective and intrusive/coercive control that I experienced during my earlier twenties. I know that my mom was probably emotionally neglected herself. She has never understood how to be an emotionally nurturing mother. Her own emotional needs weren’t met as a child. But I still think it’s no excuse because she should’ve understood that she still needed to provide guidance, encouragement and emotional support to move out of the house, apply for jobs, find apartments, seek independence from her, etc. She should have instinctively thought to do these things but maybe she just didn’t care enough to do them. As an adult, I learned that my mom had my older brother at age 16 and then she had me at age 23. She was raised by her maternal grandmother because my mom’s mother wasn’t able to raise my mom. During my twenties, my mom told me about the family problems that happened long before I was born. Sometimes, I also think my mom was neglectful because of her personality type. It’s like she’s not interested in thinking deeply about ideas and she’s interested in being introspective or learning about much of anything that’s meaningful. She’s not interested in talking about meaningful ideas, thoughts or feelings so she wasn’t interested in providing guidance or support about important things. What I realized is that when my thoughts and feelings and my very being were largely ignored by the most important person in my life, that’s why I struggled with low-self esteem and difficulties with personal relationships with others throughout my childhood and into my twenties. I’ve been to individual therapy sessions, online therapy groups and online social media sites such as Reddit, Lipstick Alley and others to gain the emotional support, validation, affirmation, advice, guidance and sense of belonging that I never received from my mom. It took a while but I finally found some good coping skills to handle life’s challenges. Now I’m living a great life. I’m thankful I have a full-time job, wonderful hobbies, and a sense of my own self-worth. |
Anonymous
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I’m a 32 year old woman. I was raised by a single mom, with one of my older brothers.
My mom was almost completely emotionally neglectful or emotionally absent throughout my childhood years, teen years and throughout my early twenties when the effects were really damaging to my mental health and to my overall development. Some of my other family members were also emotionally abusive or verbally abusive. I was bullied at school as a child and I mostly felt isolated, alienated, misunderstood, attacked, and picked on throughout my childhood years. Throughout my childhood and teen years, my mom hardly ever spoke to me. She never really asked me about my thoughts, feelings, ideas or anything like that. She may have asked me, every now and then during my childhood years, “How was your day?” but she never really tried to have an in-depth conversation about the most important ideas of life such as worldview, politics, her beliefs or her values and her expectations for my life and how she would support me in meeting those expectations, etc. She never really talked to me about anything important and she rarely spoke to me at all. She mostly ignored me and then she focused on watching T.V. or being in her own world. She didn’t show much interest in my thoughts, feelings or experiences. She treated me like I didn’t exist unless it was time to feed me or it was time to go to school or go to the dentist. My mom never offered guidance or advice about anything related to applying for jobs, gaining work experience, importance of gaining work experience/importance of building a solid work ethic, enforcing personal boundaries with others, maintaining healthy friendships, establishing healthy romantic relationships with others, maintaining healthy romantic relationships with others, applying for apartments, moving out of the house, buying a car, career choices, developing positive coping skills to face life’s challenges, marriage, children, family life or anything else. She never offered any guidance, advice or expectations about any of life’s transitional phases or important areas of development even throughout my childhood, teen and young adult years. She never tried to teach me about positive coping skills or resilience. She never discussed these things, at all, even during my teen years and during my twenties. After I started exhibiting a lot of psychological problems and behavioral issues (like social isolation, failure to launch syndrome, getting into abusive situations that could’ve been avoided, low self-worth, etc.) and after realizing that my mom showed other problematic behaviors during my twenties (showing up to my dorm room without my permission several times, becoming overly involved and overprotective in my personal life, sabotaging my potential romantic interests, enabling me to stay at home with her while I was chronically unemployed and unmotivated to move forward in life, her yelling at me and blaming me for being raped when I told her an older man raped me while I attended college undergrad, etc.) I chose to study psychology and I’ve learned more about codependent parents, childhood emotional neglect, failure to launch syndrome (which I was a failure to launch person until I overcame that), how to have healthy relationships with others, etc. I blame myself for the many bad decisions and self-sabotaging decisions that I made during my teens and earlier twenties. I don’t believe in blaming my mom or others for my failures as an adult. I think I’m responsible for the problems in my life because I made foolish choices during my teens and twenties. I made a lot of bad decisions just because, especially during my twenties, I never really stopped to think before I acted. Mi made a ton of stupid choices because I didn't think about the consequences of those choices and I had no impulse control. Although, my mom was a really neglectful mom and she never really taught me how to think before I acted or how to make wise choices or to consider the consequences of my choices. But a lot of the low self-esteem, lack of personal boundaries, failure to launch syndrome, foolish choices, lack of self-control, addiction-based compulsive behaviors, lack of coping skills, and overall emotional immaturity can be blamed on my trauma from experiencing severe childhood emotional neglect and also trauma from my mom’s codependent, clingy, overprotective and intrusive/coercive control that I experienced during my early twenties. I assume that my mom was probably emotionally neglected herself. I think she has never understood how to be an emotionally nurturing mother. Her own emotional needs probably weren’t met as a child. But I still think it’s no excuse because she should’ve understood that she still needed to provide guidance, encouragement and emotional support to move out of the house, apply for jobs, find apartments, seek independence from her, etc. She should have instinctively thought to do these things but maybe she just didn’t care enough to do them. As an adult, I learned that my mom had my older brother at age 16 and then she had me at age 23. She was raised by her maternal grandmother because my mom’s mother wasn’t able to raise my mom. During my twenties, my mom told me about the family problems that happened long before I was born. Sometimes, I also think my mom was neglectful because of her personality type. It’s like she doesn't seem interested in thinking deeply about ideas and she doesn't seem interested in being introspective or learning about much of anything that’s meaningful. She’s not interested in talking about meaningful ideas, thoughts or feelings so she wasn’t interested in providing guidance or support about important things. What I realized is that when my thoughts and feelings and my very being were largely ignored by the most important person in my life, that’s why I struggled with low-self esteem and difficulties with personal relationships with others throughout my childhood and into my twenties. I’ve been to individual therapy sessions, online therapy groups and online social media sites such as Reddit, Lipstick Alley and others to gain the emotional support, validation, affirmation, advice, guidance and sense of belonging that I never received from my mom. It took a while but I finally found some good coping skills to handle life’s challenges. Now I’m living a great life. I’m thankful I have a full-time job, wonderful hobbies, and a sense of my own self-worth. |
Anonymous
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Me!
I simply learned to be independent very early. |
Anonymous
I heard this is a gen x thing we all think this — I try not to. My adult emotional life was “eh” but got better! But there are a lot of peers in this circle |