Parenting and Childhood Amnesia

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Yes, I know that parents care about their kids' health. But the "caring" (notice the quotes) sometimes happens in such ways that kids have no way of knowing that their parents care (no quotes this time) about them. Quite the opposite, they feel oppressed by the "caring", and wish their parents didn't "care". Case in point: when I was a kid, my parents signed me up for swimming lessons during the same time as my favorite TV show. They knew I always watched it, but when I protested, they yelled at me about how I should appreciate them caring about my health. And I know you'll agree: if a parent has a TV show they always watch, they'll never sign up for a voluntary class scheduled during the same time, unless they themselves think it's important enough. Kids don't have that luxury, now do they? In fact, I always considered "caring" as a cover for demonstrating power, much like the term "spiritual self-improvement group" is a cover for recruiting into a cult.

So, childhood is about learning responsibilities, but adulthood is about making your own decisions. Well, guess what? I learned that back when I was a child. However, I interpreted it differently. I viewed childhood as some kind of a hazing or initiation ritual, where people have to tough out the unpleasantness of childhood before they get to experience the enjoyment of adulthood. It's no different than fraternity pledges doing all sorts of dirty work before they're allowed to enjoy the privileges of full membership. Similarly, if a person makes it to age 18 with their sanity intact, they passed the hazing/initiation, and can now reap the full benefits of being an adult. To this day, I have no desire to have kids. There's no way to ask a child if he/she wants to be born, and what if they'll be as unhappy as I was? I wouldn't wish that on anyone except my worst enemy, and certainly not a child who didn't even ask to be born.

Aspie1,

Are we to consider ALL parents LIARS, etc....? I mean GRANTED they are either STUPID, EVIL, or LIARS, when doing things such as this, if they don't forget HUGE parts, but I DOUBT that they can forget things like bullies, problems(that they OBVIOUSLY even have as adults), etc... Yet, if they remember that, it declares them LIARS for today talking like it is brand new, etc.... AND, if they forgot, then how come there are so many movies and series based on that? HECK, bullies are here EVEN TODAY! As "ADULTS"!

I could never reconcile this.

I can't imagine being so attached to a TV show that I would be upset if I missed it for a lesson.

But a couple of things:

In today's world, we can record programs to view later, and when things like this come up in my family, that is exactly what we do.

Also, my kids don't take lessons they haven't agreed to.

You can't take a few experiences from your childhood and assume they apply to everyone. They simply don't. Sure, my parents wouldn't sign me up for ballet, and wouldn't let me order the chicken instead of the swiss steak, and, OK, they told me they wouldn't pay for my college if I was going to study something useless (to them) like art, but .... on the whole, I had a pretty good childhood. When something was really, really important to us they usually figured it out and we negotiated. Except on that meals in a restaurant thing, but THAT probably has a lot more to do with my dad's own AS than anything else. He simply wasn't able to imagine that it really WAS important to me, it's one of those things he just never got, that he thought I was being silly about. There will always be a few things like that.

So today my daughter decided she needed crutches because she has a very mildly sprained ankle. So mildly sprained, I should note, that she skipped into the doctors office without experiencing sudden unexpected pain, and fully participated in her afternoon dance class. But she wouldn't let up about the crutches. I dug a little deeper. It seems one of her friends is refusing to believe she has a sprain because she isn't on crutches. I ended up humoring her and taking her to the store, letting her try out some crutches and discussing the cost, comparing her walk, and so on. I ended up spending $20 on a cane that can be used like a crutch for someone her size. And passed on to one of the grandparents when the current "crisis" is over. My AS son thought I was nuts, because it's black and white to him: a sprain doesn't require crutches. My answer to him was that sometimes you aren't treating the injury, but the mind. She's happy now.

I guess that is a compromise your parents would never have made.

But I do that sort of thing.

We aren't your parents. I haven't forgotten a thing about my childhood. And that includes the good stuff and how much, in the end, all that little stuff didn't matter.

I think the real issue may have been that your parents did not understand your AS. Because they couldn't understand the AS, they couldn't understand that, yes, your TV show really WAS that important to you. And so on. Or perhaps they were AS themselves, and so stuck in their own logic that they could never bend enough to see yours. I can't say.

Except that it truly isn't how I parent.

I remember very clearly what it was like to be a child.

This is the main reason I'm a good parent.

I definitely have plenty of faults but for the deep issues I understand what my children are going through.

The whole thing about parents not remembering what it's like to be a child wasn't something I came up with myself. I actually read it in a newspaper somewhere, and that was a few months ago. I came to a friend's house, and when I got there, he wasn't ready. So I sat in the living room, and read a parenting newsletter that someone left lying on the couch. (It was something you pick up in any public library, so I thought it was OK to read; if it was privately addressed, I wouldn't read it.) One of the articles talked about respecting children's privacy, and touched on the subject of remembering one's childhood. I thought it was a very interesting article. So I continued here where it left off.

i think a good parent comes from not only being able to provide for your child financially or physically being in their life but also trying to understand how they feel. i have bouts of amnesia where i can't remember every part of my childhood but i do remember how i felt as a child and i try to incorporate that to understand how my children feels and be a better parent. i remember distinctly being around 9 years old and feeling very lonely and bored and that's why i try to expose my children to other kids as much as i can. i remember when i made my mom a necklace and how scared i was to give it to her because i was afraid she would think it was ugly so i try to praise everything my kids give me. i remember feeling scared to tell someone when a little girl slapped me in the face so i totally understand why my daughter just breaks down and cries when she is trying to tell me something but can't get the words out. i remember how happy i used to be when we would pack up in my dad's van and go down to the beach and i try to make as many family trips with my kids as possible. with all this being said, i would be lying if i said i never snapped at my kids because i was too tired from work or stressed out financially. parents are not perfect people, i understand that now but i try as hard as i can to do that right thing and raise two happy and healthy kids.

Hi

I'm an Nt mum and I totally understand what you are saying. I tried to push my son into social situations until he started kindergarten. I turned up to a party and realised he was being teased and wasn't fitting in. After that his social activities became his choice. It broke my heart to see him spend so much time alone, but forcing situations on him was outside my range of behaviours, especially when he was being hurt.

None of us know what is really right or wrong behaviour. I guess I gave my son his right to decide what was right for him. After his first day at school he instructed me to go with him to school the next day to make sure he went to a different class as he didn't like the teacher he'd been allocated. The school told me to go to hell and he stayed in the same class and became very good friends with the teacher.

Our problem I think was that he didn't share things that were not flattering to him, and so there are large chunks of his life when I really had to watch him suffer. He's still the same, he only talks to me about his achievements.

In sort I trusted my son to make his own choices and my relationship with him isn't any better than you and your parents.

Well ...

There are things that are more difficult to remember than others. But you have strong memories of the power struggle, and it isn't like every child felt that and then forgot it as an adult. I remember my power struggles with my parents because these were traumatic. These are actually the types of things parents remember well. Some decide it was better that way and do the same thing; people like me actively change it. I don't remember how I felt about privacy; I'm actually sitting here thinking about it and I know I got a lock on my door to keep my little sister out and I know I used that lock but I have no specific memories of how I felt about privacy; just very fleeting glimpses. So if the article was focusing on that, it was correct. I guess it really depends on the issue. We remember what aroused the strongest feelings in us, it's that simple.

I think sometimes these power struggles get to be about who wins or loses, not what is best for the child.

That's why they're called power struggles. LOL

That is true.

What I was trying to say is some power struggles between parents and children are about doing what is best for the child, like keeping them from running out into the street, getting them to eat their vegetables, but other things are more about who wins and who loses.

Like the power struggle I had for 4 years with my parents involving swimming. At first, it may have been about getting me to learn to swim so I can get myself out of the water if I fall in but later, when they were determined I learn to love swimming over everything else, it became more about them getting their way over doing what was best for me.

Some people just get on a power trip and never get off.

Parents are human.



And ....



There is that thing where society keeps telling you that you can't give in or your kids will lose respect for you forever. While society has a valid point buried in there, it most definitely can go too far, in which case some creative and flexible thinking is called for. Some situations the "stay firm" rule is valid; in others ... not so much. But parents get taught over and over by everyone and everything around them that once you say it, you must stick to it.

But with something like swimming lessons, I think it is probably more that a stubborness kicks in. Swimming IS a very important skill, and as the struggle ratches up it would be easy to convince yourself that it is SO important that it has to accomplished no matter what, when that may not be true. It's funny that you give that example, though, because my mom never learned to swim and she has spent her entire life wishing she had; she was the one who got us all in lessons early and consistently. I've been much more lax about it with my own kids.

I had to delurk to post on this. I've been lurking about a week after finding this through googling.

I have excellent recall of my childhood, both of good times and bad times and of how things felt, back to about age 5. I think this strength of recall is genetic. My own mom has it and remembers her own childhood in startling detail and raised me and sibs with a conscious effort to both avoid her own parents' mistakes and to expose us tio the experiences she loved most as a child. Sometimes this worked out well and sometimes it didn't. But it was very conscious and based on her own excellent memory. (My dad's memory is far hazier, I think he mainly did things the way it seemed the other dads were doing them.)

I inherited my mom's excellent memory for events and feelings. And I passed it down to dd. She has a startling ability to remember whole conversations from years ago (she's 9) and to remember with great accuracy things that happened when she was a preschooler. This is one of the things we have in common. However, I'm NT and she has autism. Some of the greatest challenge in raisng her comes, ironically, from how detailed my childhood memory for events and feelings is. As a child (and as an adult) I loved suspense, surprises, crowds, and hubub. My heart pounded with excitement and desire if I saw a carnival. The lights, the smell, the music, the chaos...it thrilled me to the core. I loved ALL things like that. I loved to rub shoulders with tons of people and go on all the rides. What angered me the most about my parents is how they would use grounding as a punishment. I thought it was just awful to be banished to the house and yard when what I REALLy REALLY REALLY wanted was to leap right into the middle of whatever was loudest and most chaotic.

As you might imagine, my intense childhood recall has led me astray several times with dd, far more so than it ever did with my mom and her childhood recall. Everything I loved is just torture for her. Having to stay in the house and yard was torture for me as a child and made me angry at my parents. To her, it's sweet relief and a refuge. It has taken me YEARS to learn to put aside my childhood memories and raise dd as a unique individual who does not like what I liked and does not hate what I hated. Even now when we pass a carnival and I get a leap in my heart just hearing the music, I have to firmly remind myself to keep driving because she DOES NOT like carnivals and she DOES NOT like surprise excursions no matter how much that was my favorite thing in childhood.

a little amnesia would probably help me be a better parent. Dh has some of that amnesia (as did my dad) which help0s him be more objective since he's not constantly mapping his own childhood feelings onto dd. (Although, given that they are both men, it may be that a dad just ASSUMES that his childhood memories are irrelevent in raising a daughter.) As it is, I constantly have to remind myself that she is not mini-me and neither hates being alone in a yard nor loves being amongst a crowd with noises and lights.

I think the main problem, as has already been said is most people tend to remember the negative events in their life and forget the positive. When people have kids they try their hardest to avoid their kids having to go through the same "negative events" that they went through, but don't really repeat the positives in their life.

I certainly agree with the OP that parents mostly disregard their childrens feelings as irrelevant however. Many parents also use the phrase "Because i said so" far too much, it doesn't kill to explain the reasoning behind decisions.

What!?!

You make a VERY good point.

I think everthing has pro's and con's. There are no one size fits all answers. And you've proved it nicely, when it comes to the benefits and burdens of parental memory and amnesia.

Welcome to Wrong Planet! I hope you will post some more.