I can’t help but think that we are just starting to fuck our kids up. If we fuck our kids up, then the next generation of adults is going to be fucked up. Did it start with us? Of course not.
Depression and anxiety and anger have a long history in as many of my family members as I know of. My beloved Della used to wring her hands back and forth, back and forth. She would usually start noon lunch at 10:30 am ensuring that most everything was overcooked. It was endearing to me as a granddaughter, especially as an adult granddaughter. It was an impossible act for my mother to follow enhancing the anxiety cycle.
Before that, what little I know not even first hand but second is that the very old man that I knew as a great-grandfather whose skin was thin, whose movements were slow and deliberate, at one time beat the hell out of my great-grandmother. He probably beat the children, My grandmother and her siblings too.
That’s just a drop in the hat of one of the 4 sides of my grandparents. That’s a tiny piece of what I know from my own experience. Fast forward to my own family. The children of the afore mentioned. Boomers. Still okay to spank your children. That’s me, the spankee. Now 4 generations of hit or miss, pass and go first and second hand knowledge. I know more. We know more. Here’s my question: are we doing better with what we have? Okay there are more questions: Are we evolving? Is that even the right question? Are we blaming evolution? If we know better, are we doing better? Are we refusing to do better even though we know better? Are we just switching tactics which are just as harming?
I just got back from Thanksgiving 2024 with 90% of my family from my father’s side. I could write for day about how much I love each one of them. I could write a blog post about each individual family member, wha they mean to me, what I love about them, individual experiences we have had, and how I pray to have many more. My gratitude abounds. That’s not what this particular writing is about.
My family is challenging to be around. This too, I could write for days on. While cooking breakfast on our last day, one of my brothers took to blaming his eight year old daughter for the reason he yells. Imagine, blaming an eight year old child as the reason you cannot control your own anger. After I raised my mouth from the floor, I took the opportunity to explain to my beloved niece and brother as well about victim blaming. I doubt I was heard. My daughter was in the room as well, though, and so was god.
What I wonder, with all our resources and knowledge though is if we aren’t propelling our children into destruction at an ultra modern rate while claiming no need for new age baloney, or that’s not how we were raised. I no doubt think this could have started as early as my parents, but who knows before that. I have friends who were not spanked, and when I say spanked, I am giving my parents the absolute most amount of grace and antiquated speech within my reason. Let me remind you that I could write a book on how much I adore my mother because, there is a huge part of me that would like her to read this. Will it draw anger from her? Will she throw up her hands and say, we did the best we could while continuing to make the same mistakes? Will she continue to turn a blind eye to the generation below her, and the one that follows that?
Upon leaving my parent’s house, my daughter went in reluctantly for her goodbye hug. She goes to all who want a hug reluctantly. How can I have a kid who’s not a hugger?! That’s a different blog. Daughter goes to Grammie for the hug. Grammie holds the hug and claims that they have a better relationship because they have now been through a conflict and have come out the other side. I was aware of the conflict. I had spoken with both after the skirmish. Cousin wanted to watch the Macy’s parade. My kid didn’t want to and she was using her influence to draw cousin from the parade. Grammie stepped in to attempt to let my kid know what she was doing. My kid spouted off that she didn’t care or something of the sort that my kid would do, and instead of slowing down… anger struck. When I looked over, my mother was in my kid’s face with a finger and I was out of my seat to stop whatever was happening. My daughter was in the process of being shamed for not thinking of others. Conflict.
There has been some kind of shift. Some kind of glitch in the Matrix. My grandmother might have beat the hell out of her children when they were young and they might have had the hardest lives know to boomers when they were babies, but by the time my grandmother got to me, I would have never experienced that kind of anger from my grandmother. This is, of course, all my own experience. I feel bad for my kiddo. I want to protect her from the anger I experienced. I also want her to know and love my family like I do! I cannot think of a single reason at this moment that I would shame my kid. But I think in that moment, she was called a name or had some kind of shame placed on her for not thinking of her cousin. She ran upstairs crying. My mother walked into the room where a family is enjoying a holiday tradition announcing that a child is somehow malicious because she is using her child influence to keep another child from a parade.
Again, I spoke with both sides. To my mother, I explained that my kiddo has a hard shell and a slow processing time. “No” first, process later. To my kid, I explained what my mother failed to when she was too pressed to take the time, add grace, maybe she didn’t know how with my daughter’s face or mouth saying “no” and “I don’t care.” I explained that my kiddo that she was using her cousin influence to keep her cousin from the parade that the cousin really wanted to see. Of course my kiddo didn’t want her cousin to miss the parade. Her cousin was having trouble expressing how strong her desire was, and that’s okay. My kiddo wasn’t taking the time there either. She recovered quickly and came down to let the cousin know she wanted her to watch the parade if she wanted to.
Now I don’t know if my mother ever spoke to my child about this conflict, but when she hugged her goodbye she said, I think we have a better relationship now that we have had conflict. And I am sorry by the way. But now that we have had a fight, we are better. Next time, fight back.
I sit here now, 24 hours later in a quiet house rubbing my face while I think of what to type next. Conflict resolution? Therapy? For me? For my kiddo? Serenity prayer anyone?
Pretty sure what happened in real life at the time was me looking at my kid with my eyebrows raised as high as I could raise them, and then looking at my wife for help, and then back to my kid with an “eh or not” kind of permission for my kid.
Send help. What are we doing to our children? How far apart will the separations be when we still have people, within the same family, participating in old disproven irresponsible behaviors that they refuse to even see?
The Isms of the Ic 