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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So my therapist calls it benign neglect. My mom wasn't trying to be neglectful, she just worked and wasn't that interested in us kids. Now that she's old and infirm, I've kind of given up. I think that I've mostly grieved having that mother that I needed, but I guess time will tell when she's gone. [/quote]

This is not a good term for it. Benign means harmless. Neglect is harmful.

I have struggled with the idea of accountability on this issue. My parents were abusive and neglectful (hitting, yelling, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, but we were always fed and had a middle class life financially). I know a lot of it was because they also had abusive parents, and they had children very young and didn't really know how to change that pattern.

But also... You can change the pattern. I'm a mom now and while I'm far from perfect, I don't abuse my kids and they know I love them and we have a strong bond. I'm so glad I've been able to do this, and it's healing in some ways. But it also highlights for me that it IS a choice. They may not have meant to do it, but they didn't try hard enough to do differently.[/quote]

Do you have to consciously think about things and make better decisions? How do you do this? I definitely feel like I'm better than my parents were but I want to do better than I have in the past as well.[/quote]

PP here. I did it by putting a lot of physical and emotional distance between me and my family, going to therapy, talking a lot with my spouse both before and after marriage about the kind of parent I wanted to be, postponing parenthood until I really felt I had the emotional maturity to do it, and not having more kids than I felt I could handle well and that felt affordable (financial stress is a major trigger for family strife).

I also developed parenting models outside my own family-- parents of friends, or friends who are parents, who embody the values I share and who have family dynamics I think are healthy. When I'm in a tough parenting moment and I need guidance, I can't look to my own parents because the tough moments were their worst moments. So that's when I think of other, good parents I know and think what they would do. I also read parenting books, especially anything geared toward raising emotionally intelligent kids, and with an "authoritative" (instead of authoritarian or permissive) approach.

Some days I really lament my lack of good parenting models, and therapy is really important for helping me deal with my grief over my own childhood. But most days I'm just grateful to have been able to create a family life that is warm, loving, and functional family. Even though I'm the parent, not the child, now, it is still very healing to just have a good family to be a part of, where I feel truly loved.[/quote]

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