This isn’t the post I intended for this week, but the original one has turned into an unwieldy epic and I’m still working on it.
Our second daughter finished school last year and will turn eighteen next month. This means both of our girls will have reached legal adulthood, and only our sons remain at school. I’ve been reflecting on raising our daughters, on the things I did well and of which I’m proud, and things I wish I’d done better, or at least ‘cottoned onto’ sooner.
I’m writing about all of that but, as I said, that post isn’t ready, so I’ll save it for the future. In the meantime, I plucked this section from it, as I thought it stood quite well as a piece all by itself.
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My earliest memory is of misbehaving and feeling ashamed. I’d climbed onto the kitchen bench to reach the matches, and burnt my finger when one caught alight. I was frightened to tell my mother, because I knew I’d be in trouble. And I was—I got a hiding because I’d been told not to play with matches.
Later that day, my father took me with him when he went out. We visited Mr Hudson, and I remember standing under green perspex while they discussed something about a trailer. Mr Hudson noticed the Band-Aid on my finger and asked me what had happened.
I looked towards Dad because I didn’t want to tell this man how naughty I’d been. ‘She burnt her finger,’ Dad said, answering for me and winking at me.
To this day, I remember the relief of not being shamed publicly.
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I don’t remember a time before I felt shame. As a kid, when I told lies, I was a liar. When I didn’t want to share, I was selfish. When I took things that didn’t belong to me, I was a thief. And I was ashamed of myself.
Those labels were repeated to me many times throughout my childhood, and I took them on board, internalising them, and believing that’s who I was—a liar, selfish, a thief. I wasn’t good like everyone else—I was bad, undeserving, unworthy. And I was ashamed.
I carried that shame into my teenage years and adult life. It was always there, casting a long shadow over decisions I made and moments that should have been happy.
When my husband asked me to marry him, I said, ‘Yes,’ then, ‘Are you sure?’
At my graduation, I felt unworthy and undeserving of the title ‘Doctor’.
When my kids showed talent at something, I said they got it from their father—nothing good could have come from me.
I avoided people who I thought were better than me, believing they wouldn’t want to associate with someone like me. If I did find friends, I felt lucky, and I put up with a lot of crap just to keep them. I’ve let people walk over the top of me because I didn’t believe I deserved the same treatment as everyone else. I’ve been unable to say, ‘No’, because I felt I had to ‘earn’ love, that no one would love me just for me.
For many years, I didn’t even realise I was doing this, let alone understand why.
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When one of our daughters was seven or eight, Tamagotchis (an electronic toy) were all the rage. We hadn’t yet bought one for our daughter, and one day her friend came over to play, and brought hers along. When it came time for the friend to leave, despite searching high and low, we couldn’t find the toy anywhere. I asked my daughter a number of times, but she hadn’t seen it anywhere.
In the end, her friend went to leave without it. We said goodbye and once we were back inside, I kept searching. My daughter ran to her bed and sat at the pillow end.
‘The Tamagotchi’s not under the pillow,’ she said. ‘I already looked.’
Of course, that’s where it was, and I ran out to the friend, holding the Tamagotchi aloft, just as they were pulling out from the kerb. By the time I’d returned, my daughter was already in tears, begging me not to tell her friend, or her father, or anyone, and promising she’d never do it again.
I didn’t know what to do, whether to make her apologise to her friend, or whether to let it pass without consequence. I could see how bad she felt, so I decided to do no more—just the promise that she wouldn’t do it again.
She was still crying, so I sat on her bed and told her a story. I told her about when I was her age, I’d coveted my friend’s swap cards. One day, I pretended to discover some of them when I got home, ‘accidentally’ tangled inside my beach towel.
When my mother confronted me, I said I had no idea how they got there, that it was an accident, and I hadn’t stolen them.
I was given hidings until I owned up, sent to my friend’s house to apologise, and called a liar and a thief for years afterwards. Each time it was brought up, I felt overwhelming shame.
I did something different with my daughter: I told her that I could see how awful she felt. I also told her that she’d made a mistake, but that she was a child and that’s what childhood is about—making mistakes and learning. Discovering what’s right and wrong, learning what feels good to do and what feels bad.
I told her, too, that I believed her when she said she wouldn’t do it again, and I promised that if she never repeated it, I wouldn’t mention it ever again, nor tell her friend or anyone else.
She never stole another thing.
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I’ve often felt like a mirror for my kids. I see them looking to me, hoping to see something good reflected back—love, pride, gratitude, the sense that they are good. And that’s what they usually get. (Not always—sometimes they get annoyance and frustration, but that’s normal and it passes.)
One thing they never get is that I’m ashamed of them or that they should be ashamed of themselves. I don’t want to give them that burden because I know it well, and the weight of shame is the heaviest burden of all to carry.
I try and have always tried to let my children know that their mistakes aren’t permanent stains on their character. That it’s okay to be imperfect, and that even though they err, it doesn’t mean they’re not ‘good’ people. Telling a lie doesn’t make someone a ‘liar’. Trying to steal a Tamagotchi doesn’t make them a ‘thief’.
They are mistakes and children are allowed to make mistakes. It is, in fact, part of the job description of being a kid.
Just part of the job description of being human, really.
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On a completely different note, I need to tell you that my mother has contacted a few people who have mentioned her in their comments on this blog. To be on the safe side, it might be best to avoid mentioning her in your public comments.
Please don’t let this deter you from commenting about anything else I write, as I so look forward to reading your responses.
If my mother has contacted you and I don’t know about it, or if she does in the future, please let me know, as I’m taking steps to stop it.
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Finally, I couldn’t post a blog without some photos. Here are some I took over Christmas on our trip to the Daintree Rainforest. For something different, I turned them into black and white, and it seemed to capture the ambience of that cloudy, wet day.
We found an abandoned sawmill:
Cape Tribulation:
Some of the native flora:
And fauna:
Boyd Forest Dragon
I don’t think I need to name this fellow:
Working backwards – I love the black and white photos!!
I also respect the way that you dealt with your daughter. As we both know, when you know better, you do better. I also carried many labels from my childhood with me into adulthood and believed that there was nothing special or worthy about myself. I can’t really pinpoint incidents that lead me to this, but certainly know that words like ‘mean’ and ‘selfish’ from my childhood stayed with me deep in my soul (and not necessarily from my parents.) I try to take a similar approach to yours with my own children, showing them the harm they are doing, and the lessons they are learning, without labelling them with their behaviour. Hopefully they will go forth into the world as adults who have a little more empathy and emotional insight than their mother did.
How nice to hear from you, Theresa! You’re so right about needing to be aware of what was done to you, so you don’t repeat it. It all starts with awareness. In the days of our childhood, it wasn’t uncommon to label kids based not just on their behaviours, but also things like looks and hair colour. Like you, I hated it—once labelled, it was hard to escape that tag. Not just that, but it lowered your feelings of self-worth, too, and once you feel unworthy, it’s very hard to rise above it.
You’re right, too, in that these tags were communicated in all sorts of ways, not just overtly said, and sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint from where it came. By the way, I don’t remember you as lacking in empathy and emotional insight—we’re always better people than we perceive ourselves to be! And I’m sure you’re achieving what you set out to do with your kids, because you’ve made it a goal.
Wonderful post, and I love the photos! Reminds me of many stories from my own life and my children’s.
What is a tamagochi|?
A Tamagotchi is a ‘hand-held digital pet’ according to Wikipedia. They originated in Japan and had a tiny electronic screen and beeped continually to remind you to keep looking after them, feeding and washing them, etc. If you didn’t, they died! I know kids used to get their parents to look after them while they were at school, and I think some schools were allowing time in class to attend to them!
I’m glad you liked this post, and I hope it reminded you of stories with which you are at peace. x
You are the best mother. We all make mistakes, we are supposed to that’s how it works. Instinctively as children we lie. We are supposed to that’s how it works. Otherwise how are we going to learn. Love you Louise xxx
I’m not the best mother, but I try as hard as I can.
I agree that kids lie to get out of trouble, and the harsher the punishment, the more they’re inclined to lie, which is exactly what I used to do. It’s a self-protective thing. I know that even now, if I think I’m going to be judged by someone, I won’t open up and be completely honest.
And I totally agree that kids must be allowed to make mistakes in order to learn. And that means mistakes in everything—behaviour, as well as at school and sport.
Oh, and I love you, too! x
Hi Louise,
as always, I like your honesty. Often I think parents repeat the parenting taught to them by their own upbringing. Mine certainly did. I’m glad I am a parent in a culture where we question things and investigate and change old patterns.
I remember my eldest stealing the school lunch money when she was about 9 years old. Her peers gave her such a hard time, there was no need for me to. My kids know about most of the naughty things I did as a kid because I tell them when they make similar mistakes. If they never experimented with doing the wrong thing, I’d be concerned.
Cheers,
Kamille
I think sharing our own childhood stories with our kids is one of the most powerful things we can do. The reason I shared my story with my daughter was because my father used to share his with us.
When I was fourteen, I was caught shoplifting a pair of $4.50 earrings from Myer. (I obviously didn’t learn my lesson despite the beating I’d been given after the swap card incident.) Later that night, my father told me how he and his brother used to steal fishing flies by pinning them to the back of their school ties and walking out of the shop. I’ll never forget how much I needed to hear that story that night—I no longer felt as ashamed, knowing my father had done similar.
I didn’t write it here because I’ve just thought of it (I might add it in later), but I remember worrying briefly about whether I should tell my story to my daughter, because, firstly, I thought it might encourage her to do it again, and, secondly, I worried that she mightn’t respect me as much. In actual fact, whenever I’ve shared stories with my kids, they like it! They see I’m human and imperfect, too, and that I don’t expect perfection from them.
Thanks. As a parent I’ve always felt submerged in the shadow of my parent’s parenting. Knowing what’s the right thing to do is like trying to describe sunlight to some one living on the dark side of the moon. I respect your struggle and your words show your heart is right. And that’s the most important thing. I believe.
Thanks for visiting, Jim—it’s lovely to ‘meet’ you! I agree—the way we were parented affects so much of our own parenting, in ways more complex than I’d realised.
I agree with you, too, that if our heart’s in the right place, that’s the most important thing, because our kids pick up on it.
I like your analogy with describing sunlight to someone who’s never seen it—knowing what to do in some parenting situations, well, you just have to go with your instinct and sometimes you can’t find your instinct!
Thanks for visiting and I hope you return.
Lovely to ‘meet’ you as well and what you say is so true! For me, raising twins while watching TV nature shows leads to great leaps of fiction. This will make more sense in a few days when I post the story!
Wow! Twins! How exciting … and tiring! I have so many questions about them—age, sex, are they identical, all of that. But I guess I’ll find out more in your posts. Best of luck with your writing and raising your family.
Age? Four.
Sex? Who has the energy?!
Oh, you meant… Ha! Never mind! I meant to say, “One of each!”
One of each—perfect! I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time raising them! Watching my kids grow has been the best time of my life.
Thanks! And best of luck to you in all things!
Thanks, Jim. 🙂
When I was five, I was at my grandparent’s house where my aunt was showing off the friendship ring she had recently received from a boyfriend. I liked the look of it, stuck it down my knickers and knicked it. My three year old sister found it behind the curtains at home where I’d hidden it because I didn’t know what to do with it. Oh, the uproar. I was labelled a sneaky, thieving, evil child at five years of age. I laugh about it now but those moments in our life really stick. I think understanding and rational, calm explanation is what’s needed with kids. It’s better and more educational than scarring them for life.
Oh, Pinky! All I can say is: I love you! I can just see a little girl, eyes wide at the sight of a glittery ring, having no idea of its significance or how much it cost, just wanting that ring and slipping it into her knickers! What a great story, but I can imagine how you were shamed at the time.
I think I told you once before about the Lev Vygotsky quote about good girls and boys. I’ll quote it here again, as I believe it wholeheartedly:
‘People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds, people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls.’
Louise, your intelligence, insightfulness, honesty and sensitivity shine like a beacon in your beautifully crafted writing. Try not to doubt your parenting abilities. Your children have an amazing mother.
Hi Margaret, I’m not the best mother, but I’ve tried my goddamn hardest, and if I stuff up, I apologise and get up the next day and try to do better. The other thing is, if I’m stuck and don’t know what to do, as I sometimes have been, I seek help from a book or by asking someone wiser than me.
I used to doubt my parenting all the time—when to let something go and when to draw the line. It’s now ten years after this incident and my daughter never did anything like it again, so I know I made the right decision. I’m so glad that I thought to share my story with her, because it showed her I wasn’t perfect either, and that I wasn’t judging her.
Louise how wise you are. Some of your wisdom was born in pain,but I believe most of it comes from a loving heart.
Hi Penny, Thank you for your comment and kind words—again! There was a lot of pain over that loving heart once upon a time, but there’s not so much anymore. A much more open, loving heart now!
You make parenting decisions at the time, and you’re never sure if you’ve made the right one until ten years’ down the track. And I think I did most of the time, and certainly in this instance. I don’t think you can damage your kids by being too compassionate, not as much as you can by being brittle and hard.
I’m little late here Louise, but better late than never. Your post resonated with me in so many ways. Shame is such a feature of being human and it’s one of the most difficult emotions to tackle, largely because we attach the bad feeling to ourselves in our entirety.
It’s not simply that I did something wrong or someone sees something about me as undesirable, it’s that I am wrong, I am bad, I am all things horrible. Aand the only way to deal with this is to hide it, the source of shame and me from the light of day.
I have found writing to be the best counter to shame, writing, art, and many other forms of creativity, including conversations among friends, whereby we can talk about the experiences that have shamed us and so see ourselves with fresh eyes.
The difficulty of the childhood response you describe so often here is one of failure. Phil Mollon describes shame as ‘a breach in the bond of empathy’, which points to the fact that shame is not simply built on the experience of the person who feels shamed, it’s based on the response to that experience. A failed response.
Thanks for a lovely post. You prove my point here two fold, through your writing, which shatters the shame, and through your inspirational images, which lay bear the beauty of your mind.
Thanks for your reply, Elisabeth. There’s a huge difference between remorse and shame, and that difference makes all the difference.
When I was growing up, it was shame, and it was deliberate. It wasn’t just our behaviour that was labelled, but our characters. My mother brought up our past regularly, and reminded us of how bad we were. I cringed with humiliation each time, and hated being reminded, but was told things like, ‘Well, you did it,’ and, ‘If you hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have to bring it up.’
I agree that talking and writing about these things help take the shame away. Shame is isolating—you don’t share what you’re ashamed of, because you’re too ashamed. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s exactly what the shamer wants—they want you to believe you’re alone and really bad, and the only person in the world who’s ever done what you’ve done. After that, the shamer shows love, and you feel deep gratitude because they still love you, despite how bad you are.
I know that feeling—after I’d misbehaved, I can remember sobbing and asking my mother if she still loved me, and thanking her when she said yes.
Sharing our stories counters all of that. It’s relieving for the sharer and the listener/reader alike. Ah, I’m not the only one. Someone understands! Maybe I’m not so bad after all.
Sharing my story with my daughter told her I understood. I wrote in an earlier comment to Kamille about when my father told me that he used to steal fishing flies. It was so comforting to hear—to know he’d made the same mistakes as me. I think sharing these things publicly helps in a similar way—readers for whom it resonates, which isn’t everyone, know they’re not alone.
Art is a wonderful antidote. I love telling my memories and feelings in words. Even before I knew the physiology and psychology, and how it connected our emotional and cognitive selves, I knew it was helping. Sometimes, though, if things are too raw, I don’t have the words, and then I draw. And that helps, too. And then there’s music, and dance, and photography, and all these other beautiful ways of expressing emotion. No wonder people are moved to tears by art, in all its forms.
I just need to clarify, Louise, the failure of empathy I’m talking about here relates to some of your childhood experiences, not those in adulthood where you are clearly talking about empathising with your daughter in her shame over the Tamagoshi.
I understood—no worries. And don’t worry about being late to reply either—there’s no time limit!
Parenting is just about the most difficult job we can ever do, and it’s natural to bring things from your own childhood along, as it’s the only parenting example you have to follow. Being able to consciously look beyond our own experience and create something new for our own children is a wonderful thing to do, as it can help towards processing our own experiences. I’ve been lucky with my own parents for the most part, but my husband not so much – he has found becoming a father to be a profound experience for that very reason, and is very conscious of how he interacts with our daughter (in a good way).
And I love how you dealt with your daughter’s issue – it was lovely, and I’m sure she appreciated it.
Thanks, Helen. I agree that parenting is hard, especially when you have to make decisions in the spur of the moment, and don’t find out if you did the right thing for another ten years or more! I’ve been reflecting and writing about it a lot lately. I set out to parent my kids differently to the way I was brought up as I was sure there was no need for the harsh punishments that were doled out to me, and I was also sure they’d been damaging. I felt as if I was in unchartered territory for most of my kids’ childhoods, feeling my way, trying not to follow in the footsteps of the role model I had. I didn’t know if I was doing to the right thing, I just had to hope that I was. Now, I can see the women my girls have become, and I’m so proud of them. My parenting worked (!), and I actually feel a bit proud of that. I made mistakes, but I think the biggest thing I gave them, that I didn’t get, was a sense of themselves as good people. They do believe they’re good, I can see it in their confidence.
It’s great that your husband is aware of his own parenting—that’s the most important of all, I believe. The way we were parented does pre-programme our brain, but programming can always be changed!
Oh, Louise, this is such a tender post, full of wisdom but also pain. You are an amazing parent, and that image of you showing your own vulnerability to your daughter is very powerful. I’ve grown up with a lot of shame, some of it running so deep that I don’t even have a name or explanation for it. Shame for being alive, shame for being a female, shame for wanting things differently, – the list goes on…. It’s done a lot of damage, and reading ‘Daring Greatly’ by Brene Brown I’m starting to understand and appreciate how subversive and deeply self-destructive shame is. One thing she says is that we get shame-resilient once we start wrapping words around our shame. I thing we are on a path of recovery.
I must read, ‘Daring Greatly’, as I’ve heard lots of good things about it. Also, you’ve just written the phrase for what I’m trying to do—develop shame-resilience! I know it works—A few years’ ago, I could barely talk or write about the things my mother did to me as a child and teenager, because of the shame I felt, but I no longer feel shame about that. Now, it’s the shame I carry for things I did that I’m trying to work through. And I’m getting there …
The phrase is Brene’s and she teaches how to cultivate that resilience. I warmly recommend it – it’s giving me insights in relationships, parenting and creative process. And things we feel shame for often don’t even warrant that, especially once we start talking openly about them. It’s beautiful and enriching to follow your journey, Louise. Your courage and wisdom always inspire me.
I know exactly what you’re saying: A lot of my shame doesn’t warrant it, and it especially doesn’t warrant carrying it for 30 or 40 years!
Shame is a self-perpetuating vicious cycle—you don’t tell anyone because you’re too ashamed, and because you don’t tell anyone, there’s no one to say, It’s okay, what you did isn’t that bad. But you feel really bad about yourself, which affects your confidence, which affects all sorts of decisions you make. It’s truly isolating. After all these years, it’s been a huge relief to just write about these things, and give them an airing.
I totally recognise the shame loop. I’m still living it…
I read this the other day and it explained a lot! If the link doesn’t open, it’s on my personal
FB page (Daughters of Unloving Mothers: 7 Common Wounds) https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tech-support/201304/daughters-unloving-mothers-7-common-wounds?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost
Thank you so much for posting the article—I loved it and I’m going to keep it handy. I needed to read it twenty or thirty years’ ago! Thank god so much more is known about this now. xx
Stunning photos and a heart-breakingly honest post, Louise. Thank you.
Thanks, Teena. I found this post hard to write—it’s not easy to write about things you’re ashamed of, even things you did as a child. And you hope, too, that people won’t judge your child harshly.
I think you are parenting brilliantly by the way 🙂
Hi Lily, I just saw this, so I apologise for my late reply. Thanks so much for your compliment! We all love our kids and are trying our hardest, and that’s the most important thing. xx