The Daily Effort to Break Generational Cycles
Is it even working?
My parents are staying with me for two weeks.
My parents… ultra-religious, immigrant, hardcore strict parents…are here.
In the past, I had the buffer of my children. But courtesy of divorce, I only have them half time and they’re older, so they spend their day at school. It’s just me and them.
I had anxiety leading up to it. I cleared out my closet of all “inappropriate” clothes (short dresses and skirts). I packaged and hid my wine glasses. My wine is stored in a cabinet in the garage I use for crafting items. Lingerie and sex toys are in a box…uh, somewhere. Finding where I hid all this stuff is a Future Me problem.
In the few short months since I last saw them, they seemingly aged a few decades. My dad was once the most terrifying man on earth. Now he appears shorter and frail. I flipped when he attempted to lift their fifty-pound suitcase into my car. His arms are thinner than my wimpy ones and years of using religious teeth cleaning devices resulted in dentures.
My mom, who was morbidly obese my whole life, is now “just” overweight. She’s on all kinds of medication and shockingly, has no appetite.
They didn’t flip out when I didn’t serve the kids halal (kosher) meat as long as I didn’t serve it to them. They don’t seem to care that my daughter is constantly in shorts, although that may be because they have no concept of age; when I was nine, I wasn’t allowed anything above my ankle.
At dinner last night, the kids brought up field trips. I mentioned how they never allowed me to go on overnight trips or even sleepovers but it’s important for me that my kids experience these opportunities. My dad’s reaction was confusion: “What? When did we say you couldn’t go to a school camp or sleepover?”
Uh, every day dad. Every fricking day.
I’ve kept my disagreements to a minimum. Last night I lost my cool and asked my mom to stop putting her finger in her mouth to dig for all the food sticking to her teeth. She went on a rant about how her medication makes her mouth dry. “I’m not saying not to do it,” I told her. “Can you just cover your mouth so we’re not in a restaurant with everyone seeing you shovel your finger around your mouth for five minutes?”
She replied that she didn’t care what anyone thought. Well, that’s cool, would have been awesome if she had that attitude when I was growing up and all she ever cared about was what anyone thought of us.
This morning, my mom commented on some random country where they were doing strip searches on women. “Especially since those women were Muslim,” she said. “That’s so horrifying.”
“It’s horrifying for all women,” I replied. “Not just Muslim women. All women. Strip searches for horrifying for all women.”
My mom attempted to argue that Muslim women are much more sensitive to strip searches and I steadfastly insisted that all women, everywhere, feel violated by them. I know she believes that since “Western” women (North American) wear bikinis, they’re not as sensitive when terrifying military men with guns abuse their powers and search their naked bodies.
My parents love talking about neighbors because…well, they’re old. I guess talks like, “The young couple next door has two dalmatians. Can you believe it?” are big for their age group. My mom keeps calling one set of neighbors “the Chinese couple” and I told her that since none of us know exactly where they’re from, can they not refer to them that way in front of the kids. Shockingly, she’s done a good job of calling them “the older people next door” when my children are within earshot.
My mind is blown that they’ve adapted to that request.
It took me a few days to catch on that they praise my son significantly more than my daughter. They gush on and on about how smart he is and how proud they are of him. My mom made a big deal in the car (a spot where my daughter was an active listener to all conversations) that my cousin’s wife was “just so impressed with how smart and intelligent Ashton is” when we visited last month.
“I’m sure she said the same thing about Eva as well,” I was quick to add.
After dinner, my parents raved about my son’s willingness to try new foods. Granted, with his autism, they know how hard it’s been to feed him. But at dinner, I knew exactly what to order that would cater to his pickiness. My daughter was a tough sell but she was a trooper and stomached food she ordinarily wouldn’t touch.
I loudly proclaimed in the car how amazing my daughter was at dinner for trying so many combinations of food. I’ll be dammed if their subtle praising of my son seeps into her psyche the way their constant praise of my brother got to me. I didn’t even notice he received all the praise until my ex-husband pointed it out years ago.
I always took their excessive praise of my brother as an indication of my failure. It never crossed my mind they were biased or purposely put him on a pedestal. I assumed from birth that I was the lesser child, I was the disappointment, and I was the one always screwing up. It was because of me that my parents never shined the light on me the way they did with my brother.
That’s a hell of a message for a child to absorb her whole life. It’s crazy that I never questioned it until an outsider, my ex-husband, blatantly pointed it out with concrete examples.
Those of us breaking generational cycles or toxic behaviors deserve an award. And by “award”, I mean a jar of Nutella and a large spoon. It’s an extra mental task thrown on top of the already exhausting role of parenting.
A few weeks ago, I had a series of conversations with my kids about puberty. I’ve always called their body parts by the anatomically-correct names (penis and vagina). I didn’t shy away from telling my son about periods and I told my daughter about erections.
When I was a kid, I got in trouble because I turned a tampon applicator into a telescope. I didn’t know what tampons were used for and in hindsight, I think I was fucking brilliant for finding a free way to toss the cotton tampon out and decorate the cardboard tube as a telescope. But it didn’t matter that I didn’t even know what periods were or what tampons were used for; my dad went Defcon 1 level angry.
I began reading The Power of Showing Up. The tagline is “How Parental Presence Shapes Who Our Kids Become and How Their Brains Get Wired”.
My brain’s wires are all kinds of fucked up. Like a bowl of spaghetti with rigatoni thrown in. I can’t have my kids grow up with a bowl of mixed pasta for brains.
The gist is that there are four Ss that help kids grow up into healthy adults: safe, seen, soothed, and secure. It’s laughable how absent any of the Ss were from my childhood.
This morning, I asked my kids “Do you feel safe? Do you feel seen?” and their response was, “I don’t know what you’re asking”. I’m going to take that as a yes, but I did throw in some credit in the “seen” bucket by telling them that anytime they ever complain again about a teacher doing something that sounds unrealistic, I’ll believe them.
My daughter complained that her teacher made kids pay with tokens to use the bathroom. At the time, I rolled my eyes thinking she was exaggerating. No teacher would be that insane to pull that kind of stunt. I learned she was correct (needless to say, after parents ripped the teacher a new one, the ticketing bathroom system went away). I told my daughter this morning that if she tells me something that crazy ever again, I’ll believe her and follow up.
A few days ago, I took her aside and apologized for snapping at her when she spilled fries in my car last week. I told her it was my fault for giving her the fries and we were in a panic to get my son to urgent care, I had created a frenzy among all of us. I don’t know what that falls under with the four Ss but my goal is to remove any anxiety I’ve caused about maintaining perfection at all times.
Even now, if I accidentally drop or spill something, my mother will give me a big lecture and tell me alternatives I should do. Living like that fueled my anxiety. I don’t want my kids to be afraid to make mistakes.
Mistakes happen. Just clean that shit up when it does.
It hurts that I’m not around my kids every day courtesy of the divorce. As time goes on, the feeling gets stronger. I almost had the urge to call my ex-husband last night and tell him that I’ll live in his house’s office if it means I can see the kids every day. I’m not there for the Soothing part of the Ss. I want to always be there when they’re struggling and wrap my arms around them. I don’t want them sitting alone in their rooms because whatever is upsetting them won’t be soothed by their dad.
I’ve been all kinds of messed up my whole life. Severe depression since birth. Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Anorexia turned to bulimia and now simmers at body dysmorphia. Crippling low self-confidence. A constant state of defensiveness. Always feeling unworthy and less than others. An expert at lying to hide my true self.
A lot of that stems from autism, I can’t blame my parents for all of it. But if they had known about the autism and chromosome disorder, would they have treated me kinder? I doubt it. Religious rules combined with immigrant mentality is a nuclear reaction that leaves Chernobyl-level trauma for decades. My parents never said they loved me so…that’s like, a whole thing that probably needs therapy.
People used to tell me how my dad was the kindest, sweetest person they’d ever met. It would make my brother and I sadly laugh; my father was the most terrifying person I’d ever met. Imagine living with two people who scare the shit out of you. Home was never a place for safety. I lived in a state of constant paranoia for twenty-three years.
When I could no longer tolerate my marriage, I saw a small light. It told me I could break the cycle and finally, maybe, live a life of safety and happiness. I didn’t know what that meant or what it would look like. I didn’t have a frame of reference. That blind hope was the only thing poking a hole in the plastic bag of life suffocating me.
While I’m not happy with my post-divorce life, it’s the first time I’ve lived in a home where another inhabitant can hurt me. No one yells at me. I don’t tiptoe. The peace is unnerving.
It probably doesn’t make sense to people when they hear that others reenact bad childhoods through relationships because it feels comforting and familiar. Why would something unhealthy ever feel comforting?
It’s at a subconscious level. It’s like sticking with a job you hate. While the job sucks, it’s a job you know well and can do in your sleep. You’re not going out of your comfort zone and you know what to expect. Predictability, even for shitty things, often feels like a safer bet than the unknown that has so many wild card factors. Because as crappy as something is, it can always be worse.
It’s hard to imagine that things could ever be better.
Raising my kids feels like I’m going against the grain of everything I know. I’m typing this as my parents are watching a documentary (hence my earlier Chernobyl reference) on a couch next to me. I ask my mom to pause the movie so I could ask a question.
It becomes a whole level of anxiety. My mom freaks out that she can’t hit pause on the remote fast enough. My dad calmly answers my air conditioner questions, then bickers with my mom over the documentary (even though I’m pretty sure they were agreeing on the same point). My mom panics because she hit something on the remote and now a different movie is playing. My dad Tsk Tsks her, which then adds to her anxiety. They bicker as I get up and press two buttons to return the TV to their doomsday documentary.
Nope. Not raising my kids like this. I’ll paint my house coastal colors and hang a Live, Laugh, Love sign if I have to maintain zen.
