I certainly do.
I am perplexed when people describe I suppose what are "typical" scenarios with mot...
I've always felt this way too. For me it was more when I observed people, usually in public, displaying "typical" parental behaviors. I'll never forget the very first time I started to realize that maybe it WASN'T that I was horrible and unlovable ... maybe it was that my mother did a really sh*tty job raising me. I was in my early 20s, waiting in line at a convenience store to buy cigarettes, and there was a woman ahead of me in line with two little kids. One was whining and sort of sniffling, typical "kid having a rough day" behaviors, saying he wanted to go home, and his mother said to him, very patiently, something like: I know you want to go home honey but we still have to do XYZ. Right now I need you to try to be patient OK? Remember when we talked about what being patient means? It means waiting without being grouchy. Can you try?
I was flabbergasted by this. Fifteen years later I still am. It had never occurred to me that a mother would help a child understand what patience meant and how to actually practice it. In similar situations my own mother had either chastised me for my "tone of voice" or -- more than once -- vehemently demanded that I "learn to be patient." I'd feel guilt and shame and bewilderment -- apparently being patient was something I was supposed to know how to do, and I didn't, and here I was being instructed to "learn" it but couldn't figure out how, which led to more shame, feeling like there must be something wrong with me due to my inability to successfully "learn" how to be patient on my own.
This moment at the convenience store was the first time I realized that if a five year old has not "learned to be patient," it's not because there's something wrong with them, and in fact the only way for a five year old to learn ANY type of behavior regulation is for their parent(s) to actively deliberately teach it to them. Or at least model it in a stable effective way. I realized that my whole life I'd been explicitly blamed and shamed by my mother for my failure to understand how to act appropriately in a wide range of situations, when it had been HER responsibility to teach me those things all along, and she didn't. (My father died when I was four, and she was the only adult in my life.)
The other thing that stuck out was a few years ago. I was at my best friend's parents' house with her picking up some baby furniture for her first baby's room I was helping her put together one Saturday. She was nearly eight months pregnant and sort of emotional, upset about something trivial, and her father -- who has plenty of issues himself -- clapped his arm around her shoulder and offered comforting words, and it helped her feel better. Again, I was astonished. People comfort their adult children, I realized. People comfort their children even when they're upset about something that truly doesn't matter. People care THAT their children are upset regardless of why, and as a result there are people out there who have never once felt like they or their troubles aren't "good enough" to receive someone else's attention and comfort and support. And here was this sort of well-meaning train wreck of a man who could manage it, when my own mother never could. I'm still a little heartbroken over it.
