Abigail is an Emotional Orphan

[GeoBQn]

Abigail calls herself an "emotional orphan" and considers it abuse that her mother used birth control and put her in daycare.

abigails-alcove.blogspot.com/2012/11/thoughts.html

I am the face of emotional child abuse.

My mother is a strong supporter of abortion. She used birth control. I remember being nine years old and being told that my younger brother "passed the tests" so now we could keep him. (The "tests" being an amniocentesis done while he was in utereo to test for Down Syndrome).

I am the eldest child born after 5 years of marriage. I don't know how many siblings I've lost due to abortion and birth control. I have no particulars facts --but I have experienced the after effects, strong psychological abuse.

I have never felt like a gift from God entrusted to my parents. I have felt like a burden and a mistake. I have been told that I was difficult, an awful child, so bad that they had to wait 5 years to have another baby.

Thanks for shitting all over women who make the best decisions they can for their families. My brother was extremely hyperactive when he was young, and my parents decided they were NOT going to have anymore children until/unless he calmed down. They used birth control to prevent pregnancy. When my brother calmed down at the age of 4 (and he's been mild-mannered ever since), my parents decided they were ready to have another baby and they eventually got pregnant with me. I was their last child. My brother and I are a little under 6 years apart. Did I wish growing up that I had more siblings? Sure, sometimes. But then I GREW THE FUCK UP and appreciated my family for what it is.

[terranova]

This woman has NO idea about emotional abuse and it's insulting to those who have actually suffered at the hands of their parents that she pretends to.

[meda]

This bitch is certifiable. Lets see...an attorney who chooses not to work and lets her children go hungry. A Catholic so hard core she finds Jesus more romantic than her husband. A daughter who would write this about her own mother and then whine about how family are not supportive of her when she pops out yet another child she has no intention of raising with a decent quality of life. What self inflicted martyrdom this one has achieved. If I was her mother I would be so depressed at the choices Abigail has made.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Abuse????? Because her parents are pro choice, used birth control and put her in daycare????

She really needs to stop whining and be grateful that she has parents who cared enough about her that they put her in daycare instead of letting her crack addicted uncle creepy to watch her all day, that her parents had enough money to feed her and her brother because they both worked instead of her mom staying at home even if this situation didnt work for her. Shes lucky that her parents werent alcoholic drug addicts who left her to fend for herself all day. Shes lucky she didnt have to see her parents argue all of the time, or witness domestic abuse. Shes lucky that her parents werent Pearl supporters who beat her and handed her brother off to her to raise when she was nine. Shes lucky she has parents and wasnt raised in an orphanage, stuck in a crib all day with no social interaction. She is lucky she got the chance to go to school and learn instead of go and work in a factory all day at the age of six like they used to do.

Sure, its probably not a good idea to tell your kid youre pregnant so early on, especially in a high risk pregnancy where you plan to abort if the fetus has disabilities. I cant imagine how anyone would explain that to a child, they shouldnt have knowledge of what abortion is at that age, as theyre too young to understand.

It isnt a good idea to call your kid difficult and an awful child......but seeing as she has grown up into a whiny, ungrateful adult, it cant be far from the truth. She really needs to go and apologise to her mom for being so ungrateful. She seems to have not outgrown the childish idea that the world does not revolve around her.

If your worst childhood problem is that your parents worked and put you in daycare, you were not abused.

[dawbs]

What are the odds that a 9-year-old mis-understood?

At age 9, I still believed that my step grandma and my step grandpa had been married to e/o and divorced in order to marry my respective grandparents. (my parents swear they told us NOTHING similar. But all 3 of their children came to this conclusion).

A 9 YO being told "the pregnancy is healthy, horray" and having the tests explained could easily warp that into "and we would have terminated the pregnancy if he wasn't good enough". Because kids are weird and aren't mini-adults.

(and funny, my husband knows that if he would have been my MIL's first child, she never would have had a 2nd baby. He's also the 'favorite'. Doesn't seem to have scarred him--probably because he's not trying to judge everything his parents did through a fundie-failure-filter)

[Guest Anonymous]

This really is shitting all over people who have actually suffered emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of their parents.

Also, she talks about feeling like a 'mistake', which makes absolutely no sense. Her mother had control over her reproduction, she used birth control, etc. Surely, that suggests that Abigail was not a mistake, but planned and wanted. That's certainly what it sounds like. I'd be more worried about being a 'mistake' if I knew that my mother did not use birth control, and would not have an abortion.

Edited: spelling

[browngrl]

Abigail is such a "speshul" snowflake! Always fun to have a heaping pile of sanctimonious BS with my afternoon coffee. I'd like to ask her how she can think that daycare is worse than not having enough food for her children. At least HER mother never had to beg on a blog for food.

[ILoveJellybeans]

She was probably less of a mistake than any of the fundie kids we talk about here, as her parents had control over their own fertility and decided to give birth to her.

Even if the condom broke or the birth control failed, they still chose not to have an abortion, and then chose to keep her and not put her up for adoption.

These things go the other way too, as a kid I wished I had been to daycare before starting school as everyone else did and they were better at socialising than me, and I thought it was because I didnt go to daycare and was an only child til I was 4, so didnt learn how to talk to other kids. Now I know its not the case, but thats what I thought when I was a kid.

[OkToBeTakei]

As an emotional orphan, I ask for your prayers.

No, now fuck off.

Wonder how long it took her to come up with that load of shite to feel persecuted by. Sicko.

My Mother made me wear polyester tartan dungarees with a picture of Holly Hobby on.

Pray for me?

[Mountain Girl]

She finds it ironic that her mother's career was in child development? Yes, it's monstrous to devote your working years to teaching and nurturing children. :angry-screaming:

[Sumeri]

No, now fuck off.

Wonder how long it took her to come up with that load of shite to feel persecuted by. Sicko.

My Mother made me wear polyester tartan dungarees with a picture of Holly Hobby on.

Pray for me?

:lol:

Seriously, this lady is wack. I'd like to have a word with her about my childhood. Pray for me, indeed.

[Mountain Girl]

A 9 YO being told "the pregnancy is healthy, horray" and having the tests explained could easily warp that into "and we would have terminated the pregnancy if he wasn't good enough". Because kids are weird and aren't mini-adults.

No kidding. I doubt her parents told her "if he's broken, we'll make another one."

[salsa]

This woman has NO idea about emotional abuse and it's insulting to those who have actually suffered at the hands of their parents that she pretends to.

Yes!

Evidently this is a real blog (I didn't visit it) because you've talked about it before ... but this post seems troll-ish to me. It's just too conveniently on the heels of Zsu's post and FJ's ensuing reaction about people who don't have all the children they can don't love the children they have.

*sigh*" I wasn't wanted because my mother put me in day care." Oh, for crying out loud, I WISH I could have gone to day care.

How about growing up with your mother calling you "Dumb Ass" all the time, and never knowing when she was going to go off or what for - and so you try to keep a low profile and it sets her off that you're too low-profile. How about the frequent threats to send you away (to a "Christian boarding school" that I now think might have been one of those Roloff houses)? How about being yelled at because you have acne and the treatment isn't curing it and being told your face makes your mother want to throw up?THAT's what emotional abuse is, honey.

[Dinorah]

She sounds really entitled, I'm baffled that there are people making sympathetic comments, I wondered if she erased any comments?

I don't get the "I lost siblings to birth control". You didn't lose them because they were never there. It's like saying you "lost" siblings to abstinence.

It seems that a lot of fundies blame their parents' liberalness for issues they might have with parents which have nothing to do with their being liberal.

[valsa]

Also, she talks about feeling like a 'mistake', which makes absolutely no sense. Her mother had control over her reproduction, she used birth control, etc. Surely, that suggests that Abigail was not a mistake, but planned and wanted. That's certainly what it sounds like. I'd be more worried about being a 'mistake' if I knew that my mother did not use birth control, and would not have an abortion.

Exactly. The only way I can twist this mess into making any kind of sense is if, knowing her mother actively chose to have her, she felt there were some sort of expectations from her parents that she never met. Except that's not how choice works. Her mother didn't say "Well, this month I'm forgoing birth control because it feels like I've got a good chance to conceive a future NBA athlete" or "Gee, the fetus I'm carrying seems like it could be a Rhode Scholar so I guess I won't abort this one".

Women choose to have or not have children, overwhelmingly, due to the circumstances in their own lives (money, time, other children, health, relationships, school, work, etc) not because of any characteristic of the child themselves. The only real exception to this is when women abort due to fetal abnormalities, which is not a significant percentage.

As for the whole "he passed the test" nonsense- a parent commenting that a fetus is healthy doesn't not automatically imply they would abort if the fetus had Downs. Pro-choice women knowingly have children with Downs Syndrome.

[Jana814]

Oh my G-d. I can't believe this woman actually believes that she was an emotional orphan. I feel bad for her parents that she said this about them. I sometimes wished I had more siblings (I have 1 sister) but honestly I am happier w/ the good life my parents gave me because they only had 2 kids.

[Deleted03]

This woman has NO idea about emotional abuse and it's insulting to those who have actually suffered at the hands of their parents that she pretends to.

I think she is misplacing it, but I think parents have no business telling their kids that they were difficult babies/toddlers/whatever and that made them not want other children or made them wait longer. Honestly, it's not like anyone controls who they are as babies or children, and if this was a regular topic of conversation it can be damaging (and a self fulfilling prophecy). I've seen it in my family where some people were called oh my little X (he was short and has had that cross to bear because everyone always emphasized his stature), my mom was the difficult child, always unbulging, and even until now she keeps saying that her aforementionned brother cut off her mom's milk and thus started her eating problems.

Words matter and reminding people of a behavior perceived as failure or negative is damaging.

[Closed Womb]

This woman is a professional collector of hurts. It is just not possible for a normal, part time collector of insults to come up with this crap. It takes a professional, full time person to fabricate this bullshit and then whine about it.

[FeministShrew]

No, now fuck off.

Wonder how long it took her to come up with that load of shite to feel persecuted by. Sicko.

My Mother made me wear polyester tartan dungarees with a picture of Holly Hobby on.

Pray for me?

Pray for me, too! I want to be an emotional orphan so I can feel speshul!

Mine made me wear a pair of too big hand-me-down white pants with huge multi-colored polka dots to school. When the zipper broke she said I did it on purpose so I wouldn't have to wear them again.

I really wanted my mom to put me in daycare & go to work so we wouldn't be so poor.

[valsa]

I think she is misplacing it, but I think parents have no business telling their kids that they were difficult babies/toddlers/whatever and that made them not want other children or made them wait longer.

I think it's a shitty thing to do if you're saying it just to hurt the person but, other than that, I don't see a need to keep it a secret.

For instance, if someone (not a young child, teen years or older) asks why their parents waited so long in between children, I wouldn't think twice if the parents said "You were a colicky baby and an energetic toddler so we wanted to wait until you had grown out of it to have another kid".

[dairyfreelife]

Wow, I'm emotional orphan and I never knew it. :o

My mom took birth control and had me five years after marriage. Not only that, but she got herself sterilized after my brother was born. I was a difficult child. My parents have told me that if they knew just how difficult, they wouldn't have had my siblings. I was such an unwanted burden. My parents sent me to public school too. Think of all the siblings I lost over the years because my mom took birth control! And maybe she had secret abortions too I never knew about!

"A Mother is someone who always has time to sit on the front porch and sip blackberry tea with you." That quote feels like a description from a foreign country to me.

Me too. I never sat on a front porch with my mother and I never drank blackberry tea. I missed out on so much. :cry: I never believed I was a gift given to my parents either.

Okay, on to more serious matters:

I was told that I wasn't intelligent or gifted. I was clumsy. An embarrassment. I was a straight A student who lived in perpetual fear of Parent Teacher Conferences because I would hear in excruciating detail every"mistake" my teachers ever saw in me. The stories of the "bad me" never go away.

I call bullshit. I got all sorts of "bad me" stories from my teachers, but a hard working straight A student only getting bad reports from every teacher. Major bullshit.

[mockingbird]

Shes lucky she has parents and wasnt raised in an orphanage, stuck in a crib all day with no social interaction.

Oh but she was, you see. She has another post where she directly states that daycare was like an orphanage. Just like the ones in Eastern Europe today or some BS like that. I know it's been quoted on here before, I don't remember which post it was.

Dinorah, I think you are right. It does sound like Abigail has some issues with her mom - they don't seem to have a close relationship - but I don't think it has anything to do with her mom putting her in daycare or being liberal. (Maybe that is because her mom does not agree with her life choices and Abigail has cut her out? Because I could NEVER see her doing that.)

I was born with a rare (non-genetic/random) blood disease and was pretty sick as a baby/toddler. My mom and I talked recently about how my parents waited a few years after I recovered to make sure I was healthy before they had another kid (which I always kind-of knew). I think this conversation is fine, now... I'm an adult and I can appreciate why my parents made that decision. However, at 9 I could definitely see myself misconstruing "we wanted to wait until you were healthy so that we would be able to adequately care for both of you" as "We didn't want another sick kid like you!" I can see that happening with Abigail's brother and I definitely agree there are some topics/decisions you might not want to talk to your kids about or approach very carefully.

I can also see how continuously going on about how a child is/was "difficult" (even if it's presented as a joke) could be damaging. And maybe with her parent-teacher conferences, it wasn't that bad but maybe she was just a perfectionist or had some anxiety and took small constructive comments as major criticism? Or maybe her parents made a big deal out of what the teacher said to improve?

[valsa]

Okay, on to more serious matters:

I call bullshit. I got all sorts of "bad me" stories from my teachers, but a hard working straight A student only getting bad reports from every teacher. Major bullshit.

Someone jumped on the drama llama early in life.

No student is perfect. No teacher expects perfect students. Those detailed mistakes were simply suggestions of areas that could be worked on. Get over yourself, Abigail.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Someone should create a super sarcastic post to her about how they sympathise with her because they were also abused as a child....but theirs being things like being beaten with a piece of pipe, left home alone for days at the age of 5 while their parents went out drinking, told by their parents that they are the worst child ever, stupid and worthless, fed only dog food...I dont suppose it would make her think and realise that her parents were not abusive and it could be worse though

[Wolfie]

And since when were mistakes always bad? My grandpa was an oops, a very treasured birth control failure. Same with my siblings. Just because a child isn't planned doesn't mean that they aren't special and wanted because the parents choose to keep them.

I've heard from a teen from a QF family that she felt sort of just there. She wasn't wanted or not wanted, she wasn't planned or not planned, she just happened.