Reply to Which of the four “emotionally immature” parents was my mother?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Which of the four “emotionally immature” parents was my mother?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you’re familiar with the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, I need your help!

My therapist suspects my mother was/is emotionally immature, and advised me to read the book. But I can’t fit my mother into either of the four categories.

I lean more towards Driven, but she wasn’t aiming for MY perfection, it was other things. The house, her body, her work. Her work came first. She sent me to school with chicken pox and told me to lie and say it was mosquito bites. Sent me to school vomiting, sick with the flu, and refused to pick me up, so I would sit in the nurse’s office. I was always the kid scanning the crowd for a parent. Her reasoning wasn’t financial, my father was breadwinner. She just refused to miss work for anything. Ever.

At home, everything had to be perfect. We would get up at 7am on weekends to vacuum and dust. Things had to be meticulous, inside and out. We would have to pick individual leaves from the landscape bark in the fall, shovel perfect edges in the winter, for example. And yes, my mother has childhood trauma.

Everything had to be perfect and work came first. Always. But she didn’t necessarily care to perfect us kids at all.

I want to continue with the book and go to therapy next week with some insight. Can you help me figure out who she is?[/quote]

One thing that stood out to me is that the only thing you mention about your father is that he was the breadwinner.

Clearly if your mom worked, she was also the breadwinner.

Why don’t you mention that he also didn’t miss work when you were sick? It sounds like he wasn’t at events either?

It is interesting to me that you have focused on your mom here. [/quote]
+1

It’s always mom’s fault[/quote]

+1 Don't forget it was a lot more difficult to take off work decades ago. You had less vacation/sick time and bosses weren't as flexible as they are today. You couldn't just leave work to attend a school play or sports game. My parents never saw any of my games in middle or high school. [/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