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"I know you better than yourself" my parents say like it didn't take them 5 years and my therapist outing me to realize I was serious about liking guys x3

A good parent often will know more about their child than the child themselves. Unfortunately, many bad parents think they know more.

It's also ages dependent. Till the late teens, children often don't have a good handle on their internal state. They can often get there by 10-12, then teenage hormones do a number on it again.

Finally, it's down to the parents to teach the child how to understand what they feel. This also requires open and honest communications. You can't help and train them to cope appropriately, without knowing what's happening. You can't know what's happening without communication.

I'm not saying a parent knows your inner feelings, but I am saying that after watching repeat behaviour patterns you notice stuff. And with younger kids they don't really connect these dots. So yeah, to some extent we do know our kids better than they do

But this all has limits. And expiration dates.

This just makes it seem that in order to enjoy tumblr, you had to have shitty parents.

Seems about right.

"You never tell me anything!", they complain.

I vaguely remember that I was generally quite chatty in like, kindergarten, in stark contrast to today. Though to be fair, it might not have been my parents, or at least not only my parents, who fucked that up.

As the years go by and I approach my {redacted}'s, I am frequently reminded of and learning of ways in which my parents were both smarter and stupider than I ever could have known.

My mom can accurately describe a dozen different behaviors that I expressed throughout my childhood that indicated add or autism or something, yet still she was (and still is) adamant that I am a perfectly normal human being. I can't tell if she's just trying to be supportive in her own dysfunctional way, or if she can't accept that she produced a defective offspring. She is responsible for the quote "I don't need a doctor's permission to be weird", and I fucking love that.

My mother was constantly telling me what my thoughts, feelings, and needs were when I was growing up. She never tried to get to know me. When I would explain my actual feelings or opinions, in detail, she'd accuse me of lying. I think she was actually just projecting everything she didn't like about herself, and sometimes her mother and sisters, onto me. Some of the qualities I supposedly had were mutually exclusive, or just didn't make sense when applied to the life stage I was in. She was telling me she hated how haughty and arrogant I was since I was 3 years old, at least. When I was a teen, out of nowhere, one day she started to tell me how sad it was that I was so insecure. I was like, I thought I was arrogant. How can I be arrogant and insecure at the same time? She said I'm arrogant because I'm insecure. But, she'd been characterizing me that way since I was a small child. What small child thinks or acts that way? Little kids are notoriously honest and straight-forward. What 3 year old has the emotional sophistication to behave arrogantly to cover up insecurity, and what does a 3 year old have to even be insecure about?

There's a time and a place for some intellectual humility, and that swings both ways. There are a lot of things we just don't know about the people we're close with, and at the same time there are a lot of things we don't fully understand about ourselves, that the more objective outside observer may be able to identify pretty easily.

And that goes both ways in a parent-child relationship, a sibling-sibling relationship, a friend-friend relationship, or even a spouse-spouse relationship.

My wife certainly knows certain things about me that I myself have blind spots about. And vice versa.

I was always jealous of most of my friends parents.

Mine were fine as parents, but we never got close because they're Baptists and I rejected their church as a teen. I self censor a lot around them. Which is tiring, so I don't try to see them more than a couple times a month.

Most of my friends, their parents took up more of a close friend role I noticed in our 30's.

Edit; I guess it bothers me more now because I know they're not around for much longer.

I work in a job that has to deal with a lot of parents. These types are absolutely not uncommon in the United States. I have seen so, so, so many kids completely traumatized by their shitty parents or their parents' shitty religion, to say nothing of my own miserable experiences. I think a large part of it comes from, as usual with Americans, total arrogance. I think a lot of parents just assume they'll know how to raise their kids, and don't actually do any research or study into developmental psychology to try and understand good parenting habits. Being a parent isn't easy and reading literature is a great way to learn ways to be better at it. Considering how the concept of learning is under attack in the U.S., I don't think it's a stretch to say a lot of parents don't really know what they're doing, don't have any interest in doing better, and a lot of them end up being shitty because of it.

Almost like people online who can extrapolate your whole horrible personality and belief system from a comment they don't like.

heckacentipede isn't as clever as they think they are. As a grown adult I find myself biting my tongue in every interpersonal relationship I have to avoid making others feel bad. It's not a superpower, it's an application of basic emotional intelligence.

I'm personally sad for the person that posted that. Not every parent is a bad parent.

Hmm, I bet my mom actually could name some of my existential dreads. I should ask. I bet she'd love that text at 8am.

That moment, when something on the internet triggers traumatic memories and you're tempted to tell them to the randoms, but all you want to do is to look at pink fluffy unicorns instead for 10 hours straight.

"You'll get bored of this thing in a week and then it'll just go unused."

"No I won't, gosh mom, this is not a phase"

*the exact thing they said would happen did indeed happen

Basically my upbringing in a nutshell. Had a parent gaslight me on my own gender identity since early on in my childhood and even made assumptions on my own bodily needs (overfeeding when I’m complaining that I’m stuffed, while bringing out more food for me to eat. Also not believing that I have to go to the bathroom as often as I asked, leading to accidents that I’ve been punished over).

And then they wonder why I barely talk

That last one feels to real