You'll never amount to anything...

[OKDem08]

these are the words I heard as a child.

Oddly enough, they still resound to this day...even in my 40's.

Be kind and considerate w/your children....they remember what you say.

[OmahaBlueDog]

1. Every day I do something that I know will someday screw up my kids

The problem is I haven't narrowed down exactly which things they are.

I'm sure I'll hear about it in another 7-15 years.

[uppityperson]

19. Of course. We all do things that mess up our kids. Best to avoid as much as possible, be aware

that you will do things and try to be as good as you can.

[Tikki]

2. Please never say...'I should have never had children and...

I should have never had you or I wish you had never been born'..to your children.

It actually makes you look stupid and weak...and until your children get older and
finally figure it out...well, it makes your child/children feel worthless and sad.

Tikki

[99th_Monkey]

11. I save that stuff for my therapist or my support group

to avoid unloading it on my offspring, pretty much.

yes/and/yet if those kinds of feelings are present,

then they are present, and it's imperative to allow
that presence to have a voice, in the name of truth.

[indurancevile]

20. why? who is your "truth" for? if you know it, why does someone else (especially your kids)

have to know it?

what is the point?

"truth" in this kind of thing is highly overrated.

[99th_Monkey]

23. I wasn't disagreeing with you at all.

The point is to become a more integrated human being, where all the inner voices
(even the icky ones) have a part to play and are somehow honored in a way that
becomes ultimately beneficial to the health and well-being of myself and others
I love.

[indurancevile]

24. i may have misread you. sorry.

[Raine]

3. Verbal abuse like that leaves it's marks too. My grandmother

was that way toward my mother. All her life my mother she never thought she was good enough, smart enough or pretty enough to be worth anything. It didn't matter that my mother was actually beautiful and brillant ... she felt she was worthless. My mother had all sorts of self-destructive behavior that she engaged in, I think due to her belief that she was no good.

[OKDem08]

4. thank you for your comment

I understand the sentiment...

bless you and yours (in an atheistic way) : )

[OKDem08]

5. that is sad....i can relate

[JFN1]

6. Screw them.

I have the same situation with my parents - they have always worked to tear me down - always.

About five years ago, after a particularily humiliating scene at their house, brought about because I do not follow their religion or belong to their church, I decided I did not gain anything by having further contact with them.

So I cut them off.

I have not seen them since, nor do I ever intend to. Their occasional feeble efforts to re-engage me (or as my wife and I put it, get me back on the crazy train) have become transparently manipulative.

Since I walked away from them, in the last five years my 15 year marriage has vastly improved, I opened a small retail business two years ago this September - and it has been and continues to be, quite successful, given the economy and the fact my wife and I started it with basically an idea and little else. And I had my first novel published last August, too, after being told relentlessly by my parents I had no imagination, no talent for writing, and no real skills of any kind whatsoever.

They have nothing I want; and because of their treatment of me over the years, they have nothing I need - I learned from a young age to do without them and to take care of myself.

Fuck them.

I'm not telling you to do this yourself - just trust your heart, and remember that this option can be a viable one, when all else fails.

Don't let them tell you what you are worth - they don't even know you...do they...?

[OKDem08]

7. thank you for your comment

that is helpful...how can one maintain any kind of reverence for those who disparage one so? It's so basic but sometimes not so apparent. Thanks again!

[JFN1]

10. Reverence masked as need for their approval and love

It is the carrot my folks dangled in fron of me my whole life - I finally had the courage to face my need for their approval and discovered it was not so much a need, as a desire to prove them wrong about me.

When I started to truly believe I would never prove their opinions of me wrong, I gathered the courage to walk away from not them - but the need I felt.

Turns out it wasn't need, just misplaced, though utterly human and healthy, want...

[Lionessa]

8. I agree. I made a point to not only say what I meant in a positive way, but

also let the kids in on the secret so they could begin seeing and using the difference.

For example, instead of saying, "you're stupid," or even "that's stupid", I'd say, "you're smarter than that!" Says the same thing really but the bee you leave behind is positive "you're smarter", not the negative, "that's stupid, ie you're stupid".

[Liquorice]

9. There are so many bad parents, and many of them don't even know they're

bad. I've noticed that people tend to be particularly delusional about their parenting skills... What's particularly bad is when awful parents have their children convinced that they are wonderful parents and it's all the kid's fault that they hit them, verbally abused them, etc. That's a very common tactic bad parents use to explain their terrible parenting (blame the kid).

The bad things that are said and done to us as children never go away. I don't think anyone gets over it. At least you know you're not alone.

[Uben]

12. A close friend's boss told him that.......

....when he was a teen. Now he's a pediatric cardiologist making $600K/yr.

[outerSanctum]

13. Well....

Was it true?

[Hissyspit]

15. What difference does it make?

If OP "never amounted to anything," whatever the hell that means, OP would never be able to know if it was because of their inherent dysfunctional nature or because of the unjustified, regardless, abusive reinforcement by the parents through their treatment of the OP.

[outerSanctum]

30. It makes all the difference in the world.

If the OP never, indeed, amounted to anything, then the parents were just laying out statements of fact. If, on the other hand, the OP did amount to something, then the parents were mistaken.

[fishwax]

33. nah, predictions and speculations don't become statements of fact just b/c they happen to come true

[Hissyspit]

36. What in the ever-loving does "amounted to anything" mean?

It's subjective as hell and is abusive treatment in almost any context. NOBODY has any clear idea how anyone will really turn out. But unnecessary self-fulfilling prophesies are very powerful when parents create them. "You'll never amount to anything?" A pretty much WORTHLESS statement of opinion as advice or encouragement from a nurturing point of view - even as so-called "tough love."

[eilen]

14. I was kind of lucky

My Mom and Dad didn't do that--tell me I was worthless etc., although my Dad could do some damage occasion because he was a drunk and would say a lot of hurtful things (particularly about my mother) when he was drinking that he would deny or have no memory of sober. He was positive so long as you did everything he wanted you to do and could be a very difficult controlling asshole. He's dead now and sometimes I miss him but I don't miss the drama, the short temper and the guilt trips, he never let anything go--would rant about something that happened decades ago. My stepfather was an asshole. If you made a mistake no matter how well you had been doing up to then, that was it, you were shit. He's dead too. Both men died of lung cancer. Mom's still alive. After the second husband being a cheating lying asshole she gave up on men.

[marew]

16. I was told repeatedly...

"Who do you think you are?" I was a normal kid, a good kid, a kid who made excellent grades, a kid who went to grad school on a fellowship. But to my mother....

[pipi_k]

17. I never heard that one, but I did hear...

my mom tell us, when she was frustrated, that she would pack our bags and drop us off at Brightside, which in the 50s/60s was an orphanage in our area.

Which, I guess, is as close to saying, "I don't want you" as you can get without actually saying it.


But that didn't really have as big an effect as the feeling I always got that we girls (3 of us), or I personally, were responsible for a lot of the bad stuff that happened. My parents argued all the time, and a lot of it involved us kids. They never took us aside to explain that we hadn't done anything bad. As a consequence, I developed a horrible guilt complex that exists to this day (I am now 58). Whatever happens, I always figure it's my fault or that someone is going to blame me for it. One bad side effect also is that it was all too easy to get involved with abusive men and feel like whatever they did really was my fault.

[Missy Vixen]

18. I succeeded anyway

OKDem08, I don't know you and you don't know me, but we lived with the same abuse.

Succeed anyway. You can do it.

Always know that you are loved.

:hug: :hug: :hug:

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. Wow...that's a horrible thing to say to a child

As odd as my parents, and especially my father, was, I don't think it would ever occur to them to say something like that to their children. If I got the belt from time to time, it was for the opposite purpose, I guess, though of course I would never even dream of laying a finger on either of my children for any reason whatsoever.

Sorry for that, OKDem. Good reminder, in any case. I have a 5 year old and a 2 year old. What we say matters. I distinctly remember stuff my parents said to me when I was five. Clear as day, like yesterday. Every little thing counts.

[moondust]

22. It's not all your fault if you don't.

Opportunities in the U.S. aren't nearly what they used to be.

Besides, "amounting to something" is awfully subjective anyway. :)

[HughBeaumont]

26. It's funny . . .

. . . only reading the title to this OP, I thought of the same kind of response.

[moondust]

32. Then it must be true!

[Shagbark Hickory]

25. Who says that to you now?

[handmade34]

29. those who weren't

emotional abused can have no concept of the wounds that linger

[handmade34]

27. if you are here...

you are something! Hey, OKDem08, I heard that and much worse. Took a long while but I learned that I was ok and I sure as heck never said those things to my kids... Be good to yourself today.

I posted a video yesterday... check it out... http://www.ted.com/talks/thandie_newton_embracing_otherness_embracing_myself.html


"Self-trust is the first secret of success."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

[AngryAmish]

28. Hey, can you get me a beer?

I heard these a lot as a child. My dad was pretty cool. I miss him still.

[awoke_in_2003]

31. I think I was extremely lucky...

growing up. Yeah, we didn't have crap. Yeah, we wore a lot of second hand clothing. But I had a very loving mother, and a witty, hard working father. Did we anger him sometimes? Sure we did. But he was never mean or spiteful. He taught us a lot growing up- how to fish, set up a tent, build a fire, chop down a tree, how to fix up a car. And he didn't teach us this stuff by showing us how- we participated. Like I said, I was very lucky.

[donheld]

34. You'll never amount to anything...+ You could never do that...

You don't need that much education...

I heard it day after day year after year.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

35. I wish I had known about Harry Trumans child rearing style

Asked about raising kids Harry said; 'the secret to raising children is finding out what they are interested in and encouraging them to do it'