Reply to When did you realize that your parents didn't care about you?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "When did you realize that your parents didn't care about you?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]When I was an adult. The signs were there all along, but it was so normal, I didn’t realize it was abuse and neglect. It was just mom and dad being mom and dad. I remember incidents from childhood that I recognize now as uncaring, but they always had an excuse, a way to blame me, and/or minimized my feelings if I were brave enough to express them.

My dog had puppies and they all died (including my dog-the mom) within days of the birth. I’ve never asked what happened as an adult because I’m afraid to know, but at best it was a neglect issue where they should’ve at least called the vet (at worst, they didn’t want to deal with finding puppies homes and there are a lot of bad people in my family). They mocked me so much for crying that my dog and all the puppies died and told me I shouldn’t be sad because I wouldn’t have been able to keep the puppies anyway. I was probably 4 when this happened. It was definitely before I started kindergarten.

It wasn’t that traumatic every day during my childhood, but there were enough things on that level that there was always anxiety. I didn’t share my feelings often because if they’ll make fun of a little girl for crying over animals dying, they’ll definitely make fun of a kid for not liking soup or having a sore throat.

I also remember my mom apologizing to other people for my existence all the time as though I embarrassed her. Not for misbehaving, but if I mispronounced a word or if my clothes got dirty at school and we didn’t have time to change before going somewhere. Of course I’d be berated for it when we were alone.

That’s just the emotional abuse. It was tougher than the physical stuff, but I think they legitimately thought (at least at the moment) that they were being good parents by disciplining us. That was mostly forgivable, because it was misguided and they did improve over time. But the emotional stuff got worse as we got older and became independent and they wanted to keep control. That stuff isn’t always forgivable. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics