A Thanksgiving realization

[gjazz]

I had an eye-opening experience over Thanksgiving.  It involves my M, whom I've described here in the past as having a "mirroring" personality.  I believe there are other names for this personality disorder.  It's a sort of inverted form of narcissism.  My M has always cast herself as the lover and defender of little children.  She tells herself that she absorbed all the poison my NF spewed and protected us.  But my family had a profound scapegoating dynamic, and the truth is she played right along.  And I saw this dynamic being repeated in my brother's family.  His five-year-old son is the target among his FOO.  And early during the Thanksgiving weekend, my M announced that "'Johnny' (the boy) doesn't like me."  She said it just the way a child would.  I sort of laughed.  "Huh?"  She said, "he doesn't, and that's OK, he just doesn't like me and that's that."  A five-year-old kid.  Later, he grabbed some little knick knack from a friend's house and put it in his pocket.  It was returned, with apologies, and an appropriate discussion about not taking things that don't belong to us.  But my M's reaction was startling.  "He's going to be a criminal."  Said with venom, hatred.  "He's a bad kid.  He's a thief."  She's telling herself the whole problem is HER lack of influence in his life, because he doesn't like her.  Now, she always has preferred the company of children to that of adults.  It suddenly occurred to me: what she gets out of that isn't unconditional love FOR the kids.  It's unconditional love FROM them.  It's all about her, just like with my F.  This was a sad realization for me.  It makes me understand why I subsumed my own needs to hers for so many years--why I continue to, in many ways.

[Gaining Strength]

That's a powerful realization.  It all sounds so familiar.  It never loses its shock value to me. 

Did you have any sense that you brother or his wife noticed or saw what you saw?

[gjazz]

GS: No, because they are so enmeshed in the old patterns.  My sister-in-law is so self-involved she made plans for herself that excluded her children for their two days here.  She made reservations to go wine tasting.  Drinking.  The house is just a free hotel with meals.  She never asked if I'd be willing/available to watch the kids all day (for two days) because, of course, that wasn't necessary.  The older girl could watch the younger boy.  In a town she doesn't know, with no phone numbers, with no friends nearby.  After all, his sister has been "raising" him since he was born, when she was nine.  For the kids' sake, I stayed home, took them to town, bought them ice cream and books.  It's so bizarre.

[Gaining Strength]

Wow! - my mouth is hung low.


I'm not sure which is more stunning - your mother's reaction or your SIL's.

A note on watching an Nish mother interact with a young grandchild - they treat the grandchild much the way they treated their own children which is probably much the way they treated their own siblings or childhood friends.  Being with my mother and my 7 year old is much like being with two children.  I often have to mediate between them.  It is very sad.

[gjazz]

I've always felt my brother married his father.  My SIL came from a bizarre family of people who punished each other incessantly.  She even went so far as to announce to her table at Thanksgiving that she damn well believes in corporal punishment and that she once told her daughter (who had threatened to call Child Protective Services) that she could go right ahead and she (the daughter) would never see her family again.  That stopped conversation, I can tell you.  So appalling.  The weirdest part is that in truth, while she may have spanked her kids very rarely, she never beat them, she isn't physically abusive.  She just says things like that to make a scene and, one wonders, as a slap at my uncle, who grew up in a very physically abusive household.  It took me two days to get over their visit.