That's so cool that he signed his thank-you cards himself! What a big boy. I can't believe how our babies are reading/writing already. Conner is a bit excited about school. I feel waiting the extra year was definitely worth it. He's a lot more mature than he was in Sept. I don't think he was ready then.
I upset Bobbie because I called her out for posting on FB a long vent using the f-word numerous times...like once per sentence. It's turned into 3 long, blasting emails where she's essentially told me I suck now, I sucked then, and she hopes I find peace or whatever when I'm on my own. She said that I never talk to her or listen to her, which really grates on my nerves because I spend more time talking to her about everything in the world than I do her two sisters put together. She accused me of reading her diary when she was younger and even said I'd told her something about writing two positives for every negative thing she wrote.I've never gone through my kids stuff. I've always felt like if they wanted me to know something, they'd tell me. I think the worst for me, or what's been bugging me the most, is she accused me of never praising her or talking good about her except when it makes me look good.
I don't know what she meant by that. I certainly don't praise her or any of my kids in any attempt to reflect well on me, and frankly it's an unfair accusation because either I'm not doing it enough OR I'm only doing it to look good. So I can't win.
I ended up writing her back and saying that we'd talk about it in person, but I'm sure she's taking that as more 'proof' that I'm ignoring her and not talking to her. I refuse to get into a long, heated email debate with her though. It's just very sad for me because I've worked so hard to make her and her siblings happy and apparently that hasn't been good enough. I don't know what else I could have done. I might have done a lot of things wrong, but one thing I'm certain of is I've been the talking parent. Talk talk talk talk all the time. And I've enjoyed it. I resent her saying I never talked to her though. It makes me wonder...where have you been?
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Originally Posted by Ky'sMom
If she could just see from our perspective how much you worry and care about all your kids, how much slack you cut them, she'd have an entirely different view. Like bridget, I was very blaming of my mom for everything wrong with my life. It wasn't until I struck out on my own and had to become self-reliant that I took more ownership of my actions and feelings, and took responsibility for things that happened to me. I really started to appreciate my mom & dad 100 times more after that. Bobbie will come around. I think it also matters to be able to put your social life in its own little corner. While I still had a lot of turmoil around my friendships and angst from my insecurities, it was easy to blame my parents for my feelings of inadequacy. Again, I think it takes realizing there are more important things than your social life - namely being able to pay the bills and feed yourself - that bring you rip the realization that you belong to you, and you can't blame your parents for your negative feelings.
I have very little childhood memories and I believe when reading up on it one day I found that sometimes a creative mind will try to fill that void with memories that are not neccesarily accurate (i.e. a spanking becomes beating). Ever since than I have always questioned some of the memories that I do have. I never went through the "I hate my mom" phase, but I know that it is fairly normal. I did resent my mother for quite some time though. 
I've seen people get worse sentences for theft and IMO what he did to her doesn't even compare 
) Anyway, that night, my bachelorette friend and I had an interesting chat. She comes from a very traditional Asian home. She was asking me if I was going to put Bodhi in public school, and I told her I really liked our district and was pretty sure he'd attend school there. That somehow turned the discussion to how much demand I was going to place on his "academic excellence". I told her I planned to be casual about it. It took awhile for us to get on the same page about what I meant. To me, A's aren't necessarily a sign of exceeding expectation. To me, they just mean you've mastered what you need to move onto the next level of learning. My parents were pretty casual that way about it too - they even stopped asking to see my report cards in high school. So yeah, I want to see A's from Bodhi. But I think the difference is that she will see them as a sign of her future child's exceptionalism (she unfortunately just had a miscarriage and has no child at the moment), whereas I will just see them as proficiency. On top of that, she said she admired her older brother who told his children, "You can be a doctor, lawyer or engineer. Pick one." It was pretty clear to me by the end of the conversation that she defined success in terms of achieving in what's commonly considered a "high status" profession. I was polite, hid my strong objection to what she was saying, and just said that people will define success in their own way, and perhaps even find happiness by achieving their definition of success. (But to the poor person whose definition of success doesn't align with his definition of happiness...perhaps s/he should revisit how to define success.) 