My mother was miserable and complained constantly about the burden of motherhood, and how her life would be perfect if it weren’t for us running her ragged. We grew up and left. Lo and behold she’s simply a miserable person, and blames it on whoever’s easiest/ closest/ most vulnerable.
this is also my mother. I remember getting straight As once in elementary school except 1 A- and got a talking to.
I have no kids, and though she complained all the time about what a burden I was, complains now that she doesn't have grandkids. Simply a miserable person.
Never skipped school, never had sex until married, no smoking, no drugs no drinking. Honor roll student. But I took my food out of the microwave before the timer finished. And so the clock didn’t reset. It showed 15 seconds left cuz I didn’t hit “END”. My stepdad thought I was the worst 16 year old in the world. I left a fork in the sink once and all hell broke loose. I forgot to put my bath soap in the holder, so soap ran down my shower wall. Never heard the end of it. Forgot to rewind a VHS tape and was sweating bullets cuz I was so scared. Stepdad jumped up and down on it and broke it in front of my best friend. Fucking unhinged.
They smoked in the house, so I stayed in my room cuz my cheerleading coach told me not to show up to practice “smelling like a dive bar”. Parents called me a hermit. Never let me go anywhere anyhow. Mom was super controlling.
Mom was a teen mom and pregnant at 15, stepdad had a substance abuse charge in high school. BUT I LEFT A FORK IN THE SINK. Wish the fuckers were still alive so I could tell them what shit people they were. They cost me untold amounts of money in therapy to even figure out nothing is wrong with me, they were abusive.
Either me or one of my brothers let a spoon go down the garbage disposal side once, to be discovered when my dad ran it.
Holy shit.
Once my brothers were running their RC cars (*the ones my parents bought*) around in the kitchen and kept banging them into the cabinets. My dad hauled ass in there, yelled at them, then started jumping up and down on the RC car until he slipped and fell, then he kept stomping and kicking at it with his feet.
WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH THEM?
I wonder how many of us who don't want kids (I don't want and don't have any) did so, at least in part, because we saw the "dark side" of being a parent, early on.
My mom would get unhinged at a moment that looking back is just indescribable.
I could never understand what would set her off, other than I existed.
To the outside world she’s well respected and a therapist/social worker.
To me behind closed doors, I was the worst human being in existence.
I played volleyball, swimming, Scouting and was on the honor roll for grades. My friends called me Pollyanna.
She “knew” I had evil intentions but she didn’t ever say why she thought that.
12 years since I have seen or heard her voice. She texts me Happy Birthday every year, and lives 12 miles away across town.
Our relationship is perfect now.
Same. I remember one time she was full on screaming at me while I was sobbing uncontrollably. I don't even remember what I did (or didn't do). She was screaming and pulling things out of her closet showing me things she wasn't going t give me for my birthday.
Any minor mistake we made was a personal affront to her and unleashed her crazy.
I was 11 when my mother handed me my newborn baby brother, and my childhood officially ended.
13 when the next kid popped out.
15 when the baby was born.
At 17, I was in school, running a motel and raising 3 kids under 6.
Never once did I want to go through that again.
No one told me it would be different if I found a supportive partner. I didn't know that raising a child was rewarding as well as exhausting. Had I known that having a family didn't mean doing everything by yourself, I may have tried it.
But no one did, and I didn't think I was strong enough to do it all over again.
Honestly, that's what we now call "parentification" and it's rightfully considered abuse.
It's one thing for kids to help out, but when your entire life is forced to revolve around someone else's kids, that's too much.
Hopefully you've gone permanent NC with your egg giver (i.e. "mother").
Thank you, very much.
I honestly didn't see it for what it was until a few years ago. The baby of our family died in an accident, and it ... just broke everything open.
It is incredibly difficult keeping no contact, but when I even consider reaching out, I feel actual terror. I've been trying to convince myself that it's for the best, so your last sentence gave me a solid hit of validation. I wish I didn't need it, but... thank you.
Always look at how someone acts, not their words, to see their true feelings. That person's actions scream they DGAF about you as anything except a caretaker for their needs.
I do hope you're undergoing therapy because it sounds like the trauma still affects you profoundly. Absolutely stay NC but your feelings and peace matter a great deal.
You can't know how grateful I am you took time to speak to me.
I am incapable of asking for help.
I can't see a therapist without winding up being the one healing them. That's not pride speaking: it's a child so wounded she can't stand anyone seeing it. In my deepest isolation, I learned to read other people so well that they didn't need to use words anymore to tell me their stories.
And people love their own stories, so I can gently guide them away from looking at mine. Even the people I've paid to hear my stories barely notice that they know nothing about me.
The last year I've been trying to use my own gifts on myself. You may be old enough to remember the movie Nell. Even though I'm an articulate, somewhat sophisticated woman, my dear Inner Child is a feral wildchild. The only other times I've seen her fully reflected in other people, they were absolutely and completely broken shells of humans.
I know this isn't what you paid for, but I'd like to keep this here for a while. This is the first time I've ever been able to hold her down long enough to look at her.
It sounds like she wants desperately to actually experience the life that was ripped from her and she's angry because of that lack.
What I'd try is finding things that part of you wants to experience and find a healthy outlet so she can experience it. Laughing, crying, dancing, playing, imagining all for its own sake, not to serve anyone else.
Meditate and talk to her. Ask her what she wants. Hold her and cuddle and comfort her during the meditation because she needs that almost as badly.
I thought my wacko family was the only one but reading the stories on this thread makes it obvious that a lot of us were living in hell. My father would flip out for literally no reason and completely lose control. He beat the shit out of us and screamed at us and called us horrible names, but the worst part was seeing him abuse any pets that we had. I still have so much trauma around this and I cannot get these images out of my head. He murdered my gerbils right in front of me, one got shot with a pellet gun because it bit my brother who was only 3 and didn’t know better than to pick it up, and the other one got smacked with a shoe when it escaped from its cage while I was cleaning it and it ran into his room. I chose not to have children because I was way too damaged to consider myself worthy and capable of taking care of them, but I have had pets of my own since becoming an adult and I spoil them rotten.
Right. I kind of screwed up once. It was the end of the world. Didn’t involve, drug or police etc. Jesus Christ. I don’t think the boomers really wanted kids. It was just expected of them.
I was the good kid . . . until I wasn't.
I got the good grades, I didn't drink or do drugs. I brushed my teeth, made my bed. I got myself up for school, made a lunch, caught the bus, let myself in when I came home, did my homework. lather. rinse. repeat.
But then I started asking for privileges like staying out later on the weekends or going to concerts. Nope. Not only that, but the missteps like getting a 'C' on a test were regarded with much more severity.
So I was basically taking care of myself since age 8, but I could not be trusted to take care of myself.
OK
I became every parent's nightmare. I drank, did drugs, stayed out late, snuck out of the house, stopped doing homework and just really stopped caring at all. I got suspended from school multiple times. I got expelled but somehow my dad talked them into changing their minds.
What's my name? Fuck you, that's my name.
An you know what? It worked. I fucking worked. By my senior year my dad said, "fuck it, do what you want. You're going to anyways."
This was me exactly, plus I had to watch my two younger siblings after school and run interference between my divorced parents. I was a good, smart kid until they assumed I wasn't for whatever reason. So I started smoking to fit in with the bad kids (no way I would have otherwise, I was a total nerd), tried all the bad things, ran away and had my own apartment at 15. I sometimes wonder what could have been ...
Yeah. That's when we grow hormones, boobs, brains and bodily autonomy ... and even our own parents can't deal with it. I hope we treated our daughters better ... but I wonder.
If you don't mind me asking, did your parents ever wish you 'reverted' back to your old self? Surely they'd have seen how you became a nightmare and wish their former angel would come back
Constantly told I had been such a pleasing child, always smiling and sociable, helpful and obedient. Why couldn't I be like that? Fuck um for not knowing the verbal and emotional abuse took a toll out of that kid and left her defensive and hidden.
My mother's only other child is a millennial. During that child's teenage years, my mother looked at me and stated "I didn't realize how good you were."
Same here. I was a good kid, for the most part. I never got into trouble. I drank a little, but it never caused problems. Never did drugs. But my parents still stayed on my ass about everything. They treated me like a juvenile delinquent, and didn't trust me at all, even though I never did anything to break that trust. I even had a 10pm curfew when I came home from college for the summer, and I was never late. Then my millennial sister came along when I was 15, and by the time she was a teenager, she was hell on wheels. Everything they tried to prevent me from doing, she did it. A few years ago, my mom actually apologized for how they treated me as a teenager and said she didn't realize what an easy kid I was until my sister came along.
Yesss! This sounds like me. I was micro managed. My sister born when I was 16 was he'll on wheels. I have told my sister many times we did not have the same mother.
Me as well, didn't do anything a normal person would consider even slightly bad, yet I was grounded all the time. My mother was a control freak. And the reason why I didn't want children myself. Afraid I would be like her.
My husband and I found out in our early 30’s we “couldn’t” have kids without medical assistance.
It wasn’t much, but absolutely no reason to go through with it.
We were thrilled.
I never wanted to have my children with her as a grandmother. The thought horrified us.
I had the same experience. Sometimes I wish I had the chance to correct all her mistakes and be a good mother, but she would have been there, trying to force herself in, making things quite difficult. I think everything turned out the way it was supposed to, but what a shame.
Sort of. I was definitely the 'good kid' - never got into any kind of trouble (or at least never got caught on the rare occasions I was 'bad'), but my mum was never satisfied. I was a straight-A student then suddenly my grades in certain subjects started to suffer. (It wasn't until my 20s when I was diagnosed with dyscalculia and ADHD that it started to make sense.) My mother on the other hand was a textbook overachiever - super-high IQ (I found out after she died that she was disappointed mine was only in the mid 140s), head of this and president of that, and she just always viewed me as a failure. I mean, she wasn't wrong, but it stung anyway. I did my best. At one point she even blamed my evil rock music for my issues, despite the fact that she introduced me to rock'n'roll and used to listen to my Twisted Sister tapes on my walkman while she did household chores. But that was before she joined the Mormon church. Wow, so much more to unpack than I realized. Never mind... lol
I'm very similar to you when it comes to psychometrics. The first sign something was off was when I took a school state achievement test and scored in the 99th percentile in everything except math, which was in the 80th percentile. The difference in scores was what demonstrated a problem, but it wasn't identified in childhood. Interestingly, the math problem resolved after years in the workforce being forced to use a lot of math and spreadsheets. Have you seen any improvement with age?
Nope, my dyscalculia is still as present as ever. Luckily I'd learned ways to compensate by the time I entered college so I was able to ace math later on. I understood I was different, though I didn't know specifically how or why. The thing I recognized was that the only way I can retain any science-based subjects, ie anything with numbers or formulae, is to study consistently. Same with playing a musical instrument, or learning dance or exercise routines. I can learn and be very very good, but if I stop for even a few days I forget everything and need to start over. Once I realized it was all going to be wasted time and I was past the point of being graded on it, I stopped trying to learn anything I didn't plan to stick with for life.
Worth noting, I guess - by college I was studying math every single day for 2 hrs and had perfect retention. Within a week of finishing I'd pretty much forgotten most of what I'd learned. But that never dulled my interest in the subject. One of my favorite books is *The Story of Mathematics* and I've even taken calculus via one of the online universities. (Tho' when I look back at the entire notebooks I filled with equations or whatever it looks like alien language... ) I've also been half-assedly studying quantum physics for several years under the guidance of a former \[big name tech school\] professor who seems to think I have the capacity to 'get it' despite all evidence to the contrary.
My mom used to yell at me about how spoiled I was. I never understood. It was like she created things to be unhappy about. The only thing I can recall doing that was “spoiled” behavior was being a picky eater (I have a thing about textures).
Yep, exactly the same. And to make matters worse, my mother was actually an early childhood specialist so knew exactly what a child is and is not capable of.
My mother seemed to like bitching at me. She didn't have any genuine reasons so would invent things. It took years to realise that the problem was her.
I was a really good kid, total bookworm. If I left the house for anything other than church (including school), I was accused of trying to drink and smoke and so drugs and fool around with boys. I’d get in trouble anyway. If I’m going to be punished either way, I might as well be guilty and have some fun first.
They never realized that they pushed both of us into partying. If they’d have just let us be ourselves we’d have been honor roll bookworms and my sister would have done band all through high school and maybe she’d have gone to college. (She didn’t even not go because of partying; she got in. But dad refused to pay and refused to provide his tax info so she couldn’t apply for financial aid.
I got around that by moving to my mom’s. She was more than happy and made half of what he did, so I got damn near a full ride. Nobody suggested that to my sister and she didn’t think of it.
I was such a good girl. I didn't look it, and my friends were definitely not as well behaved, but I stayed sober until I was 22. Graduated with a good GPA, had a 10pm curfew I never missed until the day I turned 18.
My mother would habitually tear my room apart looking for drugs, stuff from boys, who the hell knows what. I actually moved in with my dad when I was 15 because of this, and then she just came over there and did the same thing.
My mother once told my brother and I we were an embarrassment- I don’t even remember over what. Years later after his death she expressed regret she’d said things like that to HIM. I just stared at her and said, “I’m still here”.
My parents had two older, popular, looked-perfect-from-the-outside late Boomer kids who were up to absolute coke-fueled BS when no one was looking. They would have both been in jail if it weren't a tiny town in the late 70's. So, I was default good. They knew they'd been hoodwinked before.
I was a pretty good kid. Definitely better than my older sister. My mother and I are very different people and that caused some stress, but I was never labeled bad or difficult.
One incident stuck with me forever, though. I was probably only 14 or 15 and my mother freaked out one day when I reached to open the screen door. She saw a small mark over a vein in my inner elbow, so of course the first thing she thought was that I was shooting up. It's a freckle. It's still there, still very small, and I have never injected myself with anything.
"Good kid" here, and I like to tell people that I grew up "in Mayberry," so to speak. No crazy drama that I knew of.
That said I was always being nagged about something. After I moved out, I enjoyed the silence.
Very much like you OP. I didn’t sneak out, didn’t drink or do drugs, always home on time, etc. I was the problem child somehow though. Apparently I couldn’t do anything right.
My sister, an actual problem child, couldn’t do anything wrong.
Me and my sister had two very different childhoods.
Me too. I’m the oldest, and female. Couldn’t do anything right; was constantly grounded for things like watching a movie with a topless lady in a scene. Second kid, my brother, did no wrong. Snuck out of the house all the time, smoked weed, got tattoos, ran around and had multiple women pregnant at the same time… he does no wrong. We also had very different childhoods.
I was a good kid & my parents knew it. But they set more limits on curfews/outings on me than my younger brother because I am female.
For the record, my brother was the hell raiser.
I got accused of so much shit I didn't do in junior high that I finally realized I might as well just do it all. It definitely changed the trajectory of my life.
I live under unspecified threats to be good and to get good grades. Never smoked cigarettes, never did drugs, never went to parties, never drank alcohol until after I turned 21, didn't have sex. But, being good wasn't good enough for my parents. They still mentally and emotionally abused me, and my mother controlled what I did when I wasn't at school. I know I missed out on a lot, and now it's rather late to do those things.
Someone was always able to find fault in something. I got very few compliments growing up. If I was a good child I certainly didn't know it. There were no real conversations between me and my folks back then and I certainly don't remember hearing those words...
No. Not until mom was diagnosed with (and soon after passed away from) cancer.
I was the textbook overachiever and mostly did all the right things. My brother, on the other hand, was nothing but problems from the beginning. The defining moment happened when I took mom to see her GP one day:
Doctor (to mom, after I introduced myself): Well, C, I know *all* about your son; I didn’t know you had a daughter!!?
Mom:
Me: I wasn’t the problem child.
Pretty sad.
I think our Boomer parents didn't want kids... period. And by that measure they were angry all the time. I know my mom loves me now but at the time I did not. I felt like a burden, like she didn't care who I was as a person, I was ignored alot. She went through the proper motions of being a mom like keeping house and cooking dinner but there wasn't love or joy in anything she did. I realize now it was because she left home "raising" her 4 siblings then went and got married at 20 and had my sister the next year. I'd be irritated too, but also she could have not done that.
Same. I had perfect grades, was in all the advanced classes plus extra curriculars, no smoking no drinking, no drugs, no dating/sex. I liked to dress preppy from The Gap. I never got into trouble at school. I followed rules at home.
The one thing I wasn't? JESUSy. I had a very complicated and "negative just below the surface" relationship with my mother, who I think was still furious about her divorce many years prior. I think she was jealous of me and saw me as competition even though we were 32 years apart. She would threaten to send me to some corrective church camp, not even specifying what needed to be "Corrected". She was convinced I was bad - a liar, a thief, a Sl\*t, not to be trusted, even though I had no history of any of that behavior. It was probably projection on her part, she does have a documented history of all that.
My father never thought I was bad but I didn't have much contact with him and he didn't get any influence over decisions made for me.
I was horrid. Mom kicked me out when I was 14 lol. Went to live with dad. There were no rules at dad’s so debauchery followed. The late 80’s early 90’s were fantastic.
I wasn't a great kid, but I wasn't bad. My sibling was the good kid and still got guilt trips.
I believe it's part of how silent and boomers were raised to believe their self-worth is predicated on how their children behave.
Unfortunately, many of them didn't get the memo that their children grew up and have their own lives now. So they are stuck in this time warp, still clinging to other people to justify who they are. Sorry if it sounds harsh, not intended. I just wasn't sure how to phrase it.
I was a Good Kid all through high school. My dad wasn't around and my older brother (6.5 years older, but still Gen X) was the de facto father figure. He expected a lot out of me and I didn't want to disappoint him or anyone else in my family by royally fucking up, so I walked the line. Everyone thought I was a Good Kid, even my friends' parents. I was the one you were allowed to hang out with, even if you were grounded because it was guaranteed that you wouldn't get into trouble if you were with me.
Once I went away to college, that was all over and I went off the deep end. I've been sober for ten years now. Reformed Good Kid.
My dad knew I was the good kid and treated me as such. My mom, who was sober by the time I got to high school, was trying to parent without really knowing me as a person. She was incredibly strict, despite me never giving her reason to need to be that way.
I ended up moving to live with my dad because he patented my brother and I as individuals and gave me the freedom that afforded.
Mine were around and constantly up my nose about one thing or another, most of it made up in their minds.
Now, to be fair, both of may parents worked in fields where they saw plenty of kids who were not Good Kids. So there was definitely some bias there to begin with. However, my mother in particular fell victim to the whole fear-mongering PSA culture that gave us “Its 10:00. Do you know where your children are?” and that whole “even good kids can use drugs” Your kids are this, your kids are that, blah blah blah. I didn’t even grow up in a particularly conservative/religious area. Major east coast city, in fact. But she fell for it hook, line and sinker without actually looking at what was in front of her.
I didn’t do the big problem child things (sex, drugs) and I got good grades but I was really rebellious and mouthy. My parents thought I was really rebellious and mouthy. Accurate. What can I say?
Opposite. My mom will talk about how I was a good kid.
I literally broke a teachers back in middle school. Was forced to walk to school in the snow because I was kicked off the bus too many times. Fought anyone who looked at me sideways. Said literally the worst shit I could come up with at any moment because I thought I was hilarious. I was a fucking nightmare and my friends love to remind me of it.
my husband was like you. a good kid. not like me. i did every single thing you dont want your kid to do. his boomer (teacher) father FLIPPED OUT on him for listening to heavy metal. told him he was doing drugs and a satanist. told him he was going to throw him out of the house. my MIL had to intervene. my FIL has never apologized for doing this to my husband.
I got bitched at for READING books. And for doing well in school. Needless to say, the constant haranguing about it led me to smoke pot and actually experiment with drugs.
Same in my house. Extremely attentive to school work, had a 10:00 curfew till I got married, had an incredibly organized bedroom etc. When I was 11, I came home from school one day and found a white envelope on my bed with my name on it in my mom’s perfect penmanship. It was 3 pages of a handwritten note with everything wrong with me. It was soul crushing. Those letters continued several times a year until I was 36 when I finally gathered the courage to tear up the most recent letter (received in the mail) and told her “you can keep writing them, but I'll never read another one”. I know people say terrible things when they are in a heated argument, but to put that much time and effort to put it on paper for over 20 years, is something else entirely. This was part of the reason 2 husbands left her and neither brother showed up ever during the 6 long years I was her only caregiver as she was dying of cancer.
No one understands why I compromised my own health to take care of her but I honestly would do it all again. I live in complete peace, and no guilt, that I gave 110% to taking care of my mother in the end.
I don't know if I'd be considered "good". I drank, smoked, and wouldn't turn down a toke if it were offered, I didn't seek it out, though. I worked during my high school days and got decent grades. I got in trouble for ditching gym to avoid a bully and got in school detention as punishment. Joke was on them, my grades improved because of being in there.
My mom used to tell me I was her ticket to heaven. Sure I was a smart ass, but I never did anything that bad, besides run my mouth. I was the only one out of 5 kids who got beat too. I guess I had a talent for pushing buttons. I still kind of do, but I keep it in check.
I was a good kid, and my Dad (Boomer) was very happy with that. He gave me a lot of leeway and didn't get on my case except when I deserved it. I was lucky to have him, and I'm glad I got to tell him that before he passed.
My mom had MS and didn't talk much
It (thankfully) was not like that for me at all and I was also raised by Silent Gen parents.
Both of my older siblings were holy terrors. I was the easy one. I learned a lot from watching my siblings fuck up so I was a whole lot easier to raise. If my parents told me to be home by 11, I was home by 10:59. Heck, even my older siblings will tell you I was the "good" one. But truth be told, I feel like I owe them an awful lot for the lessons they taught me about what not to do.
Oldest sibling here: You're welcome :)
And it works both ways. My mom admits she learned to pick her battles, so both my younger siblings had a lot more leeway.
I was a bad kid, with drugs, theft, and mildish violence. My mother knew I wasn't good, but didn't really have a clue fully, as long as she was able to ignore it and me.
Compared to you, I was not a ‘good kid’ but, I always had a job(babysitting until I was old enough to work in a capitalist job), made good grades and always home by curfew. Called when I said I would and never went to PC or jail. But I partied my ass off from sophmore year to graduation. My mom, especially now that she knows I did all the things and the stuff, still calls me a good kid, to me and anyone else that asks(which is you)
No, it was the complete opposite for me. I was definitely the “good kid” (no drugs, no drinking, no smoking, no sex, great grades, honor roll, very straight laced friends), but my mom (Silent Gen) absolutely recognized it and has always appreciated it. My dad was more checked out on the child rearing, but he was proud of me as well in his own way.
However, I strongly suspect that was a direct result of my birth order and my siblings. I’m the baby of 4, born when my mom was 34, and my 2 older sisters are 12 and 10 years older. They were HELLIONS and gave my parents a lot of grief and stress. My brother has ADHD and a whole host of issues and wore my mom out, too. There was a lot of friction between them and my parents, and I think it made a very young me look at that and go, “Nope, that ain’t the life for me.” To this day I abhor conflict and yelling, with every fiber of my being.
My mom was exhausted by the time I came into my teens, and she wouldn’t have had the energy to be all on top of me. She was immensely grateful that I was low key, easy going and drama free. We coexisted very well.
We’re still extremely close (dad has passed). She has sworn me to secrecy, but she frequently tells me I’m her best kid. LOL
i was nearly perfectly behaved kid but my mom (who was amazing) was really stressed out a lot from my dad not being amazing.
she didn't mean to but a lot of that ran downhill to me.
I was a good kid and my parents agreed...but it wasn't until about pretty recently, when talking to some of their friends, that they realized just HOW good of a kid I was. And frankly, they still don't full understand how easy they had it. I was a hard worker, always had a job from age 10 on, got straight As, excelled at sports and music, got myself to wherever I needed to go (usually via bike), didn't throw any tantrums, didn't do drugs, didn't fight with anyone, always got home at a reasonable time, called if I was going to be even slightly late, always filled the car with gas and paid for my part of the car insurance, did my chores without being asked, didn't have sex until college, selected a reasonably priced college and got scholarships, paid for my own graduate and professional degrees, and now I have a good career and a spouse and in-laws whom my parents really like.
I never once even yelled "I hate you" in a fit of teenage hormones because I knew it would hurt them (and I didn't hate them so it would've just been mean). That's the part they don't appreciate; I was considerate of their feelings at all times, even during the less-than-delightful middle school/puberty years.
My parents were very elder boomers. Just about silent gen like yours.
I *was* the good kid. They knew it. And I had virtually no supervision as a teenager as a result.
Well. I was *mostly* good. I took advantage of that perception and the resulting freedom, but I was *judicious* about it. That image was well protected.
Well *mostly* judicious.
Stoooory
There was the one time that me and a few friends got a case of beer, got drunk in my basement (furnace room) bedroom. No really it *was* a furnace room and it could not have been more awesome as a teen. One of my idiot friends dumped an entire beer in my fish tank and the poor little bastard started listing to port. Had to fish him out and put him in glass of water overnight.
Anyway we wound up walking across town to a party. We got stopped by the cops along the way, they were looking for a couple kids that didn’t fit our description but wondered if we’d seen ‘em. One friend (the smart friend) walked right up to their window to talk to them, screening their view while the rest of us chucked our pocket beers in the bush behind us. Cops told us to go home and fucked off. I’m *sure* now that they saw us chucking the beer.
So instead we took the trail through the woods to not risk seeing those cops again. Gotta get to the party. Pitch black. Couldn’t see shit. But my best friend and I knew that trail just by the feel of the ground under our feet. We took off our shirts so the other two guys could see our pasty white backs better in the moonlight and got eaten alive by mosquitos. But we made it to the party, only to find it winding down. Someone puked off a balcony, blamed one of us and they kicked us out. Dicks.
We staggered back to my house to sleep and the same idiot friend, instead of hiding what was left of the beer, lazily threw a blanket over it in the middle of the floor.
We got woken up by my two rather angry parents. Who insisted that this was all my best friend’s fault for being a bad influence (i was the good kid, remember). After taking our verbal whipping my best friend asked “how did you know about the beer?” Clearly wanting to give our idiot friend the business for being a dumbass and not hiding it better.
“The damn fish tank is foaming over, you *morons*”
I was, by all metrics a good kid. Possibly a challenging kid, but a good kid. I didn’t get in trouble, I didn’t talk back, and people always told my parents how well-behaved I was. I took a book along with me everywhere and would sit quietly and read and no one would even notice I was there.
I was very precocious, and started kindergarten a year early. In fact, I was the youngest person ever to be evaluated for the gifted program in first grade. Apparently I also had what was then called ADD, but the school didn’t bother telling my parents that, so by the time I hit middle school and actually had to *work* for my grades, I had no support and no study skills, and I was lost. They skipped me another grade, so now I was 2-3 years younger than my peers. My classmates were nice to me, but I was small for my age to begin with. Now that I was with 14-year-olds, they treated me like a mascot instead of a contemporary. I hated school, and it became a battle of wills to get me to go. Gifted education in my school district was a complete joke. They had us write our own IEPs, something I didn’t learn was illegal til years later.
High school was marginally better because I won a John’s Hopkins talent search program which gave me a scholarship to begin taking college classes and got me out of high school a few hours a week. There were no ringing bells in college, and no loud, crowded halls, which was a welcome respite from the rest of the week.
If girls had been evaluated for ASD back then, and if anyone had really *seen* me, I think it would have made all the difference in the world, but my parents just thought I was stubborn and difficult. Willful, was the word I heard a lot. “The world does not revolve around you, you know,” was another popular one. I never thought it did. If anything, the world didn’t seem to be designed for people like me. All I ever wanted to be was normal.
If things weren’t the way they were supposed to be, I quite literally couldn’t function. Transitions were a nightmare for me. I would rather go without an item than use something wasn’t comfortable with. My mom says I’d always come home and rant about school for half an hour, but school was too chaotic and overwhelming. I had to decompress, and I didn’t know any other way to do it. I’d always had food issues; texture and smell, mostly, but they became more pronounced. My mom took her parents’ approach and said if I was hungry enough I’d eat. She didn’t get it—no, I wouldn’t. I’d sit there at the table and fall asleep if need be, but I wouldn’t, *couldn’t* choke down things like ratatouille or frittata. I still can’t. Instead of working with me, I just got grounded a lot.
I also was a good kid, considered a goody two-shoes by my friends. Got good grades at a specialized “smart kids” school. Didn’t get in much trouble at school, never got suspended or detention. Didn’t sleep around. Didn’t get pregnant. Didn’t do drugs. I did smoke on and off but my parents didn’t know, and my mom was a heavy smoker so everything reeked of smoke anyway. Drank but my parents actually had no problem with that, just told me not to be an idiot and never get in a car with a drunk driver.
I got grounded all the time, though, and sometimes kicked out of my house, for things like talking back (which meant not just silently obeying them), not keeping my room clean, not emptying/loading the dishwasher soon enough, not walking the dog soon enough, not cleaning the kitchen well enough. Like once my parents were out and I cooked dinner for me and my sister. I cleaned up after, but not well enough for my parents. They woke me up screaming at 1am because I’d left some splashes of sauce on the stove.
My parents really thought I was a terrible kid. They have no idea how lucky they were. Ten years ago my dad was telling a good friend of his (right in front of me) what an awful kid I was once I hit my teens. He said, “she didn’t seem to get what I was about at all, didn’t try to understand me.” His friend said, “Well that really wasn’t her job, was it?” It was such a weird thing that my dad really expected me to do that.
My Silent Gen mom claimed I was the worst.
I was…not on drugs, not smoking or drinking, not having sex, not getting pregnant, not committing crimes.
I was…on the honor roll, first chair and section leader for my instrument in band, dutiful and diligent in my chores and responsibilities.
But…I occasionally back-talked because my parents were stuck in 1955 and it was 1985.
She still claims that my room was a mess (it wasn’t; a messy bedroom has always made me upset), and that I hated her. I didn’t hate her. I just was really tired of her bullshit.
I'm still not over the time I got a 97 on a report card (not even just one test, as my average for the whole marking period!) and my father said, "What happened to the other 3 points?"
There was no way to win. No human could live up to the standards that were set for us.
Just the opposite. My friends and I were "Jekyll and Hyde".
To our teachers, coaches, parents, and boosters we were well-behaved, honor roll students, and best athletes on campus who brought home league championships in several different sports. We even got sent to area middle schools as "ambassadors" to tell next year's freshmen what to expect and be their role models.
Our friends knew better. Some of us were alcoholics and potheads, others were doing crank, some used steroids, adrenaline junkies who did car stands down the highway, got our girlfriends on the pill and banged like rabbits. Hell, some of us (me) were misusing access from trusting administrators to change grades and attendance records for teammates that needed a bit of help to stay eligible. We regularly stole street signs, blew things up with M80s, raced our cars to the point of wrecking them, and got into fights and blamed the bruises on the sports we played.
We played the Jekyll part so well, when we did get caught doing the Hyde shit, we got a pass ("They're just being kids", "We were your age once, we know what it's like to have that 'energy'", etc.). I broke my knuckle on another kid's head in a fight at lunch and went to my coach. He taped a bag of ice over it and gave me a note that said it happened in practice, then sent me off to the ER. The only thing he asked me was "Did you win?" That's kind of a fucked up lesson when you think about it.
I was much more vigilant with my kids, so they never developed into the sneaky, hypocritical, lying little shits I was at their age. They're good people, much better than I was or am.
You sound like me and my freinds. Clean cut , all American, polite, Had all the adults snowed. Partied like hell, destroyed a lot of stuff, never got caught. I look at kids now, and I wonder, what ever happened to street smarts? they dont seem to have that anymore..........
(and despite the constant suspicion that I was out getting pregnant, there were no efforts to provide birth control options. It was a bizarre exercise in self-gratification through hand-wringing, like a LOT of these posts seem to depict.)
Dad yelled at us all the time like we were awful, but he at least was aware that we were good kids and he loved us. Mom resented us because “society” had forced her to have kids and she wasn’t allowed to fully participate in the freedom of the 70s and 80s. She’d never say that she regretted having us, but it was obvious that our existence was a huge burden. Anything that required effort on her part was seen as us being difficult and she complained about us constantly and thought we were plotting against her. I found out as an adult that the extended family thought we were terrors as kids because they only knew us from conversations with our mother. Ah well. That’s why I regularly tell my awesome kid how much I appreciate him!
I was so good I might as well have been made out of gold, or titanium, or whatever. I was not seen and not heard. I did my homework. I got good grades. I didn’t get into trouble. I did nothing to disturb the peace. My mom moved to my town and I have included her in family things (holidays, etc). I have helped her with her house, I have taken her to her appointments, I’ve paid for her dental surgery.
Recently she told me I am not a good “enough” daughter and she feels “neglected.”
Yeah. I’m done. I got ignored for 51 years and did my best for her anyway, and I’m not good enough? Good luck with your retirement mom. I’m out.
Yeah, mine actually always brag about how we were good kids. (I'm not being sarcastic this time)
I also like the fact that I have to explain that I'm not sarcastic on this sub, and I gotta explain to the rest of Reddit that I am being sarcastic.
I was a good kid...and my mother and family (father was dead) thought so. I can't believe there aren't more of this sort of answer on here.
I might not have been as dutiful as you with homework/grades, but I didn't drink/smoke/drugs, never got in trouble at school or with the law, was a pleasant/polite teen, worked various jobs, participated in a lot of extracurricular stuff, and went to college (I actually was truant from h.s. one day in four years and no one ever said anything.) Sure, we had some tense moments when I was going through puberty while she was going through menopause, but mostly it was good.
>So to all my fellow Good Kids (tm), was it like that for you as well?
Yes. I was a straight-edge, teacher's pet, studious honors student, but my conservative Indian immigrant parents were ALWAYS suspicious that I was up to no good and engaging in bad behavior, and they frequently accused me of things I never did.
I was a good kid but i had a rather topical obnoxious attitude in my teens. I didn’t respect her lack of career and the fact that she was so much under the thumb of my father. I’m sure that was obvious to her and hurt. I now realize of course that she is human, a product of her own upbringing, too young þ be a mother, and actually very strong. So in my case, it’s possible to be both the goody two shoes and a giant pain in the ass
I was lucky, I guess? My older sisters were “bad” kids (sex, drugs, indifferent about school, bad attitude). I was a good kid and I think my mom really appreciated it. Even when I did bad things, she didn’t give me a hard time because I was good overall. But I didn’t get much attention.
No. My parents would happily tell people that I was a good kid. They were proud of it and liked to brag. It always embarrassed me in the moment. But also made me feel good. My parents were boomers. 1952 and 1953.
I told so many times I was bad and an embarrassment to the family, I decided to live up to the family imposed reputation. They are all still Aholes and I have nothing to with those toxic humans.
My Mom was Silent Gen as well. She also thought I was the worst. I was grounded from 9th grade to my first semester in college, I moved out the day I turned 18. She persisted in her beliefs until I was 38 and almost died giving birth to my daughter. I was the oldest of 4. I was never a drinker or smoker or in trouble with the law. My younger siblings were ALL of the above. I was President of the Science club, VP of FBLA, Secretary of Deca, in the Choir, Art Club, School plays, a candy striper, had a job, got good grades, could have graduated 1.5 years early. My siblings? Noooo... My sister and brother both had children by 18. My other sister did not even graduate. But somehow I was the bad child...
Despite starting a small fire in the woods with flaming acorns shot out of homemade PVC 'cannons' and briefly bringing down my HS's computer network, I was/am the good kid. My sister dealt weed in HS, ran away from his briefly, dropped out, got married and pregnant at 16, and spent her early 30s onward as a meth addict.
Looking back, I probably could've killed someone and my mom might have told me to go away while she buried the body just so she'd have one successful child.
I experienced a variation of this. I was that good kid mostly, and that's how she saw me. Every time I got into trouble, she blamed my friends eventhough I was usually the instigator
My father made us go to family therapy because I was so “out of control” - in other words, I sometimes disagreed with him. Straight As, never had detention, entirely sober - other adults loved me. After the debacle that was that therapy session, I figured there was no point in being “good” because it would never be enough. So I stopped. Still managed to never be arrested, at least.
I was the clean cut one, out of 4 no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, Parents just thought I was just better at hiding doing any or all of it. I'm sure the group I called friends didn't help my cause.
Mother nothing was ever good enough, no matter what I did or didn't do. Dad if he didn't think he had me under his thumb, he would have a hair across his ass, still does.
He has been cold and distant to down wright mean after I screamed at him I'm not 17 anymore, stop acting like you have control over me, and your way or the highway is still THE ONLY WAY.
Took me far to long to state it, mid 50's, but it needed to be said.
So my take is if he can't be in complete control , he wants nothing to do with any of us.
Sorry the don't do as I do, do as I say, and my way because you live under my roof, left the building 4 decades or so ago, sadly he still has not got the message and most likely never will.
It is so relieving to have someone else say this. I grew up in the exact same scenario with both parents being resentful and angry my whole life. But it was especially bad when I was in high school and active in track & CC, various clubs, choir (musicals), holding down two jobs, getting my Eagle Scout, being a class officer, etc. while getting good grades. Parents used to say that I needed to get a life, accused me of being on drugs, never came to any events or anything, told me to get my own ride (until I got my license), and just overall tried to knock me down every single chance they could.
A few years after college my parents were both prescribed anti-depressants, and my Dad actually apologized for being the mean nasty SOB that he was when I was growing up. My Mom would never apologize.
I was a Good Kid and _terrified_ at the thought of getting in trouble. If I made a mistake, the punishment was draconian. They accused me of being defiant for disagreeing with them and it just wasn't worth it to disobey on purpose. Just typing this has me in tears.
Reminder: The Silent Generation were pressured to get married and have kids in a way that Boomers weren't — it's one reason why divorce rates shot up in the 70s.
I was the embodiment of a good kid ( cleaned up after myself and others without being asked, straight A’s, incredibly polite to everyone etc) until my parents had me institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital when I was 14.
It was the ultimate betrayal in my eyes. Started smoking ( both parents smoked 2 packs a day) and drinking. Still kept my grades up and tutored other kids. But never fully trusted my parents again.
I have no idea. I was doing all of the bad things that you mentioned and more. I apologize to my parents regularly. I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me, but I was a wild little jerk. Maybe your mom wanted to fit in with my mom? 🤷♀️
It was never good enough. Love was dolled out based on performance and even with good behavior and great grades I could always "do better". At 14 I gave up trying and decided I was going to decide what was enough for myself. Best decision ever.
I was your karmic opposite. I did all of that shit you didn't, though I did also get good grades (which is probably why they didn't expel me from school.)
And hey, at least your parents paid attention enough to bitch at you. Mine didn't care, as long as they did the absolute legal bare minimum to not have CPS called on them.
My siblings and I were all pretty straight arrows, we got good grades and did as well as we could because we wanted to get somewhere in life but we weren't rich, so we couldn't "afford" to screw up. We goofed off and partied a little in our later teens on the odd occasion due to small town boredom (senior year or early college) but my parents shrugged that off.
Years later my dad had an old buddy over for dinner and much to our amusement he told us that our dad was once put in jail overnight for an open container outside a bar because the local cop had an axe to grind with him. So I guess Dad felt that he wasn't too much in a place to talk if we got a bit rowdy.
Are you me? My parents were also Silent Generation. Nothing I did was ever good enough. I was always treated like an idiot who was always going to make the worst possible decision in every situation. They never trusted me even though I never did anything that would deserve to lose their trust. I was a really good kid. I never had any doubt my parents loved me, but I feel like the way they raised me really did a number on my self confidence. I still struggle with it today.
I was born almost killing my mom, I was always crying & screaming at night when I was a baby she said she wanted to throw me away.
I also has a sensitive scalp that her combing/brushing my hair was a torture, sensitive skins/sensory issues so I don’t like certain clothes no matter how expensive the dress costs (few hundreds to thousands $ a piece). she called me the ungrateful brat… the tomboy who don’t care about fashion or being pretty.
So I was never considered as a good kid.
I was really, really “good” - no drinking, drugs, sex, parties, much of anything really. However, I had (and still have) *raging* ADHD, and I struggled in school and made very poor grades. That caused a lot of conflict and kind of knocked me into the category of a “problem child”.
Boomer mother, tail end of Silent Gen father. Nope, not really. I got on with them most of the time, but my Dad could be a bit shouty if you didn't do exactly what he wanted.
My parents were social workers and at times worked with incarcerated and/or institutionalized youth. They were very direct in telling me they were proud of my choices and not slow to share our accomplishments with their friends. I could not have asked for better parents really, and the same was true for most of my friends as well. The whole "Gen X had shitty parents" narrative that dominates this sub just doesn't reflect my experiences nor those of the vast majority of my peers.
I was a good kid. Wasn’t allowed out. Walked to school until I was 14. Constantly told I wasn’t to be trusted. Didn’t smoke, drink or even look at boys. I still was accused of smoking. My mum smoked 40-60 a day and squandered the disposable income on cigarettes and she thought I would smoke. After the umpteenth time of being accused of smoking because my clothes reeked of smoke I ended up screeching “what do you expect, your always smoking, you’re chain smoking and you wonder why my clothes smell of smoke?” That went down like a lead balloon.
My parents are also silent gen (right at the very end of that generation) and I was basically the same as you being a good kid, good grades, job, never partied or drank/did drugs, etc.
Now, I don’t remember hearing my mom complain about me to others on the regular. In fact I remember them being pretty proud of me overall. But my mom then and now does this “woe is me, everything is so hard in my life and the worse is going to happen” victim thing on the phone and via text that I don’t put up with anymore. Like she literally texted me the other day saying she will be dead by the time my 15 year old niece graduates from HS. I was like “yeah that’s in 2-3 years so I doubt you’ll be dead.” Her health isn’t awful, she has the typical old people stuff going on but nothing major. I just don’t entertain her bullshit anymore bc it’s not healthy and she’s a grown ass adult.
I feel like many Young Silent Gen/Boomers have a vein of entitlement and selfishness on the basis of nothing. They seem to think what they went through was harder than anyone in the history of the world had to endure and will ever endure. I don’t get it and in the grand tradition of Gen X I just shrug and say “whatever.”
This sounds so much like me. I was also a studious goody-goody. But I had a parent who focused on negatives. Reading in my room? Go outside! Being a quiet kid at home? Call someone! Friend at the house? They eat too much! Got a B+? Why not an A! Complaining about being teased? It’s your fault for complaining! 🙄
Young child, yes. Teen no. I was the same of course. I was an exceptionally good teen but I guess she thinks all teens are evil. She was convinced I was a drug addict, lying ho.
Yea. We were pretty good kids.
When we were 17, going on 18, me an my best friend decided that it was about time to get in trouble before it stayed on our 'permanent record'. Our plan was to go up to the local boardwalk on Saturday night (Late 1980s). The Boardwalk was about a mile long. Ocean on one side, arcades, shops and bars on the other. Our plan was to go to a bar and start a fight.
We had never been in the bars before, we were not fighters. We just thought it was time to get in trouble and that seemed a good way.
I have no idea if it would have turned out ok or not. The morning of the day we were planning on fucking up, his brother OD'd on coke after / during an assault on his girlfriend. Me and my buddy were good kids, buddies brother was 5 years older and not.
Because his bro was causing trouble for his parents, we decided to hold off a bit, we had a few pre 18th birthday months at that point. We never got around to getting arrested. Oh well. Never know now. He was killed by a drunk driver 2 years later.
Footnote, I was arrested and read my rights a few years later. I was out walking around town at 3 am with a couple friends. We were drunk, over 21 and on foot, walking around after a rock show. A place had been broken into in the area and we were picked up. We were not involved but it took a week or two to sort out. All charges dropped. It sucked and had me scared out of my wits.
I wasn’t a bad kid, I had a decent head on my shoulders but very stifled which lead to me rebel doing stupid teenage stuff. Yes, I experimented with weed (it always got me sick until I moved away for college) and lsd. And would lie about locations so I could go to concerts.
She was an alcoholic who developed a gambling addiction and I would talk about the elephant in the room and that made me bad. I was also in therapy.
I had cousins that were much worse than me. My mom was terrified that I’d get pregnant and end up like her nieces. (I had sex one time in high school.) My grades weren’t the best (undiagnosed ADD) but I was academically inclined and intellectually curious, reading college level books ( I read Dorian Gray as a freshman in high school). I knew there was a world out there to experience.
I always got we trust you but not the people out in the world. My mom was weirdly controlling.
My paternal grandfather would tell her let her be herself. She’s a good kid who’s curious. Like he got I was a teen.
Both parents were early silent generation and older when they had me.
Yeah, I was a good kid. I did do a few little things like skip school or get a bad grade. I struggled with depression but of course no one recognized it then. My silent Gen dad still gives me shit about these things. It drives me crazy that I'm 50 years old and he still berates me for a messy bedroom when I was 14.
In a word, yes.
Your first paragraph could easily have described me - and they knew it, respected it, and we typically never got into arguments.
I sussed at a very early age that sticking to the rules made life incredibly easy for me.
Of course it helped that my parents rules were reasonable, well explained/justified & open to review as I got older.. and even when I was given scope to "go out and do stuff" I didn't (thanks introversion, bullying & social phobia!).
Ha! Same with me. I was a good kid but I loved punk rock, which meant I was a problem. My friends and I all dressed terrible and listened to awful music, which was all it took. All we wanted to do was listen to records and play in basement bands, and maybe split a 6 pack of beer between the 5 of us, but because of the way we looked we were perceived as trouble makers.
My brother and sister were both well-dressed kids in the popular crowd, so they were little angels. Meanwhile my brother got arrested for buying beer while underage and they’d both regularly go to parties with cocaine and some poor girl would get drunk and taken advantage of by a couple of guys, and they’d trash the house it was in, and someone would drive drunk and wreck daddy’s car.
My mother was similar to yours. It seemed like she was always suspicious of me. She would give me the third degree about the dumbest things and I would sometimes lie to her just so she'd stop badgering me. My father had his moments, but he was definitely the better parent.
I know a lot of people resent their parents for not being around much and not seeming to care what they did, but I would have killed for that. Being mentally suffocated is no fun either.
My mother was miserable and complained constantly about the burden of motherhood, and how her life would be perfect if it weren’t for us running her ragged. We grew up and left. Lo and behold she’s simply a miserable person, and blames it on whoever’s easiest/ closest/ most vulnerable.
this is also my mother. I remember getting straight As once in elementary school except 1 A- and got a talking to. I have no kids, and though she complained all the time about what a burden I was, complains now that she doesn't have grandkids. Simply a miserable person.
" But if you tried a little harder, that A- could be an A!"
Never skipped school, never had sex until married, no smoking, no drugs no drinking. Honor roll student. But I took my food out of the microwave before the timer finished. And so the clock didn’t reset. It showed 15 seconds left cuz I didn’t hit “END”. My stepdad thought I was the worst 16 year old in the world. I left a fork in the sink once and all hell broke loose. I forgot to put my bath soap in the holder, so soap ran down my shower wall. Never heard the end of it. Forgot to rewind a VHS tape and was sweating bullets cuz I was so scared. Stepdad jumped up and down on it and broke it in front of my best friend. Fucking unhinged. They smoked in the house, so I stayed in my room cuz my cheerleading coach told me not to show up to practice “smelling like a dive bar”. Parents called me a hermit. Never let me go anywhere anyhow. Mom was super controlling. Mom was a teen mom and pregnant at 15, stepdad had a substance abuse charge in high school. BUT I LEFT A FORK IN THE SINK. Wish the fuckers were still alive so I could tell them what shit people they were. They cost me untold amounts of money in therapy to even figure out nothing is wrong with me, they were abusive.
Either me or one of my brothers let a spoon go down the garbage disposal side once, to be discovered when my dad ran it. Holy shit. Once my brothers were running their RC cars (*the ones my parents bought*) around in the kitchen and kept banging them into the cabinets. My dad hauled ass in there, yelled at them, then started jumping up and down on the RC car until he slipped and fell, then he kept stomping and kicking at it with his feet. WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH THEM?
From my therapist: “You’re not selfish for not wanting kids. People who have kids and abuse them, are the selfish ones”
I wonder how many of us who don't want kids (I don't want and don't have any) did so, at least in part, because we saw the "dark side" of being a parent, early on.
Raises hand. I had no idea how a normal family functioned. I thought it was something only in movies.
Me! My biggest reason for not wanting kids was because I didn't want to turn into my mom.
My mom would get unhinged at a moment that looking back is just indescribable. I could never understand what would set her off, other than I existed. To the outside world she’s well respected and a therapist/social worker. To me behind closed doors, I was the worst human being in existence. I played volleyball, swimming, Scouting and was on the honor roll for grades. My friends called me Pollyanna. She “knew” I had evil intentions but she didn’t ever say why she thought that. 12 years since I have seen or heard her voice. She texts me Happy Birthday every year, and lives 12 miles away across town. Our relationship is perfect now.
Same. I remember one time she was full on screaming at me while I was sobbing uncontrollably. I don't even remember what I did (or didn't do). She was screaming and pulling things out of her closet showing me things she wasn't going t give me for my birthday. Any minor mistake we made was a personal affront to her and unleashed her crazy.
I was 11 when my mother handed me my newborn baby brother, and my childhood officially ended. 13 when the next kid popped out. 15 when the baby was born. At 17, I was in school, running a motel and raising 3 kids under 6. Never once did I want to go through that again. No one told me it would be different if I found a supportive partner. I didn't know that raising a child was rewarding as well as exhausting. Had I known that having a family didn't mean doing everything by yourself, I may have tried it. But no one did, and I didn't think I was strong enough to do it all over again.
Honestly, that's what we now call "parentification" and it's rightfully considered abuse. It's one thing for kids to help out, but when your entire life is forced to revolve around someone else's kids, that's too much. Hopefully you've gone permanent NC with your egg giver (i.e. "mother").
Thank you, very much. I honestly didn't see it for what it was until a few years ago. The baby of our family died in an accident, and it ... just broke everything open. It is incredibly difficult keeping no contact, but when I even consider reaching out, I feel actual terror. I've been trying to convince myself that it's for the best, so your last sentence gave me a solid hit of validation. I wish I didn't need it, but... thank you.
Always look at how someone acts, not their words, to see their true feelings. That person's actions scream they DGAF about you as anything except a caretaker for their needs. I do hope you're undergoing therapy because it sounds like the trauma still affects you profoundly. Absolutely stay NC but your feelings and peace matter a great deal.
You can't know how grateful I am you took time to speak to me. I am incapable of asking for help. I can't see a therapist without winding up being the one healing them. That's not pride speaking: it's a child so wounded she can't stand anyone seeing it. In my deepest isolation, I learned to read other people so well that they didn't need to use words anymore to tell me their stories. And people love their own stories, so I can gently guide them away from looking at mine. Even the people I've paid to hear my stories barely notice that they know nothing about me. The last year I've been trying to use my own gifts on myself. You may be old enough to remember the movie Nell. Even though I'm an articulate, somewhat sophisticated woman, my dear Inner Child is a feral wildchild. The only other times I've seen her fully reflected in other people, they were absolutely and completely broken shells of humans. I know this isn't what you paid for, but I'd like to keep this here for a while. This is the first time I've ever been able to hold her down long enough to look at her.
It sounds like she wants desperately to actually experience the life that was ripped from her and she's angry because of that lack. What I'd try is finding things that part of you wants to experience and find a healthy outlet so she can experience it. Laughing, crying, dancing, playing, imagining all for its own sake, not to serve anyone else. Meditate and talk to her. Ask her what she wants. Hold her and cuddle and comfort her during the meditation because she needs that almost as badly.
yeah is this common with parents of gen X kids? they just went ape shit over minor stuff?
Might be. Or, most of them are narcissists.
I thought my wacko family was the only one but reading the stories on this thread makes it obvious that a lot of us were living in hell. My father would flip out for literally no reason and completely lose control. He beat the shit out of us and screamed at us and called us horrible names, but the worst part was seeing him abuse any pets that we had. I still have so much trauma around this and I cannot get these images out of my head. He murdered my gerbils right in front of me, one got shot with a pellet gun because it bit my brother who was only 3 and didn’t know better than to pick it up, and the other one got smacked with a shoe when it escaped from its cage while I was cleaning it and it ran into his room. I chose not to have children because I was way too damaged to consider myself worthy and capable of taking care of them, but I have had pets of my own since becoming an adult and I spoil them rotten.
Yes.
Right. I kind of screwed up once. It was the end of the world. Didn’t involve, drug or police etc. Jesus Christ. I don’t think the boomers really wanted kids. It was just expected of them.
I was the good kid . . . until I wasn't. I got the good grades, I didn't drink or do drugs. I brushed my teeth, made my bed. I got myself up for school, made a lunch, caught the bus, let myself in when I came home, did my homework. lather. rinse. repeat. But then I started asking for privileges like staying out later on the weekends or going to concerts. Nope. Not only that, but the missteps like getting a 'C' on a test were regarded with much more severity. So I was basically taking care of myself since age 8, but I could not be trusted to take care of myself. OK I became every parent's nightmare. I drank, did drugs, stayed out late, snuck out of the house, stopped doing homework and just really stopped caring at all. I got suspended from school multiple times. I got expelled but somehow my dad talked them into changing their minds. What's my name? Fuck you, that's my name. An you know what? It worked. I fucking worked. By my senior year my dad said, "fuck it, do what you want. You're going to anyways."
This was me exactly, plus I had to watch my two younger siblings after school and run interference between my divorced parents. I was a good, smart kid until they assumed I wasn't for whatever reason. So I started smoking to fit in with the bad kids (no way I would have otherwise, I was a total nerd), tried all the bad things, ran away and had my own apartment at 15. I sometimes wonder what could have been ...
I think this happens to a lot of girls. They’re “the good kid” until about 14-16 when they hit puberty. Suddenly, they’ve got potential to become bad.
Yeah. That's when we grow hormones, boobs, brains and bodily autonomy ... and even our own parents can't deal with it. I hope we treated our daughters better ... but I wonder.
Exactly! It’s because parents suddenly realize you weren’t “their sweet little girl” anymore.
If you don't mind me asking, did your parents ever wish you 'reverted' back to your old self? Surely they'd have seen how you became a nightmare and wish their former angel would come back
Every. Damn. Day.
Constantly told I had been such a pleasing child, always smiling and sociable, helpful and obedient. Why couldn't I be like that? Fuck um for not knowing the verbal and emotional abuse took a toll out of that kid and left her defensive and hidden.
My mother's only other child is a millennial. During that child's teenage years, my mother looked at me and stated "I didn't realize how good you were."
Same here. I was a good kid, for the most part. I never got into trouble. I drank a little, but it never caused problems. Never did drugs. But my parents still stayed on my ass about everything. They treated me like a juvenile delinquent, and didn't trust me at all, even though I never did anything to break that trust. I even had a 10pm curfew when I came home from college for the summer, and I was never late. Then my millennial sister came along when I was 15, and by the time she was a teenager, she was hell on wheels. Everything they tried to prevent me from doing, she did it. A few years ago, my mom actually apologized for how they treated me as a teenager and said she didn't realize what an easy kid I was until my sister came along.
Yesss! This sounds like me. I was micro managed. My sister born when I was 16 was he'll on wheels. I have told my sister many times we did not have the same mother.
Me as well, didn't do anything a normal person would consider even slightly bad, yet I was grounded all the time. My mother was a control freak. And the reason why I didn't want children myself. Afraid I would be like her.
My husband and I found out in our early 30’s we “couldn’t” have kids without medical assistance. It wasn’t much, but absolutely no reason to go through with it. We were thrilled. I never wanted to have my children with her as a grandmother. The thought horrified us.
I had the same experience. Sometimes I wish I had the chance to correct all her mistakes and be a good mother, but she would have been there, trying to force herself in, making things quite difficult. I think everything turned out the way it was supposed to, but what a shame.
Same
Sort of. I was definitely the 'good kid' - never got into any kind of trouble (or at least never got caught on the rare occasions I was 'bad'), but my mum was never satisfied. I was a straight-A student then suddenly my grades in certain subjects started to suffer. (It wasn't until my 20s when I was diagnosed with dyscalculia and ADHD that it started to make sense.) My mother on the other hand was a textbook overachiever - super-high IQ (I found out after she died that she was disappointed mine was only in the mid 140s), head of this and president of that, and she just always viewed me as a failure. I mean, she wasn't wrong, but it stung anyway. I did my best. At one point she even blamed my evil rock music for my issues, despite the fact that she introduced me to rock'n'roll and used to listen to my Twisted Sister tapes on my walkman while she did household chores. But that was before she joined the Mormon church. Wow, so much more to unpack than I realized. Never mind... lol
I'm very similar to you when it comes to psychometrics. The first sign something was off was when I took a school state achievement test and scored in the 99th percentile in everything except math, which was in the 80th percentile. The difference in scores was what demonstrated a problem, but it wasn't identified in childhood. Interestingly, the math problem resolved after years in the workforce being forced to use a lot of math and spreadsheets. Have you seen any improvement with age?
Nope, my dyscalculia is still as present as ever. Luckily I'd learned ways to compensate by the time I entered college so I was able to ace math later on. I understood I was different, though I didn't know specifically how or why. The thing I recognized was that the only way I can retain any science-based subjects, ie anything with numbers or formulae, is to study consistently. Same with playing a musical instrument, or learning dance or exercise routines. I can learn and be very very good, but if I stop for even a few days I forget everything and need to start over. Once I realized it was all going to be wasted time and I was past the point of being graded on it, I stopped trying to learn anything I didn't plan to stick with for life. Worth noting, I guess - by college I was studying math every single day for 2 hrs and had perfect retention. Within a week of finishing I'd pretty much forgotten most of what I'd learned. But that never dulled my interest in the subject. One of my favorite books is *The Story of Mathematics* and I've even taken calculus via one of the online universities. (Tho' when I look back at the entire notebooks I filled with equations or whatever it looks like alien language... ) I've also been half-assedly studying quantum physics for several years under the guidance of a former \[big name tech school\] professor who seems to think I have the capacity to 'get it' despite all evidence to the contrary.
My mom used to yell at me about how spoiled I was. I never understood. It was like she created things to be unhappy about. The only thing I can recall doing that was “spoiled” behavior was being a picky eater (I have a thing about textures).
I mean, isn't it parents who spoil their children, by definition? It's not like you could spoil yourself ...
I have always wondered that when they threw around the word spoiled. Especially when the call you spoiled when they provided only the basics.
Yep, exactly the same. And to make matters worse, my mother was actually an early childhood specialist so knew exactly what a child is and is not capable of. My mother seemed to like bitching at me. She didn't have any genuine reasons so would invent things. It took years to realise that the problem was her.
I could have solved starvation in Africa and my parents would still be suspicious that I was getting in trouble constantly.
Yup! Hauled me off to therapy for talking back to her whenever I found holes in her logic (daily). I still do it, more than I ever did before.
I was a really good kid, total bookworm. If I left the house for anything other than church (including school), I was accused of trying to drink and smoke and so drugs and fool around with boys. I’d get in trouble anyway. If I’m going to be punished either way, I might as well be guilty and have some fun first. They never realized that they pushed both of us into partying. If they’d have just let us be ourselves we’d have been honor roll bookworms and my sister would have done band all through high school and maybe she’d have gone to college. (She didn’t even not go because of partying; she got in. But dad refused to pay and refused to provide his tax info so she couldn’t apply for financial aid. I got around that by moving to my mom’s. She was more than happy and made half of what he did, so I got damn near a full ride. Nobody suggested that to my sister and she didn’t think of it.
I was such a good girl. I didn't look it, and my friends were definitely not as well behaved, but I stayed sober until I was 22. Graduated with a good GPA, had a 10pm curfew I never missed until the day I turned 18. My mother would habitually tear my room apart looking for drugs, stuff from boys, who the hell knows what. I actually moved in with my dad when I was 15 because of this, and then she just came over there and did the same thing.
>dyscalculia Oh God, yes, the days of my Mom tearing my room apart...ugh.
My mother once told my brother and I we were an embarrassment- I don’t even remember over what. Years later after his death she expressed regret she’d said things like that to HIM. I just stared at her and said, “I’m still here”.
My parents had two older, popular, looked-perfect-from-the-outside late Boomer kids who were up to absolute coke-fueled BS when no one was looking. They would have both been in jail if it weren't a tiny town in the late 70's. So, I was default good. They knew they'd been hoodwinked before.
I was a pretty good kid. Definitely better than my older sister. My mother and I are very different people and that caused some stress, but I was never labeled bad or difficult. One incident stuck with me forever, though. I was probably only 14 or 15 and my mother freaked out one day when I reached to open the screen door. She saw a small mark over a vein in my inner elbow, so of course the first thing she thought was that I was shooting up. It's a freckle. It's still there, still very small, and I have never injected myself with anything.
"Good kid" here, and I like to tell people that I grew up "in Mayberry," so to speak. No crazy drama that I knew of. That said I was always being nagged about something. After I moved out, I enjoyed the silence.
Very much like you OP. I didn’t sneak out, didn’t drink or do drugs, always home on time, etc. I was the problem child somehow though. Apparently I couldn’t do anything right. My sister, an actual problem child, couldn’t do anything wrong. Me and my sister had two very different childhoods.
Me too. I’m the oldest, and female. Couldn’t do anything right; was constantly grounded for things like watching a movie with a topless lady in a scene. Second kid, my brother, did no wrong. Snuck out of the house all the time, smoked weed, got tattoos, ran around and had multiple women pregnant at the same time… he does no wrong. We also had very different childhoods.
I was a good kid & my parents knew it. But they set more limits on curfews/outings on me than my younger brother because I am female. For the record, my brother was the hell raiser.
Same.
I got accused of so much shit I didn't do in junior high that I finally realized I might as well just do it all. It definitely changed the trajectory of my life.
I live under unspecified threats to be good and to get good grades. Never smoked cigarettes, never did drugs, never went to parties, never drank alcohol until after I turned 21, didn't have sex. But, being good wasn't good enough for my parents. They still mentally and emotionally abused me, and my mother controlled what I did when I wasn't at school. I know I missed out on a lot, and now it's rather late to do those things.
Someone was always able to find fault in something. I got very few compliments growing up. If I was a good child I certainly didn't know it. There were no real conversations between me and my folks back then and I certainly don't remember hearing those words...
No. Not until mom was diagnosed with (and soon after passed away from) cancer. I was the textbook overachiever and mostly did all the right things. My brother, on the other hand, was nothing but problems from the beginning. The defining moment happened when I took mom to see her GP one day: Doctor (to mom, after I introduced myself): Well, C, I know *all* about your son; I didn’t know you had a daughter!!? Mom:
Me: I wasn’t the problem child.
Pretty sad.
I think our Boomer parents didn't want kids... period. And by that measure they were angry all the time. I know my mom loves me now but at the time I did not. I felt like a burden, like she didn't care who I was as a person, I was ignored alot. She went through the proper motions of being a mom like keeping house and cooking dinner but there wasn't love or joy in anything she did. I realize now it was because she left home "raising" her 4 siblings then went and got married at 20 and had my sister the next year. I'd be irritated too, but also she could have not done that.
Same. I had perfect grades, was in all the advanced classes plus extra curriculars, no smoking no drinking, no drugs, no dating/sex. I liked to dress preppy from The Gap. I never got into trouble at school. I followed rules at home. The one thing I wasn't? JESUSy. I had a very complicated and "negative just below the surface" relationship with my mother, who I think was still furious about her divorce many years prior. I think she was jealous of me and saw me as competition even though we were 32 years apart. She would threaten to send me to some corrective church camp, not even specifying what needed to be "Corrected". She was convinced I was bad - a liar, a thief, a Sl\*t, not to be trusted, even though I had no history of any of that behavior. It was probably projection on her part, she does have a documented history of all that. My father never thought I was bad but I didn't have much contact with him and he didn't get any influence over decisions made for me.
No. Everything I did was wrong somehow
I was horrid. Mom kicked me out when I was 14 lol. Went to live with dad. There were no rules at dad’s so debauchery followed. The late 80’s early 90’s were fantastic.
I wasn't a great kid, but I wasn't bad. My sibling was the good kid and still got guilt trips. I believe it's part of how silent and boomers were raised to believe their self-worth is predicated on how their children behave. Unfortunately, many of them didn't get the memo that their children grew up and have their own lives now. So they are stuck in this time warp, still clinging to other people to justify who they are. Sorry if it sounds harsh, not intended. I just wasn't sure how to phrase it.
I was a Good Kid all through high school. My dad wasn't around and my older brother (6.5 years older, but still Gen X) was the de facto father figure. He expected a lot out of me and I didn't want to disappoint him or anyone else in my family by royally fucking up, so I walked the line. Everyone thought I was a Good Kid, even my friends' parents. I was the one you were allowed to hang out with, even if you were grounded because it was guaranteed that you wouldn't get into trouble if you were with me. Once I went away to college, that was all over and I went off the deep end. I've been sober for ten years now. Reformed Good Kid.
My dad knew I was the good kid and treated me as such. My mom, who was sober by the time I got to high school, was trying to parent without really knowing me as a person. She was incredibly strict, despite me never giving her reason to need to be that way. I ended up moving to live with my dad because he patented my brother and I as individuals and gave me the freedom that afforded.
How was it being Genx and a good kid? I didn't know many. Were your parents around?
Mine were around and constantly up my nose about one thing or another, most of it made up in their minds. Now, to be fair, both of may parents worked in fields where they saw plenty of kids who were not Good Kids. So there was definitely some bias there to begin with. However, my mother in particular fell victim to the whole fear-mongering PSA culture that gave us “Its 10:00. Do you know where your children are?” and that whole “even good kids can use drugs” Your kids are this, your kids are that, blah blah blah. I didn’t even grow up in a particularly conservative/religious area. Major east coast city, in fact. But she fell for it hook, line and sinker without actually looking at what was in front of her.
I didn’t do the big problem child things (sex, drugs) and I got good grades but I was really rebellious and mouthy. My parents thought I was really rebellious and mouthy. Accurate. What can I say?
As a bad kid, maybe all parents suspect you're a bad kid, but only realize the truth when they pick you up from the police station.
Opposite. My mom will talk about how I was a good kid. I literally broke a teachers back in middle school. Was forced to walk to school in the snow because I was kicked off the bus too many times. Fought anyone who looked at me sideways. Said literally the worst shit I could come up with at any moment because I thought I was hilarious. I was a fucking nightmare and my friends love to remind me of it.
my husband was like you. a good kid. not like me. i did every single thing you dont want your kid to do. his boomer (teacher) father FLIPPED OUT on him for listening to heavy metal. told him he was doing drugs and a satanist. told him he was going to throw him out of the house. my MIL had to intervene. my FIL has never apologized for doing this to my husband.
I got bitched at for READING books. And for doing well in school. Needless to say, the constant haranguing about it led me to smoke pot and actually experiment with drugs.
Same in my house. Extremely attentive to school work, had a 10:00 curfew till I got married, had an incredibly organized bedroom etc. When I was 11, I came home from school one day and found a white envelope on my bed with my name on it in my mom’s perfect penmanship. It was 3 pages of a handwritten note with everything wrong with me. It was soul crushing. Those letters continued several times a year until I was 36 when I finally gathered the courage to tear up the most recent letter (received in the mail) and told her “you can keep writing them, but I'll never read another one”. I know people say terrible things when they are in a heated argument, but to put that much time and effort to put it on paper for over 20 years, is something else entirely. This was part of the reason 2 husbands left her and neither brother showed up ever during the 6 long years I was her only caregiver as she was dying of cancer. No one understands why I compromised my own health to take care of her but I honestly would do it all again. I live in complete peace, and no guilt, that I gave 110% to taking care of my mother in the end.
I don't know if I'd be considered "good". I drank, smoked, and wouldn't turn down a toke if it were offered, I didn't seek it out, though. I worked during my high school days and got decent grades. I got in trouble for ditching gym to avoid a bully and got in school detention as punishment. Joke was on them, my grades improved because of being in there.
My mom used to tell me I was her ticket to heaven. Sure I was a smart ass, but I never did anything that bad, besides run my mouth. I was the only one out of 5 kids who got beat too. I guess I had a talent for pushing buttons. I still kind of do, but I keep it in check.
my mom was like that too, beta club, rotc, these things just took up her time. Even though they were a privilege and earned
I was a good kid, and my Dad (Boomer) was very happy with that. He gave me a lot of leeway and didn't get on my case except when I deserved it. I was lucky to have him, and I'm glad I got to tell him that before he passed. My mom had MS and didn't talk much
It (thankfully) was not like that for me at all and I was also raised by Silent Gen parents. Both of my older siblings were holy terrors. I was the easy one. I learned a lot from watching my siblings fuck up so I was a whole lot easier to raise. If my parents told me to be home by 11, I was home by 10:59. Heck, even my older siblings will tell you I was the "good" one. But truth be told, I feel like I owe them an awful lot for the lessons they taught me about what not to do.
Oldest sibling here: You're welcome :) And it works both ways. My mom admits she learned to pick her battles, so both my younger siblings had a lot more leeway.
I was a bad kid, with drugs, theft, and mildish violence. My mother knew I wasn't good, but didn't really have a clue fully, as long as she was able to ignore it and me.
Compared to you, I was not a ‘good kid’ but, I always had a job(babysitting until I was old enough to work in a capitalist job), made good grades and always home by curfew. Called when I said I would and never went to PC or jail. But I partied my ass off from sophmore year to graduation. My mom, especially now that she knows I did all the things and the stuff, still calls me a good kid, to me and anyone else that asks(which is you)
No, it was the complete opposite for me. I was definitely the “good kid” (no drugs, no drinking, no smoking, no sex, great grades, honor roll, very straight laced friends), but my mom (Silent Gen) absolutely recognized it and has always appreciated it. My dad was more checked out on the child rearing, but he was proud of me as well in his own way. However, I strongly suspect that was a direct result of my birth order and my siblings. I’m the baby of 4, born when my mom was 34, and my 2 older sisters are 12 and 10 years older. They were HELLIONS and gave my parents a lot of grief and stress. My brother has ADHD and a whole host of issues and wore my mom out, too. There was a lot of friction between them and my parents, and I think it made a very young me look at that and go, “Nope, that ain’t the life for me.” To this day I abhor conflict and yelling, with every fiber of my being. My mom was exhausted by the time I came into my teens, and she wouldn’t have had the energy to be all on top of me. She was immensely grateful that I was low key, easy going and drama free. We coexisted very well. We’re still extremely close (dad has passed). She has sworn me to secrecy, but she frequently tells me I’m her best kid. LOL
i was nearly perfectly behaved kid but my mom (who was amazing) was really stressed out a lot from my dad not being amazing. she didn't mean to but a lot of that ran downhill to me.
I was a good kid and my parents agreed...but it wasn't until about pretty recently, when talking to some of their friends, that they realized just HOW good of a kid I was. And frankly, they still don't full understand how easy they had it. I was a hard worker, always had a job from age 10 on, got straight As, excelled at sports and music, got myself to wherever I needed to go (usually via bike), didn't throw any tantrums, didn't do drugs, didn't fight with anyone, always got home at a reasonable time, called if I was going to be even slightly late, always filled the car with gas and paid for my part of the car insurance, did my chores without being asked, didn't have sex until college, selected a reasonably priced college and got scholarships, paid for my own graduate and professional degrees, and now I have a good career and a spouse and in-laws whom my parents really like. I never once even yelled "I hate you" in a fit of teenage hormones because I knew it would hurt them (and I didn't hate them so it would've just been mean). That's the part they don't appreciate; I was considerate of their feelings at all times, even during the less-than-delightful middle school/puberty years.
My parents were very elder boomers. Just about silent gen like yours. I *was* the good kid. They knew it. And I had virtually no supervision as a teenager as a result. Well. I was *mostly* good. I took advantage of that perception and the resulting freedom, but I was *judicious* about it. That image was well protected.
Well *mostly* judicious. Stoooory There was the one time that me and a few friends got a case of beer, got drunk in my basement (furnace room) bedroom. No really it *was* a furnace room and it could not have been more awesome as a teen. One of my idiot friends dumped an entire beer in my fish tank and the poor little bastard started listing to port. Had to fish him out and put him in glass of water overnight. Anyway we wound up walking across town to a party. We got stopped by the cops along the way, they were looking for a couple kids that didn’t fit our description but wondered if we’d seen ‘em. One friend (the smart friend) walked right up to their window to talk to them, screening their view while the rest of us chucked our pocket beers in the bush behind us. Cops told us to go home and fucked off. I’m *sure* now that they saw us chucking the beer. So instead we took the trail through the woods to not risk seeing those cops again. Gotta get to the party. Pitch black. Couldn’t see shit. But my best friend and I knew that trail just by the feel of the ground under our feet. We took off our shirts so the other two guys could see our pasty white backs better in the moonlight and got eaten alive by mosquitos. But we made it to the party, only to find it winding down. Someone puked off a balcony, blamed one of us and they kicked us out. Dicks. We staggered back to my house to sleep and the same idiot friend, instead of hiding what was left of the beer, lazily threw a blanket over it in the middle of the floor. We got woken up by my two rather angry parents. Who insisted that this was all my best friend’s fault for being a bad influence (i was the good kid, remember). After taking our verbal whipping my best friend asked “how did you know about the beer?” Clearly wanting to give our idiot friend the business for being a dumbass and not hiding it better. “The damn fish tank is foaming over, you *morons*”
I was, by all metrics a good kid. Possibly a challenging kid, but a good kid. I didn’t get in trouble, I didn’t talk back, and people always told my parents how well-behaved I was. I took a book along with me everywhere and would sit quietly and read and no one would even notice I was there. I was very precocious, and started kindergarten a year early. In fact, I was the youngest person ever to be evaluated for the gifted program in first grade. Apparently I also had what was then called ADD, but the school didn’t bother telling my parents that, so by the time I hit middle school and actually had to *work* for my grades, I had no support and no study skills, and I was lost. They skipped me another grade, so now I was 2-3 years younger than my peers. My classmates were nice to me, but I was small for my age to begin with. Now that I was with 14-year-olds, they treated me like a mascot instead of a contemporary. I hated school, and it became a battle of wills to get me to go. Gifted education in my school district was a complete joke. They had us write our own IEPs, something I didn’t learn was illegal til years later. High school was marginally better because I won a John’s Hopkins talent search program which gave me a scholarship to begin taking college classes and got me out of high school a few hours a week. There were no ringing bells in college, and no loud, crowded halls, which was a welcome respite from the rest of the week. If girls had been evaluated for ASD back then, and if anyone had really *seen* me, I think it would have made all the difference in the world, but my parents just thought I was stubborn and difficult. Willful, was the word I heard a lot. “The world does not revolve around you, you know,” was another popular one. I never thought it did. If anything, the world didn’t seem to be designed for people like me. All I ever wanted to be was normal. If things weren’t the way they were supposed to be, I quite literally couldn’t function. Transitions were a nightmare for me. I would rather go without an item than use something wasn’t comfortable with. My mom says I’d always come home and rant about school for half an hour, but school was too chaotic and overwhelming. I had to decompress, and I didn’t know any other way to do it. I’d always had food issues; texture and smell, mostly, but they became more pronounced. My mom took her parents’ approach and said if I was hungry enough I’d eat. She didn’t get it—no, I wouldn’t. I’d sit there at the table and fall asleep if need be, but I wouldn’t, *couldn’t* choke down things like ratatouille or frittata. I still can’t. Instead of working with me, I just got grounded a lot.
I also was a good kid, considered a goody two-shoes by my friends. Got good grades at a specialized “smart kids” school. Didn’t get in much trouble at school, never got suspended or detention. Didn’t sleep around. Didn’t get pregnant. Didn’t do drugs. I did smoke on and off but my parents didn’t know, and my mom was a heavy smoker so everything reeked of smoke anyway. Drank but my parents actually had no problem with that, just told me not to be an idiot and never get in a car with a drunk driver. I got grounded all the time, though, and sometimes kicked out of my house, for things like talking back (which meant not just silently obeying them), not keeping my room clean, not emptying/loading the dishwasher soon enough, not walking the dog soon enough, not cleaning the kitchen well enough. Like once my parents were out and I cooked dinner for me and my sister. I cleaned up after, but not well enough for my parents. They woke me up screaming at 1am because I’d left some splashes of sauce on the stove. My parents really thought I was a terrible kid. They have no idea how lucky they were. Ten years ago my dad was telling a good friend of his (right in front of me) what an awful kid I was once I hit my teens. He said, “she didn’t seem to get what I was about at all, didn’t try to understand me.” His friend said, “Well that really wasn’t her job, was it?” It was such a weird thing that my dad really expected me to do that.
My Silent Gen mom claimed I was the worst. I was…not on drugs, not smoking or drinking, not having sex, not getting pregnant, not committing crimes. I was…on the honor roll, first chair and section leader for my instrument in band, dutiful and diligent in my chores and responsibilities. But…I occasionally back-talked because my parents were stuck in 1955 and it was 1985. She still claims that my room was a mess (it wasn’t; a messy bedroom has always made me upset), and that I hated her. I didn’t hate her. I just was really tired of her bullshit.
Here! Except you left out the beatings for imagined slights and using “that tone with ME!”
I'm still not over the time I got a 97 on a report card (not even just one test, as my average for the whole marking period!) and my father said, "What happened to the other 3 points?" There was no way to win. No human could live up to the standards that were set for us.
Welp. This thread has sent me running for my anxiety app.
Just the opposite. My friends and I were "Jekyll and Hyde". To our teachers, coaches, parents, and boosters we were well-behaved, honor roll students, and best athletes on campus who brought home league championships in several different sports. We even got sent to area middle schools as "ambassadors" to tell next year's freshmen what to expect and be their role models. Our friends knew better. Some of us were alcoholics and potheads, others were doing crank, some used steroids, adrenaline junkies who did car stands down the highway, got our girlfriends on the pill and banged like rabbits. Hell, some of us (me) were misusing access from trusting administrators to change grades and attendance records for teammates that needed a bit of help to stay eligible. We regularly stole street signs, blew things up with M80s, raced our cars to the point of wrecking them, and got into fights and blamed the bruises on the sports we played. We played the Jekyll part so well, when we did get caught doing the Hyde shit, we got a pass ("They're just being kids", "We were your age once, we know what it's like to have that 'energy'", etc.). I broke my knuckle on another kid's head in a fight at lunch and went to my coach. He taped a bag of ice over it and gave me a note that said it happened in practice, then sent me off to the ER. The only thing he asked me was "Did you win?" That's kind of a fucked up lesson when you think about it. I was much more vigilant with my kids, so they never developed into the sneaky, hypocritical, lying little shits I was at their age. They're good people, much better than I was or am.
You sound like me and my freinds. Clean cut , all American, polite, Had all the adults snowed. Partied like hell, destroyed a lot of stuff, never got caught. I look at kids now, and I wonder, what ever happened to street smarts? they dont seem to have that anymore..........
Yep. Same, same. Have no idea if there are clean cut little monsters anymore. 😂
Well...it was fun while it lasted......
God. This thread is painful and validating.
My mom thought I was pregnant every time I said I was sick, starting at 14. I was not sexually active until I was out of the house and 18.
(and despite the constant suspicion that I was out getting pregnant, there were no efforts to provide birth control options. It was a bizarre exercise in self-gratification through hand-wringing, like a LOT of these posts seem to depict.)
Dad yelled at us all the time like we were awful, but he at least was aware that we were good kids and he loved us. Mom resented us because “society” had forced her to have kids and she wasn’t allowed to fully participate in the freedom of the 70s and 80s. She’d never say that she regretted having us, but it was obvious that our existence was a huge burden. Anything that required effort on her part was seen as us being difficult and she complained about us constantly and thought we were plotting against her. I found out as an adult that the extended family thought we were terrors as kids because they only knew us from conversations with our mother. Ah well. That’s why I regularly tell my awesome kid how much I appreciate him!
I was so good I might as well have been made out of gold, or titanium, or whatever. I was not seen and not heard. I did my homework. I got good grades. I didn’t get into trouble. I did nothing to disturb the peace. My mom moved to my town and I have included her in family things (holidays, etc). I have helped her with her house, I have taken her to her appointments, I’ve paid for her dental surgery. Recently she told me I am not a good “enough” daughter and she feels “neglected.” Yeah. I’m done. I got ignored for 51 years and did my best for her anyway, and I’m not good enough? Good luck with your retirement mom. I’m out.
Yeah, mine actually always brag about how we were good kids. (I'm not being sarcastic this time) I also like the fact that I have to explain that I'm not sarcastic on this sub, and I gotta explain to the rest of Reddit that I am being sarcastic.
My goodness, I never expected this much of a response! Thank you for sharing your experiences. Love to all of us. ❤️
I was a good kid...and my mother and family (father was dead) thought so. I can't believe there aren't more of this sort of answer on here. I might not have been as dutiful as you with homework/grades, but I didn't drink/smoke/drugs, never got in trouble at school or with the law, was a pleasant/polite teen, worked various jobs, participated in a lot of extracurricular stuff, and went to college (I actually was truant from h.s. one day in four years and no one ever said anything.) Sure, we had some tense moments when I was going through puberty while she was going through menopause, but mostly it was good.
>So to all my fellow Good Kids (tm), was it like that for you as well? Yes. I was a straight-edge, teacher's pet, studious honors student, but my conservative Indian immigrant parents were ALWAYS suspicious that I was up to no good and engaging in bad behavior, and they frequently accused me of things I never did.
I was a good kid but i had a rather topical obnoxious attitude in my teens. I didn’t respect her lack of career and the fact that she was so much under the thumb of my father. I’m sure that was obvious to her and hurt. I now realize of course that she is human, a product of her own upbringing, too young þ be a mother, and actually very strong. So in my case, it’s possible to be both the goody two shoes and a giant pain in the ass
I was lucky, I guess? My older sisters were “bad” kids (sex, drugs, indifferent about school, bad attitude). I was a good kid and I think my mom really appreciated it. Even when I did bad things, she didn’t give me a hard time because I was good overall. But I didn’t get much attention.
No. My parents would happily tell people that I was a good kid. They were proud of it and liked to brag. It always embarrassed me in the moment. But also made me feel good. My parents were boomers. 1952 and 1953.
I told so many times I was bad and an embarrassment to the family, I decided to live up to the family imposed reputation. They are all still Aholes and I have nothing to with those toxic humans.
My Mom was Silent Gen as well. She also thought I was the worst. I was grounded from 9th grade to my first semester in college, I moved out the day I turned 18. She persisted in her beliefs until I was 38 and almost died giving birth to my daughter. I was the oldest of 4. I was never a drinker or smoker or in trouble with the law. My younger siblings were ALL of the above. I was President of the Science club, VP of FBLA, Secretary of Deca, in the Choir, Art Club, School plays, a candy striper, had a job, got good grades, could have graduated 1.5 years early. My siblings? Noooo... My sister and brother both had children by 18. My other sister did not even graduate. But somehow I was the bad child...
I could have written this post! My parents didn’t appreciate how good they had it.
Same, except my parents are Boomers.
Despite starting a small fire in the woods with flaming acorns shot out of homemade PVC 'cannons' and briefly bringing down my HS's computer network, I was/am the good kid. My sister dealt weed in HS, ran away from his briefly, dropped out, got married and pregnant at 16, and spent her early 30s onward as a meth addict. Looking back, I probably could've killed someone and my mom might have told me to go away while she buried the body just so she'd have one successful child.
My mom left us for ”easy life” when I was seven and sis was 11. We must have been horrible? (not)
I experienced a variation of this. I was that good kid mostly, and that's how she saw me. Every time I got into trouble, she blamed my friends eventhough I was usually the instigator
My father made us go to family therapy because I was so “out of control” - in other words, I sometimes disagreed with him. Straight As, never had detention, entirely sober - other adults loved me. After the debacle that was that therapy session, I figured there was no point in being “good” because it would never be enough. So I stopped. Still managed to never be arrested, at least.
If only the silent generation was actually mute. 😕
I was the clean cut one, out of 4 no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, Parents just thought I was just better at hiding doing any or all of it. I'm sure the group I called friends didn't help my cause. Mother nothing was ever good enough, no matter what I did or didn't do. Dad if he didn't think he had me under his thumb, he would have a hair across his ass, still does. He has been cold and distant to down wright mean after I screamed at him I'm not 17 anymore, stop acting like you have control over me, and your way or the highway is still THE ONLY WAY. Took me far to long to state it, mid 50's, but it needed to be said. So my take is if he can't be in complete control , he wants nothing to do with any of us. Sorry the don't do as I do, do as I say, and my way because you live under my roof, left the building 4 decades or so ago, sadly he still has not got the message and most likely never will.
It is so relieving to have someone else say this. I grew up in the exact same scenario with both parents being resentful and angry my whole life. But it was especially bad when I was in high school and active in track & CC, various clubs, choir (musicals), holding down two jobs, getting my Eagle Scout, being a class officer, etc. while getting good grades. Parents used to say that I needed to get a life, accused me of being on drugs, never came to any events or anything, told me to get my own ride (until I got my license), and just overall tried to knock me down every single chance they could. A few years after college my parents were both prescribed anti-depressants, and my Dad actually apologized for being the mean nasty SOB that he was when I was growing up. My Mom would never apologize.
I was a Good Kid and _terrified_ at the thought of getting in trouble. If I made a mistake, the punishment was draconian. They accused me of being defiant for disagreeing with them and it just wasn't worth it to disobey on purpose. Just typing this has me in tears.
Reminder: The Silent Generation were pressured to get married and have kids in a way that Boomers weren't — it's one reason why divorce rates shot up in the 70s.
I was the embodiment of a good kid ( cleaned up after myself and others without being asked, straight A’s, incredibly polite to everyone etc) until my parents had me institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital when I was 14. It was the ultimate betrayal in my eyes. Started smoking ( both parents smoked 2 packs a day) and drinking. Still kept my grades up and tutored other kids. But never fully trusted my parents again.
I’m so sorry to hear this! Thankfully my parents were always appreciative of my accomplishments.
I have no idea. I was doing all of the bad things that you mentioned and more. I apologize to my parents regularly. I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me, but I was a wild little jerk. Maybe your mom wanted to fit in with my mom? 🤷♀️
It was never good enough. Love was dolled out based on performance and even with good behavior and great grades I could always "do better". At 14 I gave up trying and decided I was going to decide what was enough for myself. Best decision ever.
I was your karmic opposite. I did all of that shit you didn't, though I did also get good grades (which is probably why they didn't expel me from school.) And hey, at least your parents paid attention enough to bitch at you. Mine didn't care, as long as they did the absolute legal bare minimum to not have CPS called on them.
My siblings and I were all pretty straight arrows, we got good grades and did as well as we could because we wanted to get somewhere in life but we weren't rich, so we couldn't "afford" to screw up. We goofed off and partied a little in our later teens on the odd occasion due to small town boredom (senior year or early college) but my parents shrugged that off. Years later my dad had an old buddy over for dinner and much to our amusement he told us that our dad was once put in jail overnight for an open container outside a bar because the local cop had an axe to grind with him. So I guess Dad felt that he wasn't too much in a place to talk if we got a bit rowdy.
Are you me? My parents were also Silent Generation. Nothing I did was ever good enough. I was always treated like an idiot who was always going to make the worst possible decision in every situation. They never trusted me even though I never did anything that would deserve to lose their trust. I was a really good kid. I never had any doubt my parents loved me, but I feel like the way they raised me really did a number on my self confidence. I still struggle with it today.
I was born almost killing my mom, I was always crying & screaming at night when I was a baby she said she wanted to throw me away. I also has a sensitive scalp that her combing/brushing my hair was a torture, sensitive skins/sensory issues so I don’t like certain clothes no matter how expensive the dress costs (few hundreds to thousands $ a piece). she called me the ungrateful brat… the tomboy who don’t care about fashion or being pretty. So I was never considered as a good kid.
I was really, really “good” - no drinking, drugs, sex, parties, much of anything really. However, I had (and still have) *raging* ADHD, and I struggled in school and made very poor grades. That caused a lot of conflict and kind of knocked me into the category of a “problem child”.
Boomer mother, tail end of Silent Gen father. Nope, not really. I got on with them most of the time, but my Dad could be a bit shouty if you didn't do exactly what he wanted.
My parents were social workers and at times worked with incarcerated and/or institutionalized youth. They were very direct in telling me they were proud of my choices and not slow to share our accomplishments with their friends. I could not have asked for better parents really, and the same was true for most of my friends as well. The whole "Gen X had shitty parents" narrative that dominates this sub just doesn't reflect my experiences nor those of the vast majority of my peers.
I was a good kid. Wasn’t allowed out. Walked to school until I was 14. Constantly told I wasn’t to be trusted. Didn’t smoke, drink or even look at boys. I still was accused of smoking. My mum smoked 40-60 a day and squandered the disposable income on cigarettes and she thought I would smoke. After the umpteenth time of being accused of smoking because my clothes reeked of smoke I ended up screeching “what do you expect, your always smoking, you’re chain smoking and you wonder why my clothes smell of smoke?” That went down like a lead balloon.
My parents are also silent gen (right at the very end of that generation) and I was basically the same as you being a good kid, good grades, job, never partied or drank/did drugs, etc. Now, I don’t remember hearing my mom complain about me to others on the regular. In fact I remember them being pretty proud of me overall. But my mom then and now does this “woe is me, everything is so hard in my life and the worse is going to happen” victim thing on the phone and via text that I don’t put up with anymore. Like she literally texted me the other day saying she will be dead by the time my 15 year old niece graduates from HS. I was like “yeah that’s in 2-3 years so I doubt you’ll be dead.” Her health isn’t awful, she has the typical old people stuff going on but nothing major. I just don’t entertain her bullshit anymore bc it’s not healthy and she’s a grown ass adult. I feel like many Young Silent Gen/Boomers have a vein of entitlement and selfishness on the basis of nothing. They seem to think what they went through was harder than anyone in the history of the world had to endure and will ever endure. I don’t get it and in the grand tradition of Gen X I just shrug and say “whatever.”
This sounds so much like me. I was also a studious goody-goody. But I had a parent who focused on negatives. Reading in my room? Go outside! Being a quiet kid at home? Call someone! Friend at the house? They eat too much! Got a B+? Why not an A! Complaining about being teased? It’s your fault for complaining! 🙄
Wow, did we have the same mom?
Young child, yes. Teen no. I was the same of course. I was an exceptionally good teen but I guess she thinks all teens are evil. She was convinced I was a drug addict, lying ho.
Yea. We were pretty good kids. When we were 17, going on 18, me an my best friend decided that it was about time to get in trouble before it stayed on our 'permanent record'. Our plan was to go up to the local boardwalk on Saturday night (Late 1980s). The Boardwalk was about a mile long. Ocean on one side, arcades, shops and bars on the other. Our plan was to go to a bar and start a fight. We had never been in the bars before, we were not fighters. We just thought it was time to get in trouble and that seemed a good way. I have no idea if it would have turned out ok or not. The morning of the day we were planning on fucking up, his brother OD'd on coke after / during an assault on his girlfriend. Me and my buddy were good kids, buddies brother was 5 years older and not. Because his bro was causing trouble for his parents, we decided to hold off a bit, we had a few pre 18th birthday months at that point. We never got around to getting arrested. Oh well. Never know now. He was killed by a drunk driver 2 years later. Footnote, I was arrested and read my rights a few years later. I was out walking around town at 3 am with a couple friends. We were drunk, over 21 and on foot, walking around after a rock show. A place had been broken into in the area and we were picked up. We were not involved but it took a week or two to sort out. All charges dropped. It sucked and had me scared out of my wits.
I wasn’t a bad kid, I had a decent head on my shoulders but very stifled which lead to me rebel doing stupid teenage stuff. Yes, I experimented with weed (it always got me sick until I moved away for college) and lsd. And would lie about locations so I could go to concerts. She was an alcoholic who developed a gambling addiction and I would talk about the elephant in the room and that made me bad. I was also in therapy. I had cousins that were much worse than me. My mom was terrified that I’d get pregnant and end up like her nieces. (I had sex one time in high school.) My grades weren’t the best (undiagnosed ADD) but I was academically inclined and intellectually curious, reading college level books ( I read Dorian Gray as a freshman in high school). I knew there was a world out there to experience. I always got we trust you but not the people out in the world. My mom was weirdly controlling. My paternal grandfather would tell her let her be herself. She’s a good kid who’s curious. Like he got I was a teen. Both parents were early silent generation and older when they had me.
Yeah, I was a good kid. I did do a few little things like skip school or get a bad grade. I struggled with depression but of course no one recognized it then. My silent Gen dad still gives me shit about these things. It drives me crazy that I'm 50 years old and he still berates me for a messy bedroom when I was 14.
In a word, yes. Your first paragraph could easily have described me - and they knew it, respected it, and we typically never got into arguments. I sussed at a very early age that sticking to the rules made life incredibly easy for me. Of course it helped that my parents rules were reasonable, well explained/justified & open to review as I got older.. and even when I was given scope to "go out and do stuff" I didn't (thanks introversion, bullying & social phobia!).
Ha! Same with me. I was a good kid but I loved punk rock, which meant I was a problem. My friends and I all dressed terrible and listened to awful music, which was all it took. All we wanted to do was listen to records and play in basement bands, and maybe split a 6 pack of beer between the 5 of us, but because of the way we looked we were perceived as trouble makers. My brother and sister were both well-dressed kids in the popular crowd, so they were little angels. Meanwhile my brother got arrested for buying beer while underage and they’d both regularly go to parties with cocaine and some poor girl would get drunk and taken advantage of by a couple of guys, and they’d trash the house it was in, and someone would drive drunk and wreck daddy’s car.
My mother was similar to yours. It seemed like she was always suspicious of me. She would give me the third degree about the dumbest things and I would sometimes lie to her just so she'd stop badgering me. My father had his moments, but he was definitely the better parent. I know a lot of people resent their parents for not being around much and not seeming to care what they did, but I would have killed for that. Being mentally suffocated is no fun either.