Reality

"The unfortunate reality was that for most of my childhood, I believed she didn't love me.  I thought she loved my siblings, but not me.  I believed she cared about me.  After all, it was she who cooked and cleaned and provided for me.  Of course she cared.  But I thought she didn't genuinely love me the way I THOUGHT a mother should love her children.  The way Carol Brady loved her children, or the way Claire Huxtable loved hers.  Those thirty-minute TV moms patiently corrected their children.  They smiled at their children's mistakes, and physical discipline wouldn't enter their minds.  My mother didn't quietly sit me down and explain why I was catching the trouble. I knew why I got into trouble, but I wanted her to handle me in the TV sitcom fashion."  With Her and Without Her pg. 33

There are times when I think about my childhood and wish I would have had a better grasp on the real state of things so that I would have understood that my perception was not my mother's reality.  But NOT understanding adult cues is what makes a child a child. With understanding comes growth. I thought that because I caught trouble more often, it equated to her not loving me. The reality was;  I caught the end of the belt,  the back of her hand or the sting of the switch because I was the most blatant of her children. I did things in middle-child fashion, without considering the consequences! I was the child who felt the need to correct  and censor her, even in public. My siblings knew when to stop.  So Mom didn't need to discipline them as often. I thought that if she loved me, she would have said so more often. The reality was that she didn't express her love with words as often as any of us might have wanted, but it didn't mean she didn't love us.  She wasn't withholding her love for me any more than she was from my siblings. She simply didn't say the words, "I love you" very often.  My perception of reality, and that of my mother's were on different planes.

"I was in high school when we talked about that period of our lives." "(I) said, "You know Mom, when I was little, I thought you didn't love me." "(She) replied, I know. But I loved you. I've always loved you.  I just didn't LIKE you sometimes."" With Her and Without Her  pg. 34

I'm the mom now, and have been for almost 28 years. Like my mother, I don't do everything exactly as my children would like. When my eldest daughter was four years old, she decided that the mommy who disciplined her was a robot. Her loving mommy would never "be mean" to her! That was how she dealt with reality. Childhood perceptions and realities often clash with the true state of things. What they believe about adult behavior and what we know to be so will not always mesh. It's important to have open dialogues with our children, not  to avoid the clashes, but to facilitate growth and understanding. There are  many factors that make children who they are. DNA, birth order, environment (just to name a few) all have a part in who our children are.

Here's the reality: My mom loved me. I love my children...even when it's the robot me.

Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. Wikipedia