#ParentalLove #ChildhoodTrauma #FamilyDynamics #EmotionalSupport #AttachmentStyles
๐จโ๐ฉโ๐งโ๐ฆ Have you ever pondered the idea that sometimes, the very people who are meant to love and care for us may not always know how to do so in the way we truly need it? This question delves deep into the complexities of family dynamics, childhood trauma, and the impact of parental love on our emotional well-being. Let’s explore this thought-provoking topic together.
## Understanding Parental Love
When we talk about parental love, we often think of it as an unconditional and selfless bond between a parent and child. However, the reality is that not all parents have the tools or capacity to express love in a way that meets their child’s emotional needs. Here are some factors to consider:
### Attachment Styles
– Secure Attachment: Parents who are attuned to their child’s needs and provide a secure base for exploration and growth.
– Anxious Attachment: Parents who may be inconsistent in their affection and attention, leading to feelings of insecurity and anxiety in the child.
– Avoidant Attachment: Parents who may be emotionally distant or dismissive of their child’s emotional needs, resulting in a strained bond.
## The Impact of Childhood Trauma
Childhood experiences have a profound impact on our emotional development and well-being. If a child grows up in an environment where they do not feel loved or supported, it can have long-lasting effects on their mental health. Some potential consequences of not receiving adequate parental love include:
– Low self-esteem and self-worth
– Trust issues in relationships
– Difficulty expressing emotions
– Increased risk of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression
## Breaking the Cycle
It’s important to recognize that the cycle of inadequate parental love can be broken. By seeking therapy, building healthy relationships, and practicing self-care, individuals can heal from past trauma and learn to love themselves in the way they deserve. Here are some ways to foster self-love and emotional growth:
1. Therapy: Seek the help of a qualified therapist to work through past wounds and develop coping mechanisms for emotional healing.
2. Boundaries: Establish healthy boundaries in relationships to protect your emotional well-being and prioritize self-care.
3. Self-Compassion: Practice self-compassion and forgiveness, acknowledging that you are deserving of love and kindness.
4. Support Systems: Surround yourself with supportive and understanding individuals who uplift and validate your emotions.
## Final Thoughts
In conclusion, the question of whether we are born with parents who may not know how to love us in the way we need is a complex and nuanced one. While it is true that some individuals may have experienced inadequate parental love, it is possible to heal from past trauma and foster self-love and emotional growth. By understanding the impact of childhood experiences on our emotional well-being and taking steps to break the cycle, we can learn to love ourselves in a way that is fulfilling and transformative. Remember, you are worthy of love and deserving of happiness.
Parenthood doesnโt come with a manual
Finding ways to connect with our offspring is something every parent struggles with I think. I do my best to stay interested, and hopefully they appreciate it, but there’s definitely things that we just don’t understand about each other! That’s OK though, you want your kids to be independent and have experiences you never had.
My advice to all new parents is to always show an interest, even if the stuff your kids are showing you seems trivial and silly to you (and it often will). Some day, they may come to you with something extremely important, and they will not be afraid because you’ve always been interested in everything before. It happened to me, and I was really proud of my kid for being brave enough to tell me.
Making children emotionally fulfilled is a recent consideration. Parents in the old days have lower standards. a) Make sure they are healthy. b) Make sure they are educated. c) Make sure they contribute to society.
Kids being happy and loved isn’t something that is considered necessary by the older generation.
I donโt know. I personally know more people who grew up in neglected households than I do people who grew up in supported ones. I feel like a majority of the population in my area struggles with generational trauma and poverty that leads to these neglectful households but Iโm not how accurately reflective my part of the world is compared to the entirety of it.
Too many people are too damaged in ways that won’t best support the development of a child. That’s not to say these people shouldn’t have a child, more that humans are inherently flawed and generations of poor rearing make a problem worse.
Absolutely true. I was adopted, my parents desperately wanted a child, but they only knew how to give love to a child they deemed normal. When I ended up being โweirdโ (which I only learned way later was autism), they went through a process of not knowing how to love me, to giving up on trying, to blaming me and my โlifestyle choiceโ that it was my fault they didnโt accomplish their dream, and definitely not theirs. They eventually disowned me over this perceived betrayal.
They werenโt bad people per se, but they certainly werenโt capable of loving a kid unconditionally.
Parents are human. Typically the only real training they get is by their own experience being parented. Many people have kids young when they themselves don’t even have fully developed brains. Some people are terrible at doing research to find help.
Kids can present challenges the parents may not even recognize and often a child’s mental health challenges don’t even present until adolescence. One can have two children and have completely different issues despite being raised together.
Sometimes it’s extremely hard to help your child. One of mine went through a rough patch. I have vivid memories of phoning every therapist in a 50 mile radius of my area and not one would go near an adolescent. We managed to get through it, but it wasn’t easy.
Some people are shitty parents though, no argument there.
I mean, yes. We need to stop setting the bar right at perfection though. Like we aren’t talking about abuse here, we are talking about humans who are struggling through life just the same as any other adult. That a child isn’t loved the way they “need” but is still loved and cared for is not a failure in parenting, just a failure of perfection.
In 0% of life is this some kind of tragedy. The child is not a victim here. Also, like the vast majority of adults also didn’t get loved the way they needed. Its something to aspire to as a parent, but who the hell thinks this is a reasonable expectation?
Sometimes, I think most parents try their best but fail at certain pieces of the equation. Some are just awful. But most I think are just ill equipped to be successful at everything and might just ignore whole chunks of parenting.
Children grow up knowing what piece was missing and resent their parents for the chunk they failed to receive.
A parent who provides well, might not invest time in their children. A loving parent might not be able to provide a safe environment. You might do everything right from birth to teens and then screw up when the kids are becoming independent. Maybe they are a great teen parent, but let their kid run feral as a child. Awesome with relationships, but terrible with encouraging academics.
I also firmly believe parents can be built to be more connected to different kids. My wife and my youngest butt heads constantly, while my oldest and her are just in sync.
My mother wasn’t exactly a good mother. She is a very controlling person, and that lends itself to also being manipulative. She cared far more about having control than actually being a mother. So yeah, I’d say it’s definitely a thing.
Yes, at least in my case.
Very likely. But let’s not forget that what we want and what we need are also not necessarily the same thing.
i think a lot of people are incredibly emotionally immature, and even adequate parents who provide well for their children and donโt physically abuse or neglect them can unwittingly abuse and neglect their emotional needs.
also not being educated in childhood development can cause parents to punish or blame a child for developmentally appropriate behaviours, or have expectations that the child literally cannot fulfill because their brain is just not developed enough. itโs sad but not really anyoneโs fault for not knowing.
A lot of well-meaning parents are trying to give you the parenting that THEY needed as children but didn’t get.
This may or may not be what you yourself need or want. And this is what breaks your heart.
OP what youโre describing is extremely common. A lot of parents shouldnโt be parents due to a number of factors like mental illness, they themselves being victims of abuse, being too focused on themselves, or their career, and neglecting their children. I have family members that never shouldโve had kids because they refused to work or couldnโt hold down a job and did a very poor job of providing for their children. Iโm not saying people that canโt work have kids, but the people Iโm talking about both spent little to no time at work for decades and still didnโt put hardly any effort into raising their kids.
Then thereโs the parents that actually care but just donโt understand their kids and that isnโt necessarily their fault. Some children are flat out difficult, no matter how much love, attention, and even therapy you provide for them. And thereโs a small vocal number of people that go out of their way to not be understood or go out of their way to fault their parents for not understanding them when they are extremely different people. Sometimes you can do everything you can for children and they still make terrible choices, suffer from mental illness or otherwise, canโt make their way in society.
Itโs true. No matter how experienced your parents might be, they have no idea how to raise YOU to be the best you that you can be if that makes sense. They might know a lot about changing diapers, keeping formula at the right temperature, the most effective ways to burp and entertain most kidsโฆbut they never got to raise you before. They can cover about 80-90% of child raising from a cookie cutter, conveyor belt program for kidsโฆbut that 10-20% has to be specially altered and catered for each kid. And itโs essential to raise great kids.
To be fair, some kids wonโt be great no matter how much effort and care is put into raising them. For the minority of kids with not only the spark of greatness but also the drive to be great, customized treatment during their formative years becomes so much more important. And many parents wonโt even see it.
I didn’t know that it was some universal truth or consensus we are born to parents who don’t know how to love us how we actually need it.
That is a ridiculous statement because only in hindsight can you determine what you would have needed (optimized). If you had love and affection, then that is what a parent does. They often raise you with how they were raised and combination of how the time changed and they tweak it, and their kid will do the same because times change.
My dad’s father died when my dad was two, and his mother never remarried. He was fatherless for his entire life. This is his first go at it, and he did a great job! Not the absolute best, but how could anyone?
Sounds like a spoiled little kid thinking mommy didn’t know that there is some new psych diagnosis that happened within the past 5 years and the child is 23.
Parents love is what it is. Tell someone without any that you are valuing it and scoring it on what *you need* and you are likely to be unloved pretty quickly.
True. I doubt they had any clue about anything at all
We’re often too needy and ungrateful
I’m a parent of two and it’s been a journey of self-discovery, learning more about how I grew up and how my parents raised me. The thing you never realize as a kid or young adult is that your parents are also growing up at the same time they are raising you.
And then some people just suck as human beings and should never be parents, let alone be allowed to live on this earth.
No it’s not true. Parents are generally very great at raising and loving their kids.
Parents often do not even think about becoming parents before they become parents. They’re just brainwashed into thinking that’s the way it’s meant to be and so they go right ahead. Some are naturals at it while others are not
I’m pretty sure every parent fucks up. It’s what they do afterwards that matters . It’s how you fix the fuck ups.
Just like children donโt choose their parents, parents have no idea what their children will need, and every child is different.
My parents had no idea how to parent my brother, who was a hyperactive child and needed lots of attention and a level of micromanagement that my parents just werenโt temperamentally equipped to provide.
In contrast, I was a very easy child, content not to be the object of my parentsโ attention most of the time, and do my own thing, and largely stay out of trouble. So they knew that when I asked for their attention, it was important.
We had diametrically opposite experiences of childhood and adolescence. For the most part, my need to feel loved and cared for was met. His wasnโt. And as a result, our fundamental sense of self is different.
We had the same parents, but very different temperaments from the day we were born. Mine was more suited to the kind of parents they knew how to be.
Though I think a lot of parents would have difficulty with a child like him, and my parents probably did far less damage than most would. It still wasnโt enough.
i mean i would say that we dont have inherent โways we actually need itโ, that itโs through the prenting process that these needs and inadequacies form, often by complete accident. Sadly the babyโs brain is so inchoate, so chaotic and is making new associations with every sensory input, that itโs pretty much impossible to account for what you are doing to a child. And this is ok, humans arent robots that can be perfectly managed.
On another level, itโs my partial belief that trauma is unavoidable, it just has many different forms. To grossly summarize psychoanalyst Jacques Lacanโs view; language can only form from prohibitionโ what is the first boundary, the first category if not โNoโ. Through the process of weaning, potty training, sleeping alone, the child learns rules that can then (again very broadly) be expanded to form language and a meaning-system. Iโm sure there are also more positive ways this may occur, but i do believe trauma is unavoidable. Think of how many children and babies you see crying all the time. This is just how we are formed, all we can do is be aware of it the best we can, and try to talk things through and work them out afterwards.
Love does not guarantee a person will be a good parent.ย
No, I think malicious people blame their parents for their own shortcomings.
I just think that not everyone should be allowed to be reproduce.
Our parents do love us, but they don’t know how to show their love.
We must understand that they suffered more than us in their childhood.
I talk to my sister about this. And we both believe that our parents matured when we turned 18. At that age we confess that we suffered abuse from a family member. I mean that they had children without having maturity, economic stability, and a home. Before, they didn’t have as much information and tools as we do now. For this reason I decide not to have children.
I’ve also found that it’s helpful to communicate with my parents about my needs. I let them know how I feel and what I need from them. This has helped to improve our relationship and has made me feel more loved and supported.
Yes, itโs called CEN! Childhood emotional neglect!
I would say it’s true that this is ALWAYS the case, not just often.ย Truth is, parents don’t have children because they want to bring a life into this world and grow it into what it is going to be.ย They are just looking for an extraordinary version of a pet.ย Something to boost their own egos and to help them feel fulfilled in their own lives, so they can feel as if they actually have a purpose.ย They bring us into this shit life they hate themselves, that we didn’t ask to be part of, then they try to dictate us in every single way to be the type of pet they had imagined having.ย I’ve had a great relationship with both parents and they have both been good to me throughout my life, and this is still my view.ย So imagine how someone with abusive parents must feel?ย Truth is, parents fucking suck.ย They are a cage more than a comrade.ย They will never actually have your back, they will just support you while guiding you towards their own goals.ย Once you have your own, you’re on your own.
Iโm adopted, but I was told it wasnโt that my birth mother didnโt know how to *love* my brother and I, she just wasnโt taught how to raise children properly and I think she struggled with that, so into foster care we went. I was three when I went into foster care and five when I was adopted so I barely remember her, but thatโs the story I was told, and one I choose to believe.
There is no such thing as a perfect parent. No matter how stable they are, how many books, talks, shows they watch and read to become a good parent. They just human. Who hasnโt made a mistake in their life, who hasnโt regretted or wish they could have done something differently in the past. We all live and learn. Often, we raise children the way our own parents raised us because thatโs all weโve ever known. Sometimes, itโs not in the most healthy and conducive way of raising a child. There are just so many factors, their own childhood, culture, environment, personal hardships, etc. My mother has never been affectionate, she shows it in ways that I think are unhealthy. Iโve had a lot of trauma from her, and even today, there are times I still struggle to communicate with her. But now that I am older, I donโt blame her. She has her own set of experiences that shaped her that way, itโs not entirely her fault. Every child is different, with different needs. And every parent, is also different from their child as well. We all are learning as we walk through life. Whether thatโs a child, teenager, adult, even elderly.
Absolutely true. What I think is even worse are kids born to parents who think they are capable of having a kid when they can’t even support themselves.
The experiences that the parent had, when they were a child, are going to heavily influence how they raise a child.
If a parent does not come to terms with their childhood experiences, theyโre likely to instill their same suffering onto their child.
This can be avoided, though.
A parent can take inventory of the things they went through, and reevaluate their perceptions of themself, the external world, leading to a reformation of what they regard as moral and/or valuable.
This reevaluation is likely going to necessitate:
– some level of self-acceptance and self-love – some level of acceptance of their limited control in a turbulent and chaotic external world
This reevaluation will serve to reform their values.
The parentโs values will be passed onto their child as theyโre raised, which will be critical components to the formation of the childโs identity and sense of self-worth (ability to love and be loved).
The earlier a parent reevaluates their childhood, reforms who they are, and identifies what they want to instill into their child, the better.
However, itโs never ever too late to do this. Even if your kid is in college, or married, this kind of work can strengthen a relationship between a parent and child, and mend residual resentments or wounds between them.
We don’t come with a manual. First time parents don’t know how often you’re supposed to sleep, let alone something as complicated as loving a person the “right” way.
I was always very angry with my parents up until recently. With therapy throughout the years Iโve come to the conclusion that our parents are humans with their own traumas and were not given proper love from their parents either. Could they have broken that cycle? Possibly, but sharing and discussing these types of issues are relatively new in our society and itโs likely that our parents didnโt have the tools and adequate support to break that cycle.
Iโm not telling you how you should feel about your parents, but just sharing how I feel now that Iโm older and have gotten over the anger
Most people suck โ make bad parents, that or just being very poor so destroying yourself working 80-100 hours a week just to support your family and you end up exhausted beyond belief and a stranger to your own familyโฆ or a combination of both
Maybe they just need a software update. Parental love 2.0 – coming soon to a family near you!
Sort of. Every parent is a parent to that specific child for the first time. They’ll hopefully get most things right (enough), but no one is perfect.
It is in my case.
I think that’s exactly what happens the majority of the time.
Take your average person – tf they know about different ways to love or how to tell which way someone needs to be loved? IDK, maybe they teach it in college or something.
You do the best you can with what you have and what you know. And sometimes you don’t even do that – things like your own poor upbringing, having to work a job you hate or that is stressful, any addictions you have, religious views, it all piles on.
My childhood best friend’s mom cried and said she wished she’d never had him or that he’d died as a child because he’s gay. Sounds horrible and it is horrible, but she felt that way because she was convinced by her religion that her son, her precious baby that she carried birthed and raised, was going to go to hell and suffer for eternity. It was literally out of **love** that she wished he had died, as fucked up as that is.
Ignore your religion, get a good job, don’t have any addictions, and go to therapy and you’ll have an easier time but even then still aren’t guaranteed to do it right. Good luck, future parents!
Edit: added “and go to therapy”
A lot of people who end up being parents, *did not want to have children*. But due to either peer pressure, religion, or draconian laws preventing them from doing anything about it, they end up pumping out a kid or two against their own will.
And that’s just the women. I think we can all agree a lot more men end up being parents when they didn’t want to either.
If your parent(s) literally didn’t want you, you’re going to be messed up.
We all know that’s just the way it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay, or how it should be.
And then you have the people who like to have *litters* of children, because that too is influenced by things such as (but usually) religion. People simply *can not* provide that many individual children with any decent amount of care and attention. There aren’t enough hours in the day.