-=> Quoting LORRAINE PHILLIPS to ROBIN ARNHOLD <=-
Hi, Lorraine,
 
 LP> I do wonder if perhaps we just aren't interested in children or still
 LP> don't understand how critical childhood is.
Probably both, with some bad parenting skills tossed in and the fact that
in many families, the parents are both working or it's a single-parent
family, and the parents are so busy working, they don't have the time or
the energy to raise their kids.
 
 -> RA>My mother is also one of those who feels the same way this mother
 ->(?) does--to this day she blames me for having been the victim of
 ->abuse in the public school system and believes I have a defective
 ->character because I wasn't able to deal with the bullies.
 LP> 
 LP> I feel that your mother is in the wrong here.  
It took me a long time to figure this out.  
 LP> Sounds like denial to me. 
I suspect it comes from some generations of disrupted family life.  My
grandparents didn't know parenting from a hole in the ground.  My
mother's growing-up years were gruesome as a result.  I give my mother
credit for trying to do better by me and in some measure doing that,
although the shortcomings were traumatic for me.  My mother
definitely wanted to do better by me than her parents did by her,
and it hurts her to deal with not having been a perfect parent.  Thing
is, we don't automatically know how to parent.  It is a learned skill
that usually isn't taught to people.  When all else fails, we tend to
fall back on the patterns we were exposed to when we were growing up.
It was probably almost inevitable that my mother made some of the same
mistakes with me that her parents made with her.
 
Take care,
Robin
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