I don't think it takes an impoverished background. Just caregivers that hammer home the notion that "no one cares what you want!"
Yeah, that does it too.
The impact for me included:
- To even ask would make my parents feel bad because they couldn't provide it.
- So, I seldom asked and every request expressed came with a nice crunchy coating of guilt for asking and wanting in the first place.
I guess the lesson was to keep needs minimal and make few requests with lots of caveats and "outs" so that the other person could refuse without losing any sleep over it.
However, I think when we do this, we "gray" ourselves out as individuals.
Quote:
(Unfortuately, when my 6 year old son was whining a never ending litany of "I want... I want... I want", I snapped and explicitly said in a fairly loud voice "No one cares what you want!" I wish I could take that back. Maybe I can with better messages given over time. But most of the time, children don't and shouldn't get what they want, so it's kind of tricky)
With the smell of the baggage of our upbringing everpresent in our nostrils , NOP and I both would tell our daughter that we loved her, that we strove to do the best/right thing in our parenting and that we were both sure there would be things about our parenting that she would look back on and say WTF?
