I don’t harp on my children to clean. I don’t scream or fuss or fight over the wrappers or spilt messes. I just do it. I frustratedly and confusingly convince myself that it’s because I love them and also it’s because this is my job. However when I feel overrun or taken advantage of I have a burst of “you all need to learn to clean up after yourself” and then the classically adorable mom guilt to follow.
When I was a child I was tricked, bought, and bribed to clean. I had to maintain the entire household in some way, shape, or fashion. When “company” would come over it was a nightmare for me. If I did not do it, it did NOT get done and that simply was NOT an option.
My memory: I was woken up early as a small child to a half suppressed snicker and the puppet master standing big overtop of me. He smiled at me like the Cheshire Cat and whispered, “if you get up and promise to clean the house really well I will let you stay home from school ALL day”. I got up and began to do my duties.. I spent the day scrubbing the ungodly amount of filth off of the disgusting floors on my hands and knees with a toothbrush….
Then.. As I lay in the floor scrubbing I distinctly remember the noise of the doorbell and my friend asking if I could come out and play since we did NOT have school that day and the puppet master laughed and said no that I was doing chores..
You see, this vivid memory that stains my brain is the story I now tell to anyone close to me to describe and sum up my childhood. It wasn’t until recently that I remembered the story and it dawned on me heavily that it was manipulation, and that manipulating story turned into a string of memories being pulled deep out of my hippocampus.
THIS memory is WHY I have been unintentionally and subconsciously allowing my children to not learn the basic every day childhood lesson, “clean up after yourself”. I have selfishly self sabotaged my own children because I grew up in an mentally abusive home.
WHAT a terrible realization….
WHAT a way to LEARN and HEAL.
Just WOW!
How does your childhood influence your parenting mechanics?
I am forever haunted by that question with every move I make.
Memoir of a mom 