Would you ever straight up say to your son, ‘You are a disappointment’?

  • spencerwi@feddit.orgEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    No.

    I might, if what they did were severe enough, express that what they did is disappointing. But that’s different from branding them with the iron of disappointment-as-identity. Everyone does stuff sometimes that is worse than they aspire to be. The trick is coming back from it, learning and growing and changing.

    I remember how it felt the day I asked my mom, after she had screamed at me and hit me a bunch for stuff she made up about me, “what did I ever do to you to make you hate me this much?”, and she screamed back “YOU WERE BORN!” And I believed she meant it, because none of this was out of character.

    I was 12.

    No kid should ever feel the hopelessness and abandonment I felt in that moment.

      • spencerwi@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        Thanks. It wasn’t the worst thing she did, but it was particularly crystallizing.

        I’ve done a lot of work on healing from it since. I’ve got a kid now, and it’s been healing to live every day in a way that shows that you totally can just love your kid and not have to treat them like that.