Parent–child relationships (Comment posted else-net)

[firecat]

"Some parents get really upset when their kids diverge from their headcanons about them."

A great deal of the difficulty in my relationship with my mother just dissolved away to nothing when I read this sentence.

My mother is gone so this difficulty has been living entirely in my head for ten years. I mean, I still have feelings about her having wanted me to be different, but there's something healing about interpreting her want that way. Because I know that, while headcanons can be very emotionally compelling, they're only in your head. They aren't a Great Truth of the Universe or a Moral Imperative.*

*except a couple of mine :D

Comments

[sasha_feather]

Oh how freeing and wonderful.

[firecat]

Yeah, it's like a big deep breath.

[kore]

Haaaa yes. I believe in some family systems? (not sure) therapy it's called the struggle over the narrative.

[firecat]

Yeah, and I guess that also applies to which member of the family is "the [X] one" as well as "I want my child to [Y]."

[lilacsigil]

Oh yes, when I realised my mother's issues with me where 99% about herself, our relationship got better! It had not been great since I suddenly got much taller and fatter than her aged 11, so that should have been a clue as to her daughter headcanon!

[lilysea]

My mother's headcanon is "my *daughter* was put on this earth in order to mother me/parent me/meet all my emotional needs/be my confidant", so...

[firecat]

That's rough.

[lilacsigil]

Are you the only daughter? I am, and it was weird to see the body issues completely skip over my brothers (one of them is very thin, to the point of being medically underweight until his mid-20s, but the other brother and I look extremely alike, including body type).

[lilysea]

Are you the only daughter?

I'm their only child - I was the first child they had, mum almost died in childbirth, she was told not to have any more children.

[firecat]

Yeah, "fatter than her" figured prominently, mainly because she was fat and (believed she had) suffered socially from it, and she'd struggled her whole life to be the smallest size of fat she could possibly be. And I...really didn't.

A different gender presentation than she preferred figured in heavily as well. And a few other things. We mostly stopped wrangling about those issues once I passed my mid-20s but they were still in my head.

[lilacsigil]

My mum was and is tiny (and I think orthorexic), and got weird about my feet being bigger than hers first, and then the rest of my body soon caught up! Even without being a fat teenager, I was also 6 inches taller than her at age 12 and the whole "my daughter and I share clothes!" phase lasted less than six months. That said, she has never been in the slightest bit homophobic, which is nice!

[sabotabby]

Oh. That makes a lot of sense, actually.

I couldn't explain this to my mother because she doesn't understand things like headcanons, but it explains things to me.

[lirazel]

Oh, that's good. Yeah.

[snippy]

Glad you found something useful with that. I figured out after her death that my mother wanted me to be my older brother (whom she'd been forced to give up for adoption shortly after his birth), and I wasn't that and never could be. Her grief over losing him prevented her seeing/appreciating me for who I was.

[silveradept]

That is an effective statement and very descriptive of a lot of conflict between parent and child.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

That is a good way to frame it. Both my parents being dead a long time, I didn't have that, but I think it could apply to other relationships as well, i.e., Your head canon of me is different than my own.