I quit every sport/after school club as it was too much a bother for my parents to deal with.
This happened with me also. Part of why I quit everything was me--if it became a challenge, I didn't know what to do next. In our family if it got too hard, then that was it. With everything. And even if I had known to just try harder, there would have been no support whatsoever. I would have been all alone in my endeavor. No support, no one to talk it out with. Nothing. Never any helpful suggestions or advice. Never a "well, how about playing a different instrument if you don't like clarinet anymore?" No idea of striving for a goal. Just quit.
Anyway, I remember doing those things for my kids. And all my anger from my childhood would rise up to the surface during my kids' concerts. I'd be sitting in the auditorium and looking around at all the other families sitting there, too. Three generations! Gray-haired grandparents, babies, siblings, both mom and dad. Big brothers and sisters who were on break from college. When their student was introduced for a solo or whatever, the entire group who was there for them would start cheering and clapping and whistling! Kind of rude to the others, I suppose. But just great for the kid on stage. And I would be seething. Never in a million years would my parents have done that for me. It was like pulling teeth to get one of them to do anything of that nature for me. I don't think my father ever went to one thing. He thought that was the mother's job. And my mother resented every second of it. Hey, maybe she was just liberated!!! She actually thought, in 1962, that when she came home from the hospital from having my sister, that my father would have a meal on the table for her and have all the windows open in their hot apartment so it would be comfortable for her. He didn't even know how to boil water. What made her think that he would learn how to be a househusband in a week? The N in her I suppose.
I am so glad I did those things for my kids. I do hope they didn't pick up on my anger, though. It wasn't at them. It was at my parents and all the other so-called adults who couldn't lift a finger to help raise me with one little molecule of self-confidence or self-value. I was raised just the opposite. To believe I was worth absolutely nothing. Because that made it easier for their lazy little selves.
See? It is still in there. It takes a long time to heal from this. I'm lucky now that it doesn't get triggered so very often. When my kids were still at home, it got triggered regularly. Four or five school functions per year during junior high and senior high. From 1992 to 2004. Towards the end, I was forcing myself to go through the motions. My anger almost took away the joy I felt at seeing my kids on stage. I was very lucky one time, though. I went to the school to pick up my son from rehearsal and I got there early. Hardly anybody was in the auditorium and I sat down to listen all by myself. Their music teacher got them started on, I think it was some Santana or something along those lines. All of a sudden, the four T-bones clicked with each other. They were all buddies anyway. The teacher just moved off to the side and let them go with it. They were all grinning and playing their hearts out and swinging their instruments in unison while they played. It was phenomenal! And I got to see that. It was a never to be repeated performance. During the actual concert they got nervous and inhibited so it wasn't the same. But I remembered it. And it was great that I was by myself and didn't even think about the past for once.
That kind of hurt so early on from our parents just becomes a part of your heart I think. The less I'm around reminders, the better. I can definitely understand the desire, or the reflex, to bait your mother. But it's not going to turn out the way your little child heart wants it to. I wish it would, because you deserve to have that. But I think it's just not a real option.
((((((((((((Beth))))))))))))))
Love, Pennyplant