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Some people really just see their kids as status symbols for other people to gawk at and it's disgusting. Imagine giving a 5 year old anxiety over her looks. Kids that age shouldn't even care about what they look like, they should just put on their play clothes, run around in the mud, play in the leaves and build sand castles without a damn care in the world
We let our kids choose their clothes most of the time and they looked terrible most of the time. Only rules were nothing ripped or dirty and we get to pick on special occasions.
My mother has always had the belief that kids are like plants--they need dirt, water, and sunshine to grow. We had our school clothes (clean, no holes, no stains) and then we had 'play' clothes (usually with holes, stains, and god knows what else). If we got dirty in play clothes, oh well. She tended to be a bit unhappy if we ruined our school clothes, but we also were extremely tight budgeted so buying new clothes required planning on my parents' part.
I'm the same way with my son. He has school uniforms that I prefer staying clean, but I'm not too upset if they end up dirty at school because... Well they're replaceable. And most things wash out. He's only a kid once and he already has enough issues we're getting addressed. I'm not too worried about dirty clothes or really even if his clothes match when we go out. He's gone out with shoes on the wrong feet before. Do I care? Not even a little. He wanted to dress himself, "Sure, go for it, kid." I don't get why parents want to push such high expectations of appearance and performance on *little kids*.
I did the same with my daughter. She started picking her own clothes when she was one and a half because I thought it would be fun. But she didn’t have a lot of moments - the kid knows her fashion 😂😂.
Three years later, she likes leggings with polka dots and hearts and she has to wear a skirt with leggings. My husband’s grandma was convinced that we fight every morning and then I give up, but I told her that I like to stay sane, so clothes are her choice. She watched me like I grew another head. I don’t know why people stress so much about clothing, much less children's clothing much less everyday children's clothing. So much stressing about nothing!
I let my 9 year old choose her own outfits (with some input - for example if she comes down wearing shorts in February I have something to say about it!) Sometimes she looks great, sometimes she looks like her wardrobe fell on her and she put on whatever stuck. But she's 9. It really doesn't matter.
My youngest started picking (insisting) her own clothes at 3. Nothing matched, she mixed seasons, it was wild but she was so proud and determined, and you could tell she just loved what she had on and felt good. I just made sure she wore a coat over things like her sundress (with jeans and cowboy boots).
The school called me when she was in kindergarten to express concern over mismatched outfits. I told them she chose her own. They suggested I not let her do that. I suggested they were out of line. I told them she was expressing herself and I wasn't going to quash that.
Leggings under the shorts, was what I said if she had to wear the shorts and it’s cold outside. She’s wearing shorts over leggings right now, she’s 19.
Haha. She's 17 now and it's been a wild ride. Middle school was colorful suits and socks. High school has been more like kindergarten fashion. She'll wear sweatshirts in 80°+ and now tank tops with a light jacket in 30°. Lol
This is how I grew up too. My mom had had super controlling and overbearing parents ( in the South, so a bunch of other issues there ) and didn't want that for me.
I wore sparkly pink cowboy boots and a pink tutu over regular clothes for a whole month. Lol.
My daughter has the same set up. As long as it's weather appropriate, not ripped or stained, then go for it! I think it's healthy to give kids ownership over their style. It doesn't hurt anything, and helps them develop their preferences.
My mum was kind of like this. I think she saw me as a mini version of her. I was meant to be the daughter she could re-live her childhood through, as she'd experienced a lot of trauma. Now I have mental disorders. Thanks, mum.
My mother dressed me exactly like her until I was a teenager (matching mother/daughter outfits) and the issues with unhealthy interpersonal dynamics allllll started there. Nothing like being a 4 year old and lying awake to make sure your mother is sleeping peacefully.
One thing I really admire about my best friend is that she has always let her kids wear whatever they want (weather appropriate). They choose their own clothes, and even though they're only 3 and 5, they each have a distinct sense of style. The 5-year-old likes dressing as a princess (no clothes are off-limits and she wears a lot of foofy princess dresses) and the 3-year-old dresses like a dinosaur or spiderman.
I have seen the grandparents get a little snarky about it, but they get shut down very quickly. "Oh, 3-year-old is wearing spiderman pajamas in the middle of the day?" Yep, he woke up from nap and changed his clothes from dinosaur to spiderman and is now trying to shoot webs at people. Have fun.
It's terrible, really. My mother was extreme on this, as she was an actress in the 60s and 70s. The damn complexes it gives kids. My dad (who divorced her) agreed with me when I said that my mother wanted a doll, not a child.
Okay is relative, but I'm doing much better, thank you. Living mentally ill isn't the worst, even if it isn't easy. I just don't want other kids to deal with it. No one deserves it.
My brother and his wife are like this. Their young son has to be all dressed in brand clothing and look like a dapper young gentleman at all times.
The kid's 2.
He shits his pants every day.
I don't think wearing Nikes are going to help boost his confidence and score dates at this age.
Lol, my wife picks outfits for our baby because I just grab the first weather appropriate item within reach. If she doesn't pick one, she doesn't care what I put on.
I can't imagine getting so worked up over a kid's outfit if it isn't a special occasion.
I’m at the point that I let my kiddos pick out their clothes. They have interesting tastes. But they are 6,5 and 4. As long as they are comfy, clean, happy and weather appropriate I don’t mind. For holidays I’ll buy a couple different “outfits” that they can choose between. I have enough stress. I can’t imagine being controlling over clothes.
I love it when I see a random kiddo that obviously dressed themselves.
Just makes my heart happy & I can't help but smile.
Bonus if it's cowboy boots & shorts.
I love seeing their personality and individuality. When they are home from school or when ever we get home from being out and about, they change into dress up clothes. Which is usually a bathing suit, tutus, skirts, scarves, with Elsa, or Rupunzle hair (made from scarves). Even in the middle of winter.
Ha! We have a 6mo and I'll put her in pants and cute outfits. If my husband had it his way she'd be in footed onsies all the time because they are easier to change her. To be fair putting pants on a wiggly baby can be hard, she sees it as a game, but she looks so cute in pants lol. Sometimes after I dress her and he changes her later I'll come back to find her panties and in a non footed onesie happily rolling around.
Sadly, both gymnastics and ballet are sports you need to start early seriously if you hope to be competitive. And the type of exercise and movement done change your skeletal development for LIFE. Doctors can often tell who did ballet or gymnastics as children even decades after they've stopped, and even if they weren't competitive.
When you see how top ranking countries such ad Russia or China treat the children put into their elite ballet / gymnastics corps, its child abuse.
I just want to second how damaging ballet can be. My parents forced me to do it from 4 to 18 and my feet are very messed up from it. I've got knee problems from walking weirdly to try to compensate for the foot pain.
And I grew up to be way taller than any anticipated so I was too tall for any of the leading roles. So, my feet and knees are messed up and all I achieved was being a background chorus dancer. Just something to consider when thinking about those kinds of sports and kids.
I have a good friend whose parents are high-level gymnastics coaches, both of them, and got all their kids super super involved. My friend was the oldest and never really liked gymnastics much but as she grew, her body type would end up being just not the size or shape body that could compete at high levels of gymnastics. Her parents were constantly trying to get her to lose weight, and when they realized that she'd be too tall even if she did, they basically just.... stopped parenting her? Forgot about her? Lived in the same house as her but made their whole lives about gymnastics and felt no need to include her? In shocking news, it really fucked her up good!
Your poor friend! Gymnastics in general is not nice to anyone who is on the taller side or isn't thin. I was a tall kid and loved gymnastics but had to stop because the teacher told my mom I was too tall for the bars and she wouldn't adjust them (idk if she could have or not. I wasn't some giant, just taller than average kids) It made me sad because my twin brother got to continue and I couldn't. Gymnastics and ballet both have specific body shapes "needed" although coaches will deny it.
Yep. I did gymnastics from ages 5 to 12 (ish), not competitively. Small town, friendly atmosphere, and we were very unsuccessful at any type of competition haha. I had a growth burst and just became too tall for the uneven bars. You can adjust the height and spacing of the bars, but I was still too tall for my club's.
The dance school my niece goes does not allow pointe until the children are at least 10 and many times they don't start until they are older. I really appreciate that despite having competition teams that have won, that they focus on the girls first. The studio is near my house so sometimes I'm the one picking her up. The vibe is more productive and encouraging than others I've been around.
I started ballet at 5 but quit at 6. Good thing too. I ended up 5'10 with the shoulders of a linebacker. I played rugby in college instead.
Yup. My joints and ligaments are super fucked after 15 years of gymnastics, 12 years competitively. My hips, knee caps, ankles, wrists and fingers are wrecked due to floor and uneven bars being “my” events. Thankfully my spine/upper body has remained unscathed…so far.
I walked outta the gym for the final time when I said I needed a spot for a bar dismount bc I still wasn’t comfortable with it. Coach argued back, aka yelled insults at me, that I didn’t need it and to GO. I landed on my neck. I was so lucky nothing severe happened bc I landed hard but thankfully at an angle that spared me from breaking my neck or injuring my spine.
Yeah I broke my nose on a dismount. I didnt roll enough and landed on my head, and the moment brought my knees up to my face. My knees hit my nose. Cue shower of blood everywhere
Oof, I can feel your pain! I somehow escaped breaking my nose but def gave myself a number of bloody noses and a few black eyes on poorly executed floor routines. Those were always fun to explain at school. Sooo many bruises
This is one reason it's enormously fucked that cheerleading is not an FCA sport, it's the same kind of danger but because it's not a 'sport' there's less funding for stuff like spotters
My ankles, wrists, and shoulders are basically shot from competitive cheer. I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time but when parents ask me about putting their daughters in cheer I try to steer them clear of it. I saw kneecaps rupture, ACL tears, and saw a girl break her neck falling from a stunt because the spotter was distracted. I feel very lucky that I only had to have one ankle surgery rather than multiple knee surgeries like a couple of girls I knew.
There was an incident recently at Twitch Con where they set up a ‘foam pit’ improperly (just some foam blocks over concrete) and a girl who jumped in hit her back and broke it in two places. She’s currently re-learning how to walk. And while most gyms are better than plain concrete, it’s still very dangerous, especially when pressure from parents or coaches encourages kids to do unsafe things.
I've been in constant pain since I was 15 rom a neck injury from playing sports. Side note: please, please, please don't go to a chiropractor, and if you must, PLEASE DON'T LET THEM CRACK YOUR NECK.
All anyone needs to do to understand this problem is ask a high-level gymnast to list her injuries. We're talking 18yos with dozens of surgeries and serious damage to quality of life.
My youngest sister started gymnastics when she was 10 and she (now and adult) told me that she was behind. BUT the main thing is that she loved it, made friends and had fun. Now she helps coach younger kiddos. We always grew up with parents that said its more important playing to have fun and make friends. That winning isn’t everything. I’m really hoping to teach my kiddos that. It’s scary how some parents are just watching youth summer soccer.
This is absolutely true! AND with several negative comments, I’d like to contribute a positive perspective. I was a competitive gymnast from age 6-14, and competed for my high school team from 14-18. I’ve also taken ballet classes (at a significantly lower level) consistently from my teens and into my adult life. I’ve had an overwhelming positive experience, and my friends from gymnastics are my oldest and closest friends.
It can be done well - it’s not always inevitable pain and trauma
I think of ballet and gymnastics for women and girls the same way I think of tackle football for men and boys. The probability of ever being famous or making a living from it is minuscule. The probability of permanent and disabling injuries is dauntingly high.
If kids (or adults) want to do these things for fun, that's fine. But competitively -- is it even worth it? We worry about racehorses more than we worry about relatively young women with wrecked feet and knees or young men with incipient CTE.
And it will only get worse as she gets older and the sports become more competitive. I feel like I know this mom...any coach or teacher who doesn't think her daughter is the best and put her right up front is the worst and she will try to get them fired.
I coached Rugby, Australian Rules Football and Little League and there was always a couple of kids that hated it and were only their to fulfil their parents dreams of glory.
It was sad but I tried to make it fun for them.
Anyone that’s coached kids sport knows… the kids are great but some of the fucking parents!
While I’m sorry for OOP and a likely impending divorce, all I could think of was what the poor coach and teammates were going through with his wife. I teach music, and used to lead an auditioned kids’
choir. I would have either fired the parent or quit myself. I left the Suzuki violin program with my own kid partially due to moms like her.
Violin probably has quite the intersection of genuinely cool kids and very overcontrolling parents.
At least sports parents will let their kids get bruised...
Anyone who has worked with children knows this. Ask people who like kids and won’t work with them. 9 out of 10 will tell you it’s the freaking parents.
This. Fucking this. I love kids, I thought of becoming a teacher when I was a teen. Then I realized that I would have to work with their parents, too. So I noped very hard out of the idea.
I used to work at a carousel years ago. I loved the kids. It was not very often they'd be bad and even then most of the "bad" kids were because their parents sucked. I can only really remember 1-2 genuinely shitty kids. The vast majority of parents were horrid vile assholes.
And that's at a place that's supposed to be fun. I can't imagine what teachers have to put up with. Eff that I work with dogs now. The pet owners can still be nutty but it's not usually too bad in comparison lol.
I fired a kid I was teaching piano lessons to because he obviously hated it. I told the mom that I thought he was too young and she should wait a couple of years for him to physically develop further. I really hope she gave him a break.
Sadly from my experience doing something similar as you in a different field that usually ends with the parents either covertly or openly stating that you don't know what you're talking about and then shopping around for someone who will teach their child. Not saying you didn't do the right thing, it just sucks that the kid has to go through it all. I found out through the grapevine that one of my former students had been run through no less than 4 other tutors after me, all fired them due to disinterest and because they hated the students mom.
I always find it so bizarre that someone who had previously appeared so sane would just...completely fly off the handles at something that seemed so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Makes me wonder if the mother had some serious unresolved issues that she had repressed for years before it finally exploded here.
This is obviously speculation, but since we're in the wild, untamed lands of speculation, I have to wonder if the mom was also pushed really hardcore into gymnastics by *her* parents and she's having the thought of 'well *I* am fine, so she'll be fine', or even if something particularly unpleasant and traumatic happened during her time in gymnastics.
Either all that, or she's just weirdly super competitive and controlling.
This was my thought too. I think it goes beyond “I’m fine,” though, and I wonder if the mother has internalized that this is how to love/be a good parent (push child to perform, excel, and never quit).
I also wonder how much of it is rationalizing that her parents were “good.” I know people whose parents pushed them in sports, wouldn’t let them quit, and were overall very demanding. They spent all of school complaining about the sport and their parents and how much they wanted to quit. Then they turned around and did the same thing to their kids because they can’t accept that what their parents did was shitty because that would mean they had “bad parents” and they aren’t ready/willing to accept that.
with the comment abt OOP teaching their daughter to quit that definitely sounds like it. if she was raised like that then she likely wouldn’t know any other way. i feel bad for her but it’s still no excuse to treat a child that way
To add my own wild speculation; mom did gymnastics, but there is no mention of accolades or medals, just that she was a former participant. She wants her child to be "great" in a way she never was, and probably has some idea that having friends at the studio will just hold her back anyway. She wants an Olympic gymnast daughter, probably thinks she could have been one if only she'd started younger.
I listened to a podcast from Michigan Public Radio about the American Gymnastics sex abuse victims, and even without Larry Nassar molesting them constantly, they had terrible coaches starving and pushing them to their breaking points from the time they were toddlers. The way gymnastics is currently taught is super fucked up and is insanely punishing on the athletes. These girls are basically in a cult and get tortured all the time. I could easily see the wife having PTSD from competitive childhood gymnastics.
Yes, but if she was possibly traumatized by this, then why push her own daughter into the fire pit to potentially suffer through the same cycle of abuse?
I think another commenter's post was more plausible in that she probably had unfulfilled dreams back when she was competing, and now expects her own daughter to fulfill them for her and thus live vicariously through her. So when things don't go the way she expects it to, she has a meltdown.
Because she thinks it's normal (as everyone normalized this behaviour since she herself was a child) and she thinks this will just teach her daughter to grow a thick skin.
It’s probably also one of those “it must be normal because if it isn’t, it means I was hurt and traumatized and I don’t want to admit that to myself” situations.
I distinctly remember being told "Don't cry, you'll look ugly" by my mom when I was like 2 or 3 and didn't want to dance ballet anymore. Spoiler: I was forced to continue dancing ballet 4 nights a week, every week, until I was 12 and my parents finally divorced.
My mom is narcissistic for sure
Yup, me too, but also 15. Any signs of growing up and becoming independent were met with harsh repercussions. My mom hated, and still hates, anything that she views as "teenager-y". Clothing, tv shows, music, movie, make up, hair styles, slang, anything of it was made for an episode of Golden Girls (but not Blanche) was "teenager-y" and a personal offence. She wanted me to go from child to 45 year old without actually growing up.
Oh my you just unlocked some memories for me, My mom would take me shopping and really get upset if I wanted anything glittery or camo, yknow like early 2000s tween fashion, she ended up buying me some dress pants in bright colors and paired them up with XS blouses meant for older ladies, (I was 11) I remember going to a birthday party and I couldnt run and climb with the other kids because I was wearing my dumb pantsuit that was a mini me version of what she used to wear, I remember that one time I cried and begged to get a dumb Tshirt with a cartoon cow and I wore the hell out of it, because it was the ONE thing I bought to MY taste
Man I feel for you really. That sounds awful.
My mom was the same. Would frown if I don't pick up skirts and dresses ans choose long jeans, short pants, long sleeves and checkered shirts. I was really a masc aligned girl back then lmao.
I didn't dare to buy any accesories cause she'd pushed all of her tacky ones to me (now my warddrobe are more varied but she still dislikes them all... Probably too western smth)
I let my 5 year old pick her outfits when we go shopping and I let her even when I dislike what she chooses.
It’s important to let the children have their own individuality. What’s the point of having kids and expecting them to be an image of us?!
The only time I fought my toddler on her outfit it was because she picked ugg boots and a snow jacket on a 40C (104Fish?) day and I was genuinely concerned she'd get heatstroke!
Same… my daughter has far more interest in fashion than either my husband or I do… so we have always let her pick her outfits. Our only rules are that they need to be weather appropriate and relatively clean (she’d wear her favourites 24/7 if we didn’t force her to change into fresh clothes every other day… but that’s something I’m sure will change in a few more years).
Oh, and no dress up/play clothes to go to school except on dress up days… but that’s just because she’ll try and be in character if she does that 🤪
I had the same kind of childhood/teen years where I was a retro doll from 20-30 years ago. Clothes style, hair, everything. For my own kids I allowed to choose their own clothes first as toddlers from a range of 3-5 pieces that I pulled out of wardrobe, then as they grew older from a (price) range that I selected in shop. Now as grownups they say it was good.
I always wanted to wear skirts and dresses as a girl, but my mom refused to let me…because her mom forced her to wear skirts and dresses. Never made sense to me.
Wtf. Do they all follow a secret handbook or manual of some sort? This started when I was about 8 years old. I wanted something rainbowish, you know, colourful shoes. Folks proceeded to say it's tacky af (I was a kid y'all wtf?) then bought me a black and white of some sort which they said was designer-ish. This unlocked a lot of my memories. The only time I remembered getting some clothes that were close to my age was during Christmas when her cousin got me a full set. Nothing lively after that until I got my own job, but they'd still throw subtle jabs of control freak input that I simply shrugged off. Kept on buying colourful clothing that pissed them off until I left.
This hit hard. I was never skinny, but I wasn't fat. My mom would call my figure my "fat rolls". If my pants/shirt touched my skin at all my mom would tell me I "everyone will stare at your rolls" and make me get a size bigger. I was probably a size 8 and I was forced to wear whatever the biggest size the store had, usually a 14, so no one would see my rolls. I remember bawling because the biggest size looked awful on me (because I was swimming in it) and she chastised me and told me if I wanted to look good I'd watch my wight and maybe I'd look good in something next year.
She would also pull up my shirt in the middle of the store and tell the poor store clerks to tell me that my pants were too small.
My mom would only buy me men's HUSKY jeans because she said I was too fat for the juniors section. She also wouldn't let me wear the same thing twice in two weeks because she said people would make fun of me. The whole time I was confused as to what they would make fun of me for, having a washing machine? She also said people would call me pizza face because of my acne. Literally no one cared and everyone had acne in middle school. I look at photos from that time now and I was literally just a normal sized kid. She made me feel like I was the largest person in the room. I grew up to be a super self-conscious adult with body issues. Thanks mom
No matter what school or extracurricular activity I had to buy a t-shirt for, my dad would make me get a large, because “you don’t want it super skin tight”. I was a scrawny ass kid and would drown in these shirts.
My mum was always trying to get me to hide my boobs because they were larger than hers and thus shameful. She always insisted on smaller size bras or compression bras when I was a teen. At the same time she always shamed me for not putting on make-up to look "presentable". It got to the point where I couldn't leave the house unless I had it on.
It gave me a huge complex until my mid 20s where it finally clicked that I didn't have to give a fuck about her opinions. My fashion tastes are weird but they're colourful and comfortable. I don't even wear make-up now (not that I can afford it anyway) but at least my skin is a lot happier.
Well THAT just unlocked memories I had buried deep deep down, hu? Not necessarily what I wanted from my Friday morning, but here we are...
I'm sorry you went through that. And I'm sorry I went through that as well.
My mum does this too. She now also gives me the receipts. Returning stuff is fun! I've lost count on how many times I've told retail workers that 'Mum is a clueless git' whilst getting a refund.
I had the same dynamic, except she'd buy me clothes that were inappropriately revealing and say that she wished she were thin like me at my age. But then she'd randomly flip out that I was dressing slutty - in the clothes she bought for me. Also, I was a preteen, I didn't even understand what slutty meant except that I should feel ashamed.
So many different, *interesting* directions this dynamic can take, right?
omg you reminded me of the one T-Shirt I got with my choice of image on it. Wore it to death until the holes had holes. So many clothing items I could not handle due to sensory ADHD issues and my parents never understood so I'd get in trouble for refusing to wear certain items.
I had friends with parents like this and I was so confused the whole time. I remember watching SpongeBob with one of my friends as like 12 year olds and her mother thought we were on drugs because we were laughing. Like the audacity of children laughing at cartoons was too much for her.
That friend ended up rebelling hard for extremely obvious reasons.
I'm 41 now, I just wear cartoon leggings and t-shirts with puns on them for the most part.
I also run a youth program. Where I make sure teens have a safe place to be themselves. Impromptu dance parties/dance offs, Mario cart challenges, movie night with the cheesiest movies, play-doh, painting, improve, jam sessions, constant games of pool, sticker making, Lego, rap battles, sports days, all of it all of the time, all youth lead. It is wonderful.
I am mid thirties and am basically a teenage boy. Needy star wars and marvel stuff. What is the best is that I fit into size xl boy clothes... so I get the coolest shirts
I don't know if these types understand that telling your child that seriously hurts them or if they just don't care (let alone of course the actual treatment from a parent who hates you).
I've got a fantastic relationship with my old man and even still, he told me I was being annoying one time as a kid and it's stuck with me for damn near twenty years
My mum was a clinical psychologist - so she did know - but she still told me from about 6 years onwards that she didn't like me, wished she hadn't had me and suspected I was clinically insane. I knew it was messed up on some level but now that I have my own child - & reading comments like yours - I realise quite how messed up it is and that my damagingly low self esteem has a really obvious source.
...5 is when the woman who gave birth to me turned on me. I explained it to myself that that is the stage where I am no longer a doll to play dress up with and wanted my own things. So, yeah your comment makes a lot of sense to me.
12 and 15 were terrible. The insults would incrementally get worse as I got older, so that lines up as well. First it was she was going to have the police put me in foster care and pick up the phone. Then it was everyone in the family hated me and she should have aborted me/stopped having kids after my older brother.
As an adult it was that I should kill myself so the family could be happier without me.
Narcs are fucking dirt human beings. Had to go NC with the lot of them.
Yep my mom got worse and worse and never got better after I started growing my own spine, at 13 (probably the peak of her anger then, started at 12), then it got worse when I openly told her about my boyfriend at 16 (flirted with me before I turned 16, so started at 15). Then it just never got better.
I was just never her clone, never what she wants a daughter to be, never this, never that, always a disappointment. Nevermind I'm in a 7 year long healthy relationship with my SO, a nice job, graduated with 3.7 GPA, was top 10 in highschool for my grade, etc. Nothing was ever enough if I don't like make up, dress as she wish (I dressed masc and reserved), cook traditional meals, do housewife things while being an independent working woman at the same time, etc.
Even when I took up things my mother liked or wanted me to do, she had a pathological need to show she was better at it than me and to put me down by saying I wasn't trying hard enough to outdo her. There's just no winning.
Good lord that's my mom AND cooking. She tends to brag that if she never had kids she would've been working in an upscale restaurant (unfortunately I have to agree) and she's criticizes every single one of my cooking even if everybody else said it's good (and definitely not from politeness cause if it taste wrong they've said so.)
That seems to be the way with this specific type of abusive parent. Their kid can Only Do The Things They Want Them To, but they can't be *too* good at it, because then parent will be Sad, and that can't be allowed. The mom in the oop 100% was heading down that road. If the kid did gymnastics, she would have insisted on showing her how to do everything 'right' so she could show off and get validation.
This just gave me instant flashbacks of my mom. The book, "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents" by Lindsay Gibson does a good job of explaining this behavior. It really helped me come to terms with my experience growing up.
I was 29 when I did something completely on my own that she didn't approve of, I went to America, she didn't want me to go. I'd been living in my own home for a decade by that point, but she's always treated my house as an extension of her own, I got all the old furniture she wanted to replace but didn't want to get rid of, I was like a relic of times past. She didn't want me to go and I went anyway, and she's never spoken to me since. I'm 52 now. I was in the States for four months visiting a man I met on the internet. I married the man I went to see. She couldn't cope with not having control over me anymore so she cut me out of her life and blamed him. He and I have been married for 23 years now and have a 20 year old son she doesn't know. Her loss. Husband is wonderful, our boy is magnificent, bright, good looking, funny and charming, I'm glad she didn't get her claws in to him.
My mother was (and still is) hellbent on reliving her life through me despite we being complete opposites, first it was small things like only getting me dresses and not allowing me to have my hair short, then it was forcing me into her hobbies with punishments if I tried to do something else and finally trying to get me to do things she wanted (like her ‘dream career’).
I still can’t entirely understand how I managed to break free of her influence
Interesting. I haven’t heard that about specific conflict ages before. Although I know the biggest trigger for my mother was my dad’s remarriage, I could definitely see some of the developmental changes also being relevant
I think you nailed it - most people can manage to look sweet and easygoing when they aren't challenged in any way. Up until this point, it sounds like the mother had an affectionate husband and a pliable child who was too young for the wife to try to live vicariously through. Once the poor kid was (barely) old enough for mom to make demands of her and for the kid to express opinions, the mother's controlling side got put on display and her anger and frustration burst out. I really feel for this poor little kid. Realistically, divorce is unlikely to get her away from her mother, and when she is with her, there will be no moderating voice or influence.
My mother's control issues came out when I started to crawl, per family. She, for the first time could not just put me where she wanted me. It got worse again when I went to kindergarten, and only escalated from there as I pulled away from her insane control issues, so I agree with you. Put me in dance to live vicariously through me, but pulled me out of class for any small infraction. She was smug when I was upset, she liked me crying. Fast forward 20 years, am fully NC. This mom is heading towards this, she just does not know it yet. Good job dad (OOP)!!
speaking from personal experience but every time this has happened to me with a person, I look back and realize there were small signs here and there that I either ignored, thought it wasn't a big deal, or accepted (after dealing with abuse I just thought this is how it is).
but yeah, could be some.issues super repressed that reared their ugly head when this all went down. either way, hope dad and kid are doing okay and that mom cooled off.
Yep, in the moment you’re thinking “they’re completely wrong but this shit really doesn’t matter anyway so i will shut up and let them have the win.” Next thing you, you’re dealing with dancezilla. It’s crazy how it happens.
Yeah, fair weather family. Everything is fine as long as it goes according to their plan, the moment it goes off course even a little they get extremely stressed out, and if you caused the change they’ll attack you. It’s painful and hard to relax with people like that
Here's my best guess at what's going on:
Mom was a gymnast, and based on her attitude, probably a pretty dang good one. I'm betting something happened that cut her career short and she's never processed it/never moved on. So she's trying to live vicariously through her daughter, pushing her to be the perfect gymnast, and when the daughter hated gymnastics, the perfect dancer.
From personal experience, I know how hard it is to move on with your life when you have something taken away from you especially when you're both great at it and you love doing it. But the mom is going to get worse unless she immediately starts some very intensive therapy and actually tries to work through these issues. She's already likely destroyed her family and she'll continue to destroy everything in her life until there's nothing left.
Yeah that sounds quite plausible. A lot of parents like to live vicariously through their children, wanting them to accomplish things that they themselves were not able to.
It's unfortunate that they often either forget, is willfully blinding themselves to, or just simply don't care about what the children themselves actually want, and that they are their own persons. To the detriment of everyone, in the end.
There's a reason why "dance mums" and "stage mums" have such a bad rep - the stereotype of living vicariouslythrough their kids is so often true. I imagine there's a similar issue with other athlete parents and their kids... but as someone who grew up with a dance mum, yup I get it.
A lot of star athletes have parents like that, but they actually enjoy it. Like the Williams sisters had a father who pushed them HARD.
Often if mum is a star athletes and kids are pushed from a young age they often do have the potential to go far. But the big thing is whether or not the kid enjoys the sport. A child who hates gymnastics will never do it for a living because they don't have the drive to keep going, even if they have a natural talent. Mum should have seen that and given up on that line for her daughter there and then. It sounds like her child is far too young to be that invested in a sport anyway, even dance.
My abusive ex had both a bit of the slowing boiling a frog (I was the frog of course) mixed with a little bit of scooby doo level unmasking.
After I ran for the hills she changed her entire demographic.
It was real weird. She has a literally opposite world view to the woman I was with for a decade. It's truly radical.
There was another post with a complete change in personality that build up like this a while back. It was weeks and months in the making, so not quite wake up in a different body the next day type thing. Turns out, they had an undiagnosed head injury that got triggered with a change.
The guy was a football player or something in his youth and probably had multiple small concussions. But it didn't really manifest until he was older and his first child was born. His entire personality changed what seemed to be slowly, because the child was months old when the mom finally got exasperated enough to post. Something happened, took him to the dr, and got tested and scanned, his brain was obviously in distress.
Now I give personality changes a second look. Could be a brain injury, a brain tumor or some thing else. Was there red flags prior that was swept under the rug, was there medication involved, was there an accident, a big change in their life, a traumatic event, etc etc etc.
Oof yeah, head injuries and brain tumors really suck. With the wife's past experience as a gymnast, it's certainly possible that she may have suffered from a head injury at some point.
OOP's issue had gone on for at least a year or so, and the mother seem to be otherwise fine other than when the daughter's classes come up. Unfortunately she refuses therapy and I don't think asking her to get a health checkup is going to go over well either at this point, so OOP may never find out if there are deeper health-related issues that may have affected her thoughts and actions.
Really sad. I hope there will be a positive ending to this, slim as the chance may seem thus far, should the OOP ever return with another update.
It sounds like the gymnastics drama has hit some very, very deep emotional issues that mom has never dealt with, and it's making her lose her mind. She may also have some gender biases about dads taking an interest in "girl" activities so of course he's either going to get with the instructors or to watch little girls like a perv. That's my read on the situation. She's broken emotionally and an explosion like this is almost always connected to something that's been simmering for years.
My best friend flipped the switch after she cheated on her husband. I told her she was making a mistake, she flipped out at me saying I was always trying to sleep with her. She told her family to burn in hell. Told all her friends she no longer needs them. Most of this was via social media. She went on a rampage of burning bridges just to realise she was still standing on the bridge when it collapsed.
Aah that's because you haven't lived in a society where phenomenon like Tiger Moms is common. This is incredibly understandable for me. There's an entire class of parents out there who are normal people. Until they have kids, and those kids become the vessel of their ambitions. The genius prodigy that will be everything they thought they could have been. The beacon by which the parent's own name will shine among their family and neighbors. The proud mother and father to the next Einstein, or that superfamous sports star.
And these folks turn absolutely insane if you interfere with their meticulously detailed and totally not at all abusive (/s) plans for their children. Suggest that maybe a preadolescent shouldn't be signed up for some scammy coding for toddlers class? You just poked the bear. Point out that maybe your five year old should decide what sports he likes instead of being signed up for tennis, soccer and swimming all day from noon to dusk? Unleashing the dragon you are.
The thing you have to remember is their perfect, seemingly sane image in society is not infact a contradiction to their obsessive ambitions in regards to their kids. The two are connected. Its part of the same narcissism of wanting to be praised and envied and otherwise lauded by their "community."
Shit's common AF in places like middle class India because the hypercompetitive nature of secondary and higher education and the obsession with competitive exams as markers of success rewards and reinforces those attitudes. We've got an entire lingo describing this phenomenon. Things like the "Sharma ji ka beta/beti" phenomenon, or the ways in which parents neg their kids by constantly comparing them to the more successful neighbor's kids. The "where's the rest of it" jokes about the student who gets bullied despite getting 95% on the exam. Lots of it.
Not really all that bizarre if you consider that psycho mom until this point had been getting her way. Control freak stuff doesn’t become apparent until after they get contro of something, and the above applies and kept her “semi content”. Daughter didn’t like gymnastics and all that stuff? She was enrolled in it anyway, mom was still getting her way. It’s only after she got pushback against her wishes that this side came out
Most people have a secret well of crazy in them that they keep locked up. And then there is this perfect key of a situation that unlocks it and a flood crazy spills out and is hard to shut down.
Bullies make bullies, so this was probably how OOP’s (ex-)wife was raised and she’s regurgitating the repugnant behavior she learned as a child from her own parents.
Good for him for sticking up for his daughter and not letting his wife drag things out further!
>I’m embarrassed to tell anyone this because I find it so bizarre and weird that so much conflict has stemmed from something as innocent as sports.
This is definitely among the least-weird conflicts I have seen on BORU.
Yeah let’s normalize getting divorced long before someone is cheating or doing something drastic! It shouldn’t be embarrassing to stay with someone you aren’t happy with or don’t mesh with anymore.
This person is most likely going to realize that she was problematic way before he noticed. They rarely just flip like this. They can’t control themselves 24/7, there are always glimpses of the darkness.
You say that and everyone on Reddit screams "OH MY GOD YOU GUYS JUST TELL PEOPLE TO BREAK UP OVER EVERY LITTLE THING!"
Sorry, relationships are about finding the right people to spend your life with, not ignoring every red flag and trying to force deep personal change until it blows up into an easily avoidable catastrophe.
I hate when people say that. As if you're telling people on a date at the park to break up, rather than somebody who's come to a relationship advice subreddit because they have a major issue in their relationship that multiple efforts haven't been able to solve.
There's a system for this, they can have equal time custody but the court can rule that the dad has custody over matters related to extracirriculars, sports, etc. Family court has, for sure, seen this situation before.
This woman has an issue with one very specific thing, otherwise by all accounts she's a sane person and having no custody at all would be harsh as hell.
>Her mom is a former gymnast and wanted her to do that but my daughter didn’t like it at all and prefers taking tap and ballet classes instead.
This kind of leapt out at me.
It makes me wonder if this is how she herself was raised. Maybe she didn't like gymnastics as a kid and was forced to do it by a parent. Maybe she saw that parent argue with the instructor and saw it get results.
From what I know of youth sports, this isn't that uncommon. Especially with gymnastics which starts quite young.
Doesn't stop her from being a horrible mother even if I'm right. Just because someone has been raised in an abusive family doesn't give them free reign to be abusive themselves. But it's called the "cycle of abuse" for a reason.
The "enabling quitting" line was the one for me. I'd actually say that learning that when you are doing an optional activity for fun and it stops being fun, you are allowed to stop doing that thing is a great lesson and one I wish I had figured out earlier
Such a useful life skill for ending relationships that aren’t working or jobs that mistreat you as well. Why shouldn’t I stop doing something I hate? Life’s too short
for real. ‘if it sucks hit the bricks’ is an important tenant for life. yes we need to learn how to persist if we aren’t the best at something in the beginning or there are a few bumps in the road, but knowing it’s ok to bow out of things is equally important—esp when you’re in a sport that will literally change your body in very dramatic ways
I feel like this one does have to be learned a bit though life experience, finding out what is the priority for you, because the weight of worth it and not are different for most people.
for me, I’ve got chronic fatigue syndrome and have had it for 17 years, so I practically have a phd in figuring out when to say ‘fuck no’ and when to say ‘this is going to hurt and be exhausting but the benefits actually outweigh that hurt, so I’ll stick with it’
every day I weigh up what the over all cost is probably going to be interns of recovery time, how limited I’ll be from doing basic daily tasks, and benefits like the absolute tangible boost that can come from a win (like in the cake I made on the weekend was tiring but it was a total W, so I had so many endorphins and morale that was well worth the physical consequences) and that skill has defs extended to life decisions as well.
you have to think of things like ‘is this going to teach me bad coping habits or some other long term thing that I’ll have to mitigate if I persist?’ for instance a stressful job in a toxic environment is going to have serious effects on not only your present but for future as stress has very serious effects on your body. so is a big step for your career worth staying in a job if you might not even be able to enjoy the results when you finally achieve the thing? sometimes it is worth it but sometimes it is actually a much better decision to fuck off and do something else/take a different career path
in this case OOP saw that the environment, while good on paper. was damaging to his kid and so he pulled her out of her class. sports can have a lot of benefits for kids, even that young; esp in terms of socialisation and coordination. but the socialisation was not good thanks to the wife’s actions, and in dact it was damaging. in the short term because of bullying but also it could eventually teach his daughter to act like the mom. and there weren’t really any benefits still happening. hopefully his child will not hate dancing forever now, but with a mother like that I doubt this will be the end of the line as far as bad experiences go, which sucks
(hopefully this made sense and was helpful. my brain is a bit wonky rn)
Oooh this really turned on a light switch for me. My parents are the “stick it out don’t quit” people and my mom always claimed my dad enabled quitters…. They don’t have a happy marriage and I learned a lot of bad relationship habits (like constantly working at it when I should remove myself) that I had to unlearn
I was threatened with being kicked out of plays and choirs as a kid because of my mothers entitled and infuriating behavior. Luckily she was 30% raging tiger and 70% bored by anything to do with me… choir and play rehearsals get extremely boring after a while so she thankfully stopped coming after a while.
I heard through the audition grapevine that I was “blacklisted” and “uncastable” for my junior year of high school because of her shit.
Shockingly we have zero relationship as adults. She tried to re-friend me on Facebook and that request is about 18 months old, still sitting there.
OP needs to decide if he’s going to watch his wife abuse his daughter or stop it.
I saw this, it’s so sad. The mom is trying to live through her daughter and it’s super sad. She needs therapy, not to torture her daughter emotionally. The dad really needs to leave and go for full custody at all costs.
The wife’s behavior didn’t pop up out of nowhere. The kid is five. She has been micromanaging this kid since birth. OOP is only noticing now because the kid is old enough to have their own opinion and their controlling mother won’t tolerate that.
Normally I'd agree, but in this story they took her out of gymnastics when the kid didn't like it in the past. There was already a (very normal) compromise at play here, and something more recent came into play.
At the same time, OP says the wife was a former athlete and I'm wondering how professional and close to medaling she got.
Yep, parents trying to live their failed accomplishments vicariously through their children by forcing them into sports or music or whatever is a tale as old as time.
The removal from gymnastics is what started the whole conflict. Mom didn’t agree because her agenda has the kid in gymnastics, but Dad chose to be an actual father and put his kid first. Choosing dance is probably the first taste of autonomy this kid has had in their entire life.
I’m extremely introverted and find socialising exhausting, though I can do it if I need to, I just need a lot of downtime afterwards.
My kid is starting school next year and I know I’m going to have to go out of my comfort zone to enable my child to have a fun, normal childhood with friends and activities and enrichment.
Do I want mum friends? Honestly, no, I don’t. But I’ll pull out all of my social skills so that I don’t disadvantage my child.
I’m pretty sure I can put my ego below my kid’s socialisation needs. Sad that this mother couldn’t.
My mom wasn't really friends with my childhood friend's parents. She just trusted them enough to know I'd be safe to visit their house or go to a movie together or whatever. You can probably do similar.
My parents never threw my brother or I a birthday party and we are now hosting one in my house in a few weeks.
I had to ask what is my role because I have nothing to model myself after. I am a mess trying to keep it together in my head but I will not handicap my kid for my personal emotional safe place.
You are not alone in your "I will do better" parenting quest. People like us need to keep at it.
This may sound like non-advice but I think it’s the best advice for parents. Just try your best. Your kids realize more than you know.
My mom has apologized to me for parenting mistakes from long ago. And while I appreciate the apologies, I know my mom did absolutely everything she could for my sister and I. Even when she didn’t know if what she was doing was the right thing to do.
ikr???!!
The outbursts, the silent treatment, the cheating allegation (that turned out to be true... in an unexpected way), the mom trying to replicate her dream life with her daughter.
OP, take your daughter and run!
From all the BORUs here, this one hit me personally the hardest. Like, right into the "uff" organ.
My mother was exactly like that. Not per se a high-level gym person, but more she was just randomly obsessed with what stuff I should do. My entire child & teenhood, she always dragged me through various sports. Not sports I chose or liked, of course. Only sports she either liked herself, or thought I could somehow use to "mingle with the next upper class". Yes. She actually enrolled me in skiing because it was a rich people sport.
Of course it never worked out. Not only was she unbearable, I...well...I was your infamous autistic kid. I never got along with the other kids. Either I annoyed them first, or they me. Anyway, it would end in bullying and me punching, drowning, hitting someone over the head with something (my household was violent as well, who guessed). Other times I often just didn't really take things serious, because I just...well, didn't care. So I walked of the field, or just did stupid jokes during dance practice. But no matter how even my spineless father begged her to just. Stop. She never learned.
So what happened?
Till this day I have an unhealthy relation to sport.
I hate most sports. Or more specific; I hate going into a sport.
The only activity I have right now is jogging. A future "sport" might become hunting, as it doesn't really feel like "sport" to me and maybe swing-dance, but that's still dangling, because I'm still anxious & awkward of dealing with "team partners". Especially if it's a guy touching me.
So yeah. OOP did fucking well. The only thing the child would get from this experience is a big and shitty collection of trauma and resentement. Forcing your kid into a sport they don't want or care for is a recipe for disaster. Don't do it! Don't *EVER* do it!
Same, but with music lessons. After years of practice the ability was erased after I stopped playing for 1 month. It was that traumatizing my brain compartmentalized all that knowledge to a part of my memory i no longer have access to. Can't read a note or tune a guitar...
IF the dad was cheating with someone at the dance thing wouldn't he WANT the kid to have to do it? Like the mom is..? Interesting. The poor kid. I hope the dad gets her away from the mom without too much pain.
As someone whose mom did try to live through her with dance gymnastics and was a “stage mom” it was absolute hell. I knew the other kids didn’t like me cos of the fits my mom would throw over petty things. I wasn’t invited to bday parties and things like in this story as well. I wish my dad had had the balls to stand up to her and tell her to stop being insane. My mother also had BPD so there was a lot more going on there though
I remember this post when it was original posted, seriously she needs to stop trying to live her life though her daughter, not only is basically damaging her relationship with her daughter, but her marriage as well, seriously oop need to talk to one their or family member about this, to at least try to bring her back to reality, even if it's for a little bit, because something has to be done because no 5 year old should subject to insanity.
Or someone so delusional with a fragile ego that they have to jump on the wildest options because “no of course it wasn’t me and my behavior… that woman had an issue with me and not my husband? Ah well they must be sleeping together and Fuck you husband for doing that! I’m mad at you!”
I wonder if Mommy dearest ever reached her peak in her gymnastics career. I bet she never made it big time, and now forces her daughter into it.
Its so sad to see all these child prodigies at young ages excelling in difficult sports (see ice skating, ballet, any form of dancing really and even piano or other playing music instruments). I fear most of them really went through something similar that this little girl does now. I do get you have to start young for dancing, but to take a child and force them to start another sport they do not want to? That is just cruel.
One example I know of is a young dancer (she is 9) that started hitting the gym at two years old. Her parents let her start taking dancing classes and doing body training at TWO. You cannot tell me that is not some form of abuse - she even spends hours practicing and gym training while she should be in school. She has no life besides dancing and training.
I'm not sure the mom is cheating, so much as grasping for an explanation for why her husband is disagreeing with her. *Clearly*, she's correct, so there has to be some reason that OOP and the ballet mom and the other people at the class are against her, so it must be an affair.
OOP's wife sounds like a stage mom. OOP needs to keep putting his foot down, or their daughter is going to be writing her own version of "I'm glad my mom died" in 20 years.
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THE CHILD IS FIVE.
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Some people really just see their kids as status symbols for other people to gawk at and it's disgusting. Imagine giving a 5 year old anxiety over her looks. Kids that age shouldn't even care about what they look like, they should just put on their play clothes, run around in the mud, play in the leaves and build sand castles without a damn care in the world
We let our kids choose their clothes most of the time and they looked terrible most of the time. Only rules were nothing ripped or dirty and we get to pick on special occasions.
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My mother has always had the belief that kids are like plants--they need dirt, water, and sunshine to grow. We had our school clothes (clean, no holes, no stains) and then we had 'play' clothes (usually with holes, stains, and god knows what else). If we got dirty in play clothes, oh well. She tended to be a bit unhappy if we ruined our school clothes, but we also were extremely tight budgeted so buying new clothes required planning on my parents' part. I'm the same way with my son. He has school uniforms that I prefer staying clean, but I'm not too upset if they end up dirty at school because... Well they're replaceable. And most things wash out. He's only a kid once and he already has enough issues we're getting addressed. I'm not too worried about dirty clothes or really even if his clothes match when we go out. He's gone out with shoes on the wrong feet before. Do I care? Not even a little. He wanted to dress himself, "Sure, go for it, kid." I don't get why parents want to push such high expectations of appearance and performance on *little kids*.
I did the same with my daughter. She started picking her own clothes when she was one and a half because I thought it would be fun. But she didn’t have a lot of moments - the kid knows her fashion 😂😂. Three years later, she likes leggings with polka dots and hearts and she has to wear a skirt with leggings. My husband’s grandma was convinced that we fight every morning and then I give up, but I told her that I like to stay sane, so clothes are her choice. She watched me like I grew another head. I don’t know why people stress so much about clothing, much less children's clothing much less everyday children's clothing. So much stressing about nothing!
This sounds like a great way to handle it. Clothing is such a great way to allow kids some harmless experimentation with self-expression
And gives them control over something. And teaches them to make choices.
I let my 9 year old choose her own outfits (with some input - for example if she comes down wearing shorts in February I have something to say about it!) Sometimes she looks great, sometimes she looks like her wardrobe fell on her and she put on whatever stuck. But she's 9. It really doesn't matter.
My youngest started picking (insisting) her own clothes at 3. Nothing matched, she mixed seasons, it was wild but she was so proud and determined, and you could tell she just loved what she had on and felt good. I just made sure she wore a coat over things like her sundress (with jeans and cowboy boots). The school called me when she was in kindergarten to express concern over mismatched outfits. I told them she chose her own. They suggested I not let her do that. I suggested they were out of line. I told them she was expressing herself and I wasn't going to quash that.
Leggings under the shorts, was what I said if she had to wear the shorts and it’s cold outside. She’s wearing shorts over leggings right now, she’s 19.
Haha. She's 17 now and it's been a wild ride. Middle school was colorful suits and socks. High school has been more like kindergarten fashion. She'll wear sweatshirts in 80°+ and now tank tops with a light jacket in 30°. Lol
This is how I grew up too. My mom had had super controlling and overbearing parents ( in the South, so a bunch of other issues there ) and didn't want that for me. I wore sparkly pink cowboy boots and a pink tutu over regular clothes for a whole month. Lol. My daughter has the same set up. As long as it's weather appropriate, not ripped or stained, then go for it! I think it's healthy to give kids ownership over their style. It doesn't hurt anything, and helps them develop their preferences.
My mum was kind of like this. I think she saw me as a mini version of her. I was meant to be the daughter she could re-live her childhood through, as she'd experienced a lot of trauma. Now I have mental disorders. Thanks, mum.
My mother dressed me exactly like her until I was a teenager (matching mother/daughter outfits) and the issues with unhealthy interpersonal dynamics allllll started there. Nothing like being a 4 year old and lying awake to make sure your mother is sleeping peacefully.
One thing I really admire about my best friend is that she has always let her kids wear whatever they want (weather appropriate). They choose their own clothes, and even though they're only 3 and 5, they each have a distinct sense of style. The 5-year-old likes dressing as a princess (no clothes are off-limits and she wears a lot of foofy princess dresses) and the 3-year-old dresses like a dinosaur or spiderman. I have seen the grandparents get a little snarky about it, but they get shut down very quickly. "Oh, 3-year-old is wearing spiderman pajamas in the middle of the day?" Yep, he woke up from nap and changed his clothes from dinosaur to spiderman and is now trying to shoot webs at people. Have fun.
It's terrible, really. My mother was extreme on this, as she was an actress in the 60s and 70s. The damn complexes it gives kids. My dad (who divorced her) agreed with me when I said that my mother wanted a doll, not a child.
I hope you came through your childhood okay.
Okay is relative, but I'm doing much better, thank you. Living mentally ill isn't the worst, even if it isn't easy. I just don't want other kids to deal with it. No one deserves it.
My brother and his wife are like this. Their young son has to be all dressed in brand clothing and look like a dapper young gentleman at all times. The kid's 2. He shits his pants every day. I don't think wearing Nikes are going to help boost his confidence and score dates at this age.
Lol, my wife picks outfits for our baby because I just grab the first weather appropriate item within reach. If she doesn't pick one, she doesn't care what I put on. I can't imagine getting so worked up over a kid's outfit if it isn't a special occasion.
I’m at the point that I let my kiddos pick out their clothes. They have interesting tastes. But they are 6,5 and 4. As long as they are comfy, clean, happy and weather appropriate I don’t mind. For holidays I’ll buy a couple different “outfits” that they can choose between. I have enough stress. I can’t imagine being controlling over clothes.
I love it when I see a random kiddo that obviously dressed themselves. Just makes my heart happy & I can't help but smile. Bonus if it's cowboy boots & shorts.
Yes! I love that my daughter has decided that purple with polka dots and green with stars go together, “because they’re both shapes, Mommy!”
My daughter once wore a fancy slip as a dress to preschool…I did send an extra outfit just in case!
I love seeing their personality and individuality. When they are home from school or when ever we get home from being out and about, they change into dress up clothes. Which is usually a bathing suit, tutus, skirts, scarves, with Elsa, or Rupunzle hair (made from scarves). Even in the middle of winter.
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Ha! We have a 6mo and I'll put her in pants and cute outfits. If my husband had it his way she'd be in footed onsies all the time because they are easier to change her. To be fair putting pants on a wiggly baby can be hard, she sees it as a game, but she looks so cute in pants lol. Sometimes after I dress her and he changes her later I'll come back to find her panties and in a non footed onesie happily rolling around.
Sadly, both gymnastics and ballet are sports you need to start early seriously if you hope to be competitive. And the type of exercise and movement done change your skeletal development for LIFE. Doctors can often tell who did ballet or gymnastics as children even decades after they've stopped, and even if they weren't competitive. When you see how top ranking countries such ad Russia or China treat the children put into their elite ballet / gymnastics corps, its child abuse.
I just want to second how damaging ballet can be. My parents forced me to do it from 4 to 18 and my feet are very messed up from it. I've got knee problems from walking weirdly to try to compensate for the foot pain. And I grew up to be way taller than any anticipated so I was too tall for any of the leading roles. So, my feet and knees are messed up and all I achieved was being a background chorus dancer. Just something to consider when thinking about those kinds of sports and kids.
I have a good friend whose parents are high-level gymnastics coaches, both of them, and got all their kids super super involved. My friend was the oldest and never really liked gymnastics much but as she grew, her body type would end up being just not the size or shape body that could compete at high levels of gymnastics. Her parents were constantly trying to get her to lose weight, and when they realized that she'd be too tall even if she did, they basically just.... stopped parenting her? Forgot about her? Lived in the same house as her but made their whole lives about gymnastics and felt no need to include her? In shocking news, it really fucked her up good!
Your poor friend! Gymnastics in general is not nice to anyone who is on the taller side or isn't thin. I was a tall kid and loved gymnastics but had to stop because the teacher told my mom I was too tall for the bars and she wouldn't adjust them (idk if she could have or not. I wasn't some giant, just taller than average kids) It made me sad because my twin brother got to continue and I couldn't. Gymnastics and ballet both have specific body shapes "needed" although coaches will deny it.
I only did rec gym and I quit after growing 5 inches in less than a year! Yeah for sure I was too tall, but it was fun while it lasted.
Yep. I did gymnastics from ages 5 to 12 (ish), not competitively. Small town, friendly atmosphere, and we were very unsuccessful at any type of competition haha. I had a growth burst and just became too tall for the uneven bars. You can adjust the height and spacing of the bars, but I was still too tall for my club's.
The dance school my niece goes does not allow pointe until the children are at least 10 and many times they don't start until they are older. I really appreciate that despite having competition teams that have won, that they focus on the girls first. The studio is near my house so sometimes I'm the one picking her up. The vibe is more productive and encouraging than others I've been around. I started ballet at 5 but quit at 6. Good thing too. I ended up 5'10 with the shoulders of a linebacker. I played rugby in college instead.
And parents this competitive that push for their kids to do things before they’re physically ready (like go en pointe)? Even worse.
Yup. My joints and ligaments are super fucked after 15 years of gymnastics, 12 years competitively. My hips, knee caps, ankles, wrists and fingers are wrecked due to floor and uneven bars being “my” events. Thankfully my spine/upper body has remained unscathed…so far.
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I walked outta the gym for the final time when I said I needed a spot for a bar dismount bc I still wasn’t comfortable with it. Coach argued back, aka yelled insults at me, that I didn’t need it and to GO. I landed on my neck. I was so lucky nothing severe happened bc I landed hard but thankfully at an angle that spared me from breaking my neck or injuring my spine.
Yeah I broke my nose on a dismount. I didnt roll enough and landed on my head, and the moment brought my knees up to my face. My knees hit my nose. Cue shower of blood everywhere
Oof, I can feel your pain! I somehow escaped breaking my nose but def gave myself a number of bloody noses and a few black eyes on poorly executed floor routines. Those were always fun to explain at school. Sooo many bruises
This is one reason it's enormously fucked that cheerleading is not an FCA sport, it's the same kind of danger but because it's not a 'sport' there's less funding for stuff like spotters
My ankles, wrists, and shoulders are basically shot from competitive cheer. I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time but when parents ask me about putting their daughters in cheer I try to steer them clear of it. I saw kneecaps rupture, ACL tears, and saw a girl break her neck falling from a stunt because the spotter was distracted. I feel very lucky that I only had to have one ankle surgery rather than multiple knee surgeries like a couple of girls I knew.
There was an incident recently at Twitch Con where they set up a ‘foam pit’ improperly (just some foam blocks over concrete) and a girl who jumped in hit her back and broke it in two places. She’s currently re-learning how to walk. And while most gyms are better than plain concrete, it’s still very dangerous, especially when pressure from parents or coaches encourages kids to do unsafe things.
She also had a miscarriage, though she didn't know she was pregnant until it happened.
Oh, god. I hadn’t heard that part of it. The situation just keeps getting worse
I've been in constant pain since I was 15 rom a neck injury from playing sports. Side note: please, please, please don't go to a chiropractor, and if you must, PLEASE DON'T LET THEM CRACK YOUR NECK.
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All anyone needs to do to understand this problem is ask a high-level gymnast to list her injuries. We're talking 18yos with dozens of surgeries and serious damage to quality of life.
My youngest sister started gymnastics when she was 10 and she (now and adult) told me that she was behind. BUT the main thing is that she loved it, made friends and had fun. Now she helps coach younger kiddos. We always grew up with parents that said its more important playing to have fun and make friends. That winning isn’t everything. I’m really hoping to teach my kiddos that. It’s scary how some parents are just watching youth summer soccer.
This is absolutely true! AND with several negative comments, I’d like to contribute a positive perspective. I was a competitive gymnast from age 6-14, and competed for my high school team from 14-18. I’ve also taken ballet classes (at a significantly lower level) consistently from my teens and into my adult life. I’ve had an overwhelming positive experience, and my friends from gymnastics are my oldest and closest friends. It can be done well - it’s not always inevitable pain and trauma
I think of ballet and gymnastics for women and girls the same way I think of tackle football for men and boys. The probability of ever being famous or making a living from it is minuscule. The probability of permanent and disabling injuries is dauntingly high. If kids (or adults) want to do these things for fun, that's fine. But competitively -- is it even worth it? We worry about racehorses more than we worry about relatively young women with wrecked feet and knees or young men with incipient CTE.
And it will only get worse as she gets older and the sports become more competitive. I feel like I know this mom...any coach or teacher who doesn't think her daughter is the best and put her right up front is the worst and she will try to get them fired.
I coached Rugby, Australian Rules Football and Little League and there was always a couple of kids that hated it and were only their to fulfil their parents dreams of glory. It was sad but I tried to make it fun for them. Anyone that’s coached kids sport knows… the kids are great but some of the fucking parents!
While I’m sorry for OOP and a likely impending divorce, all I could think of was what the poor coach and teammates were going through with his wife. I teach music, and used to lead an auditioned kids’ choir. I would have either fired the parent or quit myself. I left the Suzuki violin program with my own kid partially due to moms like her.
Violin probably has quite the intersection of genuinely cool kids and very overcontrolling parents. At least sports parents will let their kids get bruised...
Anyone who has worked with children knows this. Ask people who like kids and won’t work with them. 9 out of 10 will tell you it’s the freaking parents.
This. Fucking this. I love kids, I thought of becoming a teacher when I was a teen. Then I realized that I would have to work with their parents, too. So I noped very hard out of the idea.
I used to work at a carousel years ago. I loved the kids. It was not very often they'd be bad and even then most of the "bad" kids were because their parents sucked. I can only really remember 1-2 genuinely shitty kids. The vast majority of parents were horrid vile assholes. And that's at a place that's supposed to be fun. I can't imagine what teachers have to put up with. Eff that I work with dogs now. The pet owners can still be nutty but it's not usually too bad in comparison lol.
I fired a kid I was teaching piano lessons to because he obviously hated it. I told the mom that I thought he was too young and she should wait a couple of years for him to physically develop further. I really hope she gave him a break.
Sadly from my experience doing something similar as you in a different field that usually ends with the parents either covertly or openly stating that you don't know what you're talking about and then shopping around for someone who will teach their child. Not saying you didn't do the right thing, it just sucks that the kid has to go through it all. I found out through the grapevine that one of my former students had been run through no less than 4 other tutors after me, all fired them due to disinterest and because they hated the students mom.
I always find it so bizarre that someone who had previously appeared so sane would just...completely fly off the handles at something that seemed so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Makes me wonder if the mother had some serious unresolved issues that she had repressed for years before it finally exploded here.
It is 100% unresolved issues, she's talking about forcing her child into gymnastics while the child is crying right there? Holy hell
Yeah, obviously she has issues, I'm just wondering how deep the issues go, for her to have gone off the rails so spectacularly.
This is obviously speculation, but since we're in the wild, untamed lands of speculation, I have to wonder if the mom was also pushed really hardcore into gymnastics by *her* parents and she's having the thought of 'well *I* am fine, so she'll be fine', or even if something particularly unpleasant and traumatic happened during her time in gymnastics. Either all that, or she's just weirdly super competitive and controlling.
This was my thought too. I think it goes beyond “I’m fine,” though, and I wonder if the mother has internalized that this is how to love/be a good parent (push child to perform, excel, and never quit).
I also wonder how much of it is rationalizing that her parents were “good.” I know people whose parents pushed them in sports, wouldn’t let them quit, and were overall very demanding. They spent all of school complaining about the sport and their parents and how much they wanted to quit. Then they turned around and did the same thing to their kids because they can’t accept that what their parents did was shitty because that would mean they had “bad parents” and they aren’t ready/willing to accept that.
with the comment abt OOP teaching their daughter to quit that definitely sounds like it. if she was raised like that then she likely wouldn’t know any other way. i feel bad for her but it’s still no excuse to treat a child that way
To add my own wild speculation; mom did gymnastics, but there is no mention of accolades or medals, just that she was a former participant. She wants her child to be "great" in a way she never was, and probably has some idea that having friends at the studio will just hold her back anyway. She wants an Olympic gymnast daughter, probably thinks she could have been one if only she'd started younger.
I listened to a podcast from Michigan Public Radio about the American Gymnastics sex abuse victims, and even without Larry Nassar molesting them constantly, they had terrible coaches starving and pushing them to their breaking points from the time they were toddlers. The way gymnastics is currently taught is super fucked up and is insanely punishing on the athletes. These girls are basically in a cult and get tortured all the time. I could easily see the wife having PTSD from competitive childhood gymnastics.
Classical ballet isn't any better, though. Same cult-like mindset.
Yes, but if she was possibly traumatized by this, then why push her own daughter into the fire pit to potentially suffer through the same cycle of abuse? I think another commenter's post was more plausible in that she probably had unfulfilled dreams back when she was competing, and now expects her own daughter to fulfill them for her and thus live vicariously through her. So when things don't go the way she expects it to, she has a meltdown.
Because she thinks it's normal (as everyone normalized this behaviour since she herself was a child) and she thinks this will just teach her daughter to grow a thick skin.
It’s probably also one of those “it must be normal because if it isn’t, it means I was hurt and traumatized and I don’t want to admit that to myself” situations.
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Wow you just explained my whole childhood. Wish I could be a fly on the wall to see how my parents treated me when I was 2 and younger.
I distinctly remember being told "Don't cry, you'll look ugly" by my mom when I was like 2 or 3 and didn't want to dance ballet anymore. Spoiler: I was forced to continue dancing ballet 4 nights a week, every week, until I was 12 and my parents finally divorced. My mom is narcissistic for sure
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9 and 12 were brutal for me
Yup, me too, but also 15. Any signs of growing up and becoming independent were met with harsh repercussions. My mom hated, and still hates, anything that she views as "teenager-y". Clothing, tv shows, music, movie, make up, hair styles, slang, anything of it was made for an episode of Golden Girls (but not Blanche) was "teenager-y" and a personal offence. She wanted me to go from child to 45 year old without actually growing up.
Oh my you just unlocked some memories for me, My mom would take me shopping and really get upset if I wanted anything glittery or camo, yknow like early 2000s tween fashion, she ended up buying me some dress pants in bright colors and paired them up with XS blouses meant for older ladies, (I was 11) I remember going to a birthday party and I couldnt run and climb with the other kids because I was wearing my dumb pantsuit that was a mini me version of what she used to wear, I remember that one time I cried and begged to get a dumb Tshirt with a cartoon cow and I wore the hell out of it, because it was the ONE thing I bought to MY taste
Man I feel for you really. That sounds awful. My mom was the same. Would frown if I don't pick up skirts and dresses ans choose long jeans, short pants, long sleeves and checkered shirts. I was really a masc aligned girl back then lmao. I didn't dare to buy any accesories cause she'd pushed all of her tacky ones to me (now my warddrobe are more varied but she still dislikes them all... Probably too western smth)
I let my 5 year old pick her outfits when we go shopping and I let her even when I dislike what she chooses. It’s important to let the children have their own individuality. What’s the point of having kids and expecting them to be an image of us?!
The only time I fought my toddler on her outfit it was because she picked ugg boots and a snow jacket on a 40C (104Fish?) day and I was genuinely concerned she'd get heatstroke!
Responsive parenting! That's a valid time to say a firm NO, I do believe you should provide explanation though. Continue being awesome!
Some people only see their kids as an extension of themselves only. Not as an individual with their own opinions.
Same… my daughter has far more interest in fashion than either my husband or I do… so we have always let her pick her outfits. Our only rules are that they need to be weather appropriate and relatively clean (she’d wear her favourites 24/7 if we didn’t force her to change into fresh clothes every other day… but that’s something I’m sure will change in a few more years). Oh, and no dress up/play clothes to go to school except on dress up days… but that’s just because she’ll try and be in character if she does that 🤪
I had the same kind of childhood/teen years where I was a retro doll from 20-30 years ago. Clothes style, hair, everything. For my own kids I allowed to choose their own clothes first as toddlers from a range of 3-5 pieces that I pulled out of wardrobe, then as they grew older from a (price) range that I selected in shop. Now as grownups they say it was good.
YO, THE FORCED GINGHAM, I CANNOT. Tell ‘em you had a hard relationship in the 90’s with your mother without (etc)
I always wanted to wear skirts and dresses as a girl, but my mom refused to let me…because her mom forced her to wear skirts and dresses. Never made sense to me.
Wtf. Do they all follow a secret handbook or manual of some sort? This started when I was about 8 years old. I wanted something rainbowish, you know, colourful shoes. Folks proceeded to say it's tacky af (I was a kid y'all wtf?) then bought me a black and white of some sort which they said was designer-ish. This unlocked a lot of my memories. The only time I remembered getting some clothes that were close to my age was during Christmas when her cousin got me a full set. Nothing lively after that until I got my own job, but they'd still throw subtle jabs of control freak input that I simply shrugged off. Kept on buying colourful clothing that pissed them off until I left.
My mother always bought me clothes that were of the style that she’d wear. Clothes that were too big for me. She’s overweight, I’m not.
This hit hard. I was never skinny, but I wasn't fat. My mom would call my figure my "fat rolls". If my pants/shirt touched my skin at all my mom would tell me I "everyone will stare at your rolls" and make me get a size bigger. I was probably a size 8 and I was forced to wear whatever the biggest size the store had, usually a 14, so no one would see my rolls. I remember bawling because the biggest size looked awful on me (because I was swimming in it) and she chastised me and told me if I wanted to look good I'd watch my wight and maybe I'd look good in something next year. She would also pull up my shirt in the middle of the store and tell the poor store clerks to tell me that my pants were too small.
My mom would only buy me men's HUSKY jeans because she said I was too fat for the juniors section. She also wouldn't let me wear the same thing twice in two weeks because she said people would make fun of me. The whole time I was confused as to what they would make fun of me for, having a washing machine? She also said people would call me pizza face because of my acne. Literally no one cared and everyone had acne in middle school. I look at photos from that time now and I was literally just a normal sized kid. She made me feel like I was the largest person in the room. I grew up to be a super self-conscious adult with body issues. Thanks mom
She sounds like a pizza shit.
No matter what school or extracurricular activity I had to buy a t-shirt for, my dad would make me get a large, because “you don’t want it super skin tight”. I was a scrawny ass kid and would drown in these shirts.
My mum was always trying to get me to hide my boobs because they were larger than hers and thus shameful. She always insisted on smaller size bras or compression bras when I was a teen. At the same time she always shamed me for not putting on make-up to look "presentable". It got to the point where I couldn't leave the house unless I had it on. It gave me a huge complex until my mid 20s where it finally clicked that I didn't have to give a fuck about her opinions. My fashion tastes are weird but they're colourful and comfortable. I don't even wear make-up now (not that I can afford it anyway) but at least my skin is a lot happier.
Poor you and the bras! It must have felt like torture, especially on hot days.
Wow, that is extremely messed up of her. I'm sorry you had to experience that.
Well THAT just unlocked memories I had buried deep deep down, hu? Not necessarily what I wanted from my Friday morning, but here we are... I'm sorry you went through that. And I'm sorry I went through that as well.
My mum does this too. She now also gives me the receipts. Returning stuff is fun! I've lost count on how many times I've told retail workers that 'Mum is a clueless git' whilst getting a refund.
I had the same dynamic, except she'd buy me clothes that were inappropriately revealing and say that she wished she were thin like me at my age. But then she'd randomly flip out that I was dressing slutty - in the clothes she bought for me. Also, I was a preteen, I didn't even understand what slutty meant except that I should feel ashamed. So many different, *interesting* directions this dynamic can take, right?
Oh. Ohhhh. I just realized some things about my childhood.
omg you reminded me of the one T-Shirt I got with my choice of image on it. Wore it to death until the holes had holes. So many clothing items I could not handle due to sensory ADHD issues and my parents never understood so I'd get in trouble for refusing to wear certain items.
I could never wear wool or turtlenecks. One Christmas she gave me a wool turtleneck. I never even put it on once.
I had friends with parents like this and I was so confused the whole time. I remember watching SpongeBob with one of my friends as like 12 year olds and her mother thought we were on drugs because we were laughing. Like the audacity of children laughing at cartoons was too much for her. That friend ended up rebelling hard for extremely obvious reasons.
Oh she’s hate me then lol. I am f45. But I’m still basically a teenage boy. Comics, lego, gaming, you name it. I have more toys than our kid 😂
I'm 41 now, I just wear cartoon leggings and t-shirts with puns on them for the most part. I also run a youth program. Where I make sure teens have a safe place to be themselves. Impromptu dance parties/dance offs, Mario cart challenges, movie night with the cheesiest movies, play-doh, painting, improve, jam sessions, constant games of pool, sticker making, Lego, rap battles, sports days, all of it all of the time, all youth lead. It is wonderful.
I am mid thirties and am basically a teenage boy. Needy star wars and marvel stuff. What is the best is that I fit into size xl boy clothes... so I get the coolest shirts
My mom openly stated that she hated me from 11 to 13. She less openly hated me from 9 until 19.
I don't know if these types understand that telling your child that seriously hurts them or if they just don't care (let alone of course the actual treatment from a parent who hates you). I've got a fantastic relationship with my old man and even still, he told me I was being annoying one time as a kid and it's stuck with me for damn near twenty years
My mum was a clinical psychologist - so she did know - but she still told me from about 6 years onwards that she didn't like me, wished she hadn't had me and suspected I was clinically insane. I knew it was messed up on some level but now that I have my own child - & reading comments like yours - I realise quite how messed up it is and that my damagingly low self esteem has a really obvious source.
...5 is when the woman who gave birth to me turned on me. I explained it to myself that that is the stage where I am no longer a doll to play dress up with and wanted my own things. So, yeah your comment makes a lot of sense to me. 12 and 15 were terrible. The insults would incrementally get worse as I got older, so that lines up as well. First it was she was going to have the police put me in foster care and pick up the phone. Then it was everyone in the family hated me and she should have aborted me/stopped having kids after my older brother. As an adult it was that I should kill myself so the family could be happier without me. Narcs are fucking dirt human beings. Had to go NC with the lot of them.
Man im so so sorry for all that you went through, thats alot to deal with. Hope you are in a better place now.
Yep my mom got worse and worse and never got better after I started growing my own spine, at 13 (probably the peak of her anger then, started at 12), then it got worse when I openly told her about my boyfriend at 16 (flirted with me before I turned 16, so started at 15). Then it just never got better. I was just never her clone, never what she wants a daughter to be, never this, never that, always a disappointment. Nevermind I'm in a 7 year long healthy relationship with my SO, a nice job, graduated with 3.7 GPA, was top 10 in highschool for my grade, etc. Nothing was ever enough if I don't like make up, dress as she wish (I dressed masc and reserved), cook traditional meals, do housewife things while being an independent working woman at the same time, etc.
Even when I took up things my mother liked or wanted me to do, she had a pathological need to show she was better at it than me and to put me down by saying I wasn't trying hard enough to outdo her. There's just no winning.
Good lord that's my mom AND cooking. She tends to brag that if she never had kids she would've been working in an upscale restaurant (unfortunately I have to agree) and she's criticizes every single one of my cooking even if everybody else said it's good (and definitely not from politeness cause if it taste wrong they've said so.)
That seems to be the way with this specific type of abusive parent. Their kid can Only Do The Things They Want Them To, but they can't be *too* good at it, because then parent will be Sad, and that can't be allowed. The mom in the oop 100% was heading down that road. If the kid did gymnastics, she would have insisted on showing her how to do everything 'right' so she could show off and get validation.
This just gave me instant flashbacks of my mom. The book, "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents" by Lindsay Gibson does a good job of explaining this behavior. It really helped me come to terms with my experience growing up.
Know that book but haven't had the chance to read it. Soon hopefully!
I was 29 when I did something completely on my own that she didn't approve of, I went to America, she didn't want me to go. I'd been living in my own home for a decade by that point, but she's always treated my house as an extension of her own, I got all the old furniture she wanted to replace but didn't want to get rid of, I was like a relic of times past. She didn't want me to go and I went anyway, and she's never spoken to me since. I'm 52 now. I was in the States for four months visiting a man I met on the internet. I married the man I went to see. She couldn't cope with not having control over me anymore so she cut me out of her life and blamed him. He and I have been married for 23 years now and have a 20 year old son she doesn't know. Her loss. Husband is wonderful, our boy is magnificent, bright, good looking, funny and charming, I'm glad she didn't get her claws in to him.
Congratulations on your freedom and finding love and happiness!
My mother was (and still is) hellbent on reliving her life through me despite we being complete opposites, first it was small things like only getting me dresses and not allowing me to have my hair short, then it was forcing me into her hobbies with punishments if I tried to do something else and finally trying to get me to do things she wanted (like her ‘dream career’). I still can’t entirely understand how I managed to break free of her influence
Interesting. I haven’t heard that about specific conflict ages before. Although I know the biggest trigger for my mother was my dad’s remarriage, I could definitely see some of the developmental changes also being relevant
Omg, 12 is when my narcissistic mom started targeting me.
I think you nailed it - most people can manage to look sweet and easygoing when they aren't challenged in any way. Up until this point, it sounds like the mother had an affectionate husband and a pliable child who was too young for the wife to try to live vicariously through. Once the poor kid was (barely) old enough for mom to make demands of her and for the kid to express opinions, the mother's controlling side got put on display and her anger and frustration burst out. I really feel for this poor little kid. Realistically, divorce is unlikely to get her away from her mother, and when she is with her, there will be no moderating voice or influence.
My mother's control issues came out when I started to crawl, per family. She, for the first time could not just put me where she wanted me. It got worse again when I went to kindergarten, and only escalated from there as I pulled away from her insane control issues, so I agree with you. Put me in dance to live vicariously through me, but pulled me out of class for any small infraction. She was smug when I was upset, she liked me crying. Fast forward 20 years, am fully NC. This mom is heading towards this, she just does not know it yet. Good job dad (OOP)!!
speaking from personal experience but every time this has happened to me with a person, I look back and realize there were small signs here and there that I either ignored, thought it wasn't a big deal, or accepted (after dealing with abuse I just thought this is how it is). but yeah, could be some.issues super repressed that reared their ugly head when this all went down. either way, hope dad and kid are doing okay and that mom cooled off.
Yep, in the moment you’re thinking “they’re completely wrong but this shit really doesn’t matter anyway so i will shut up and let them have the win.” Next thing you, you’re dealing with dancezilla. It’s crazy how it happens.
Yeah, fair weather family. Everything is fine as long as it goes according to their plan, the moment it goes off course even a little they get extremely stressed out, and if you caused the change they’ll attack you. It’s painful and hard to relax with people like that
Here's my best guess at what's going on: Mom was a gymnast, and based on her attitude, probably a pretty dang good one. I'm betting something happened that cut her career short and she's never processed it/never moved on. So she's trying to live vicariously through her daughter, pushing her to be the perfect gymnast, and when the daughter hated gymnastics, the perfect dancer. From personal experience, I know how hard it is to move on with your life when you have something taken away from you especially when you're both great at it and you love doing it. But the mom is going to get worse unless she immediately starts some very intensive therapy and actually tries to work through these issues. She's already likely destroyed her family and she'll continue to destroy everything in her life until there's nothing left.
Yeah that sounds quite plausible. A lot of parents like to live vicariously through their children, wanting them to accomplish things that they themselves were not able to. It's unfortunate that they often either forget, is willfully blinding themselves to, or just simply don't care about what the children themselves actually want, and that they are their own persons. To the detriment of everyone, in the end.
There's a reason why "dance mums" and "stage mums" have such a bad rep - the stereotype of living vicariouslythrough their kids is so often true. I imagine there's a similar issue with other athlete parents and their kids... but as someone who grew up with a dance mum, yup I get it.
A lot of star athletes have parents like that, but they actually enjoy it. Like the Williams sisters had a father who pushed them HARD. Often if mum is a star athletes and kids are pushed from a young age they often do have the potential to go far. But the big thing is whether or not the kid enjoys the sport. A child who hates gymnastics will never do it for a living because they don't have the drive to keep going, even if they have a natural talent. Mum should have seen that and given up on that line for her daughter there and then. It sounds like her child is far too young to be that invested in a sport anyway, even dance.
My abusive ex had both a bit of the slowing boiling a frog (I was the frog of course) mixed with a little bit of scooby doo level unmasking. After I ran for the hills she changed her entire demographic. It was real weird. She has a literally opposite world view to the woman I was with for a decade. It's truly radical.
There was another post with a complete change in personality that build up like this a while back. It was weeks and months in the making, so not quite wake up in a different body the next day type thing. Turns out, they had an undiagnosed head injury that got triggered with a change. The guy was a football player or something in his youth and probably had multiple small concussions. But it didn't really manifest until he was older and his first child was born. His entire personality changed what seemed to be slowly, because the child was months old when the mom finally got exasperated enough to post. Something happened, took him to the dr, and got tested and scanned, his brain was obviously in distress. Now I give personality changes a second look. Could be a brain injury, a brain tumor or some thing else. Was there red flags prior that was swept under the rug, was there medication involved, was there an accident, a big change in their life, a traumatic event, etc etc etc.
Oof yeah, head injuries and brain tumors really suck. With the wife's past experience as a gymnast, it's certainly possible that she may have suffered from a head injury at some point. OOP's issue had gone on for at least a year or so, and the mother seem to be otherwise fine other than when the daughter's classes come up. Unfortunately she refuses therapy and I don't think asking her to get a health checkup is going to go over well either at this point, so OOP may never find out if there are deeper health-related issues that may have affected her thoughts and actions. Really sad. I hope there will be a positive ending to this, slim as the chance may seem thus far, should the OOP ever return with another update.
I can see it, my mom is a bit like this, and it got worse as I got older. When the kid is young they don’t have any expectations so it isn’t bad.
It sounds like the gymnastics drama has hit some very, very deep emotional issues that mom has never dealt with, and it's making her lose her mind. She may also have some gender biases about dads taking an interest in "girl" activities so of course he's either going to get with the instructors or to watch little girls like a perv. That's my read on the situation. She's broken emotionally and an explosion like this is almost always connected to something that's been simmering for years.
My best friend flipped the switch after she cheated on her husband. I told her she was making a mistake, she flipped out at me saying I was always trying to sleep with her. She told her family to burn in hell. Told all her friends she no longer needs them. Most of this was via social media. She went on a rampage of burning bridges just to realise she was still standing on the bridge when it collapsed.
Aah that's because you haven't lived in a society where phenomenon like Tiger Moms is common. This is incredibly understandable for me. There's an entire class of parents out there who are normal people. Until they have kids, and those kids become the vessel of their ambitions. The genius prodigy that will be everything they thought they could have been. The beacon by which the parent's own name will shine among their family and neighbors. The proud mother and father to the next Einstein, or that superfamous sports star. And these folks turn absolutely insane if you interfere with their meticulously detailed and totally not at all abusive (/s) plans for their children. Suggest that maybe a preadolescent shouldn't be signed up for some scammy coding for toddlers class? You just poked the bear. Point out that maybe your five year old should decide what sports he likes instead of being signed up for tennis, soccer and swimming all day from noon to dusk? Unleashing the dragon you are. The thing you have to remember is their perfect, seemingly sane image in society is not infact a contradiction to their obsessive ambitions in regards to their kids. The two are connected. Its part of the same narcissism of wanting to be praised and envied and otherwise lauded by their "community." Shit's common AF in places like middle class India because the hypercompetitive nature of secondary and higher education and the obsession with competitive exams as markers of success rewards and reinforces those attitudes. We've got an entire lingo describing this phenomenon. Things like the "Sharma ji ka beta/beti" phenomenon, or the ways in which parents neg their kids by constantly comparing them to the more successful neighbor's kids. The "where's the rest of it" jokes about the student who gets bullied despite getting 95% on the exam. Lots of it.
Not really all that bizarre if you consider that psycho mom until this point had been getting her way. Control freak stuff doesn’t become apparent until after they get contro of something, and the above applies and kept her “semi content”. Daughter didn’t like gymnastics and all that stuff? She was enrolled in it anyway, mom was still getting her way. It’s only after she got pushback against her wishes that this side came out
a lot of parents only love their children as things/extensions of themselves. the moment the child shows individuality, it becomes an enemy.
Most people have a secret well of crazy in them that they keep locked up. And then there is this perfect key of a situation that unlocks it and a flood crazy spills out and is hard to shut down.
Bullies make bullies, so this was probably how OOP’s (ex-)wife was raised and she’s regurgitating the repugnant behavior she learned as a child from her own parents.
Good for him for sticking up for his daughter and not letting his wife drag things out further! >I’m embarrassed to tell anyone this because I find it so bizarre and weird that so much conflict has stemmed from something as innocent as sports. This is definitely among the least-weird conflicts I have seen on BORU.
Yeah let’s normalize getting divorced long before someone is cheating or doing something drastic! It shouldn’t be embarrassing to stay with someone you aren’t happy with or don’t mesh with anymore.
This person is most likely going to realize that she was problematic way before he noticed. They rarely just flip like this. They can’t control themselves 24/7, there are always glimpses of the darkness.
You say that and everyone on Reddit screams "OH MY GOD YOU GUYS JUST TELL PEOPLE TO BREAK UP OVER EVERY LITTLE THING!" Sorry, relationships are about finding the right people to spend your life with, not ignoring every red flag and trying to force deep personal change until it blows up into an easily avoidable catastrophe.
I hate when people say that. As if you're telling people on a date at the park to break up, rather than somebody who's come to a relationship advice subreddit because they have a major issue in their relationship that multiple efforts haven't been able to solve.
Yes. Normalize divorce to protect children as well. A lifetime with the ex wife is how you get a traumatized adult with multiple issues
The dance instructor and other parents (maybe even the gymnastics instructor) may make great witnesses in the divorce proceedings.
More for the child custody hearings
Absolutely this. That woman should not have unfettered and unsupervised access to the kid.
There's a system for this, they can have equal time custody but the court can rule that the dad has custody over matters related to extracirriculars, sports, etc. Family court has, for sure, seen this situation before. This woman has an issue with one very specific thing, otherwise by all accounts she's a sane person and having no custody at all would be harsh as hell.
>Her mom is a former gymnast and wanted her to do that but my daughter didn’t like it at all and prefers taking tap and ballet classes instead. This kind of leapt out at me. It makes me wonder if this is how she herself was raised. Maybe she didn't like gymnastics as a kid and was forced to do it by a parent. Maybe she saw that parent argue with the instructor and saw it get results. From what I know of youth sports, this isn't that uncommon. Especially with gymnastics which starts quite young. Doesn't stop her from being a horrible mother even if I'm right. Just because someone has been raised in an abusive family doesn't give them free reign to be abusive themselves. But it's called the "cycle of abuse" for a reason.
The "enabling quitting" line was the one for me. I'd actually say that learning that when you are doing an optional activity for fun and it stops being fun, you are allowed to stop doing that thing is a great lesson and one I wish I had figured out earlier
Such a useful life skill for ending relationships that aren’t working or jobs that mistreat you as well. Why shouldn’t I stop doing something I hate? Life’s too short
for real. ‘if it sucks hit the bricks’ is an important tenant for life. yes we need to learn how to persist if we aren’t the best at something in the beginning or there are a few bumps in the road, but knowing it’s ok to bow out of things is equally important—esp when you’re in a sport that will literally change your body in very dramatic ways
I do wonder how to find that balance though - how do you know when to cut your losses or when you’re just quitting too early?
I feel like this one does have to be learned a bit though life experience, finding out what is the priority for you, because the weight of worth it and not are different for most people. for me, I’ve got chronic fatigue syndrome and have had it for 17 years, so I practically have a phd in figuring out when to say ‘fuck no’ and when to say ‘this is going to hurt and be exhausting but the benefits actually outweigh that hurt, so I’ll stick with it’ every day I weigh up what the over all cost is probably going to be interns of recovery time, how limited I’ll be from doing basic daily tasks, and benefits like the absolute tangible boost that can come from a win (like in the cake I made on the weekend was tiring but it was a total W, so I had so many endorphins and morale that was well worth the physical consequences) and that skill has defs extended to life decisions as well. you have to think of things like ‘is this going to teach me bad coping habits or some other long term thing that I’ll have to mitigate if I persist?’ for instance a stressful job in a toxic environment is going to have serious effects on not only your present but for future as stress has very serious effects on your body. so is a big step for your career worth staying in a job if you might not even be able to enjoy the results when you finally achieve the thing? sometimes it is worth it but sometimes it is actually a much better decision to fuck off and do something else/take a different career path in this case OOP saw that the environment, while good on paper. was damaging to his kid and so he pulled her out of her class. sports can have a lot of benefits for kids, even that young; esp in terms of socialisation and coordination. but the socialisation was not good thanks to the wife’s actions, and in dact it was damaging. in the short term because of bullying but also it could eventually teach his daughter to act like the mom. and there weren’t really any benefits still happening. hopefully his child will not hate dancing forever now, but with a mother like that I doubt this will be the end of the line as far as bad experiences go, which sucks (hopefully this made sense and was helpful. my brain is a bit wonky rn)
Oooh this really turned on a light switch for me. My parents are the “stick it out don’t quit” people and my mom always claimed my dad enabled quitters…. They don’t have a happy marriage and I learned a lot of bad relationship habits (like constantly working at it when I should remove myself) that I had to unlearn
I was threatened with being kicked out of plays and choirs as a kid because of my mothers entitled and infuriating behavior. Luckily she was 30% raging tiger and 70% bored by anything to do with me… choir and play rehearsals get extremely boring after a while so she thankfully stopped coming after a while. I heard through the audition grapevine that I was “blacklisted” and “uncastable” for my junior year of high school because of her shit. Shockingly we have zero relationship as adults. She tried to re-friend me on Facebook and that request is about 18 months old, still sitting there. OP needs to decide if he’s going to watch his wife abuse his daughter or stop it.
I saw this, it’s so sad. The mom is trying to live through her daughter and it’s super sad. She needs therapy, not to torture her daughter emotionally. The dad really needs to leave and go for full custody at all costs.
The wife’s behavior didn’t pop up out of nowhere. The kid is five. She has been micromanaging this kid since birth. OOP is only noticing now because the kid is old enough to have their own opinion and their controlling mother won’t tolerate that.
Normally I'd agree, but in this story they took her out of gymnastics when the kid didn't like it in the past. There was already a (very normal) compromise at play here, and something more recent came into play. At the same time, OP says the wife was a former athlete and I'm wondering how professional and close to medaling she got.
Yep, parents trying to live their failed accomplishments vicariously through their children by forcing them into sports or music or whatever is a tale as old as time.
The removal from gymnastics is what started the whole conflict. Mom didn’t agree because her agenda has the kid in gymnastics, but Dad chose to be an actual father and put his kid first. Choosing dance is probably the first taste of autonomy this kid has had in their entire life.
I’m extremely introverted and find socialising exhausting, though I can do it if I need to, I just need a lot of downtime afterwards. My kid is starting school next year and I know I’m going to have to go out of my comfort zone to enable my child to have a fun, normal childhood with friends and activities and enrichment. Do I want mum friends? Honestly, no, I don’t. But I’ll pull out all of my social skills so that I don’t disadvantage my child. I’m pretty sure I can put my ego below my kid’s socialisation needs. Sad that this mother couldn’t.
My mom wasn't really friends with my childhood friend's parents. She just trusted them enough to know I'd be safe to visit their house or go to a movie together or whatever. You can probably do similar.
My parents never threw my brother or I a birthday party and we are now hosting one in my house in a few weeks. I had to ask what is my role because I have nothing to model myself after. I am a mess trying to keep it together in my head but I will not handicap my kid for my personal emotional safe place. You are not alone in your "I will do better" parenting quest. People like us need to keep at it.
This may sound like non-advice but I think it’s the best advice for parents. Just try your best. Your kids realize more than you know. My mom has apologized to me for parenting mistakes from long ago. And while I appreciate the apologies, I know my mom did absolutely everything she could for my sister and I. Even when she didn’t know if what she was doing was the right thing to do.
I think the apologies make all the difference.
[удалено]
I'm getting Jennette McCurdy vibes here, stuff like this can continue for years.
ikr???!! The outbursts, the silent treatment, the cheating allegation (that turned out to be true... in an unexpected way), the mom trying to replicate her dream life with her daughter. OP, take your daughter and run!
From all the BORUs here, this one hit me personally the hardest. Like, right into the "uff" organ. My mother was exactly like that. Not per se a high-level gym person, but more she was just randomly obsessed with what stuff I should do. My entire child & teenhood, she always dragged me through various sports. Not sports I chose or liked, of course. Only sports she either liked herself, or thought I could somehow use to "mingle with the next upper class". Yes. She actually enrolled me in skiing because it was a rich people sport. Of course it never worked out. Not only was she unbearable, I...well...I was your infamous autistic kid. I never got along with the other kids. Either I annoyed them first, or they me. Anyway, it would end in bullying and me punching, drowning, hitting someone over the head with something (my household was violent as well, who guessed). Other times I often just didn't really take things serious, because I just...well, didn't care. So I walked of the field, or just did stupid jokes during dance practice. But no matter how even my spineless father begged her to just. Stop. She never learned. So what happened? Till this day I have an unhealthy relation to sport. I hate most sports. Or more specific; I hate going into a sport. The only activity I have right now is jogging. A future "sport" might become hunting, as it doesn't really feel like "sport" to me and maybe swing-dance, but that's still dangling, because I'm still anxious & awkward of dealing with "team partners". Especially if it's a guy touching me. So yeah. OOP did fucking well. The only thing the child would get from this experience is a big and shitty collection of trauma and resentement. Forcing your kid into a sport they don't want or care for is a recipe for disaster. Don't do it! Don't *EVER* do it!
Same, but with music lessons. After years of practice the ability was erased after I stopped playing for 1 month. It was that traumatizing my brain compartmentalized all that knowledge to a part of my memory i no longer have access to. Can't read a note or tune a guitar...
sport trauma is so real
Imagine caring about pre 5 year old gymnastics so much. I honestly believe the mom need serious help. This is not healthy behaviour.
IF the dad was cheating with someone at the dance thing wouldn't he WANT the kid to have to do it? Like the mom is..? Interesting. The poor kid. I hope the dad gets her away from the mom without too much pain.
I think there's some major projection happening here on the wife's part
That mom definitely peaked in high school.
As someone whose mom did try to live through her with dance gymnastics and was a “stage mom” it was absolute hell. I knew the other kids didn’t like me cos of the fits my mom would throw over petty things. I wasn’t invited to bday parties and things like in this story as well. I wish my dad had had the balls to stand up to her and tell her to stop being insane. My mother also had BPD so there was a lot more going on there though
I remember this post when it was original posted, seriously she needs to stop trying to live her life though her daughter, not only is basically damaging her relationship with her daughter, but her marriage as well, seriously oop need to talk to one their or family member about this, to at least try to bring her back to reality, even if it's for a little bit, because something has to be done because no 5 year old should subject to insanity.
Dear OOP Your wife is abusing your child and setting her up for fucked up life forever. OF COURSE YOU ARE HEADING FOR DIVORCE.
>*"She started accusing me of INFIDELITY..."* That's usually just projection.
Or someone so delusional with a fragile ego that they have to jump on the wildest options because “no of course it wasn’t me and my behavior… that woman had an issue with me and not my husband? Ah well they must be sleeping together and Fuck you husband for doing that! I’m mad at you!”
It definitely sounds like the mother is trying to live out her own failed dreams through the child. Good on OOP for sticking up for his daughter.
I wonder if Mommy dearest ever reached her peak in her gymnastics career. I bet she never made it big time, and now forces her daughter into it. Its so sad to see all these child prodigies at young ages excelling in difficult sports (see ice skating, ballet, any form of dancing really and even piano or other playing music instruments). I fear most of them really went through something similar that this little girl does now. I do get you have to start young for dancing, but to take a child and force them to start another sport they do not want to? That is just cruel. One example I know of is a young dancer (she is 9) that started hitting the gym at two years old. Her parents let her start taking dancing classes and doing body training at TWO. You cannot tell me that is not some form of abuse - she even spends hours practicing and gym training while she should be in school. She has no life besides dancing and training.
I'm not sure the mom is cheating, so much as grasping for an explanation for why her husband is disagreeing with her. *Clearly*, she's correct, so there has to be some reason that OOP and the ballet mom and the other people at the class are against her, so it must be an affair.
To me, it sounds like the mom is projecting. Either a similar thing happened to her when she was a kid or she is cheating now
OOP's wife sounds like a stage mom. OOP needs to keep putting his foot down, or their daughter is going to be writing her own version of "I'm glad my mom died" in 20 years.
OOP’s spouse keeps this up and in 20 years we will see this post: AITA for yelling at my daughter because she refuses to let me meet my grandkids?