But not everyone agrees that childhood is that significant in your character development. Some would say that's just an excuse for poor adult behaviour, and that it's entirely up to you what you make of your adulthood.
I strongly believe that your adult behaviour is greatly influenced by your childhood experience, and that it's very hard to throw off that experience. The attitudes and assumptions you're exposed to as a child become deeply embedded and can affect your whole personality.
It seems obvious to me that my woefully inadequate childhood led directly to me being a rather clueless adult. My parents and my boarding school between them left me with poor social skills, low self-confidence, repressed emotions and dismal self-awareness. I've spent my life trying to overcome those failings, but with limited success.
The sceptics would tell me my childhood is past history and has no influence whatever on my adult life. Instead of harping on about my childhood, I should just forget about it, focus on the present and grab life's opportunities.
Well, I have indeed grabbed life's opportunities, but I'm still conscious that other people are often better-performing adults than myself, quite confident about all sorts of things that still make me nervous and hesitant.
Or so it seems. It may be that their apparent confidence and social poise is only skin-deep, and underneath they're equally nervous. They're just good at hiding their trepidation. Or hiding their blunders.
In the final analysis, I've made the most of my life and had lots of fun on the way. That's good enough for me.
The older I get, the more I realize how important childhood upbringing can be. Love and attachment during those early years, along with mental stimulation are the building blocks for the rest of your life.
ReplyDeleteBijoux: Love, attachment and mental stimulation are exactly what's needed. Any sense of a parent's indifference is disastrous.
DeleteI do believe one's upbringing can't help but color their adulthood, but some fare better than others. I grew up scared to death of my sperm donor, someone rest his soul. Hello? Anyone? Anyway, I lived physical, emotional and psychological abuse, insults, constant put-downs and fear of death, but believe I'm fairly stable. It's odd- I'm one of eight originally, and those of us who lived through the "dark" times are grateful for survival, while the younger ones who thankfully didn't have to endure the abuse once he left, feel cheated, neglected and traumatized no matter how much we older siblings told them they were more fortunate. Go figure.
ReplyDeletepresstfortime: That sounds like a pretty awful childhood. And it's easy to feel traumatised, however irrational that seems to others.
DeleteTill I read I Am Ok You Are Okay in the mid seventies, I did not even know about childhood experiences affecting/influencing adult behaviour. By that time, I was well settled in a marriage, parenthood and a career and found the contents remarkably effective in understanding behaviour and taking appropriate responses. Till today, TA has been of great help to me in not only retaining my own sanity but also in handling difficult behaviour in others. That book and its contents besides another that followed, Games People Play have been great teachers of human behaviour. If you have not read them, I strongly recommend that you do.
ReplyDeleteRamana: I know those two books though I've never read them. Perhaps I should check them out. Luckily I've never had any trouble retaining my sanity!
DeleteI figure our upbringing gave us a rough draft. I thinking rewriting is a lot more fun than first drafts.
ReplyDeleteJean: That's an interesting way of looking at it. I guess I've rewritten my personal history a bit over the years.
DeleteAs a child I, apparently, learned it was not good to notice what was going on around me. I am still unobservant to this day. Which means I can feel safe in risky situations. Is that good or bad?
ReplyDeleteLinda: Probably a good thing if you don't notice too many worrying details. I also tend to overlook "warning signs" and launch into things a bit carelessly. Luckily it hasn't led to too many debacles.
DeleteI strongly agree. I know that the experiences we have as children become deeply embedded and difficult to ignore. My father could have been a better person, I'm sure there was someone nice inside but he was treated very badly by his step father. People didn't talk about feelings in those days.
ReplyDeletePolly: I suspect my father was also treated badly by his own father, though he never talked about his childhood. And he certainly never talked about his feelings.
DeleteMy mother resented the limitations that marriage placed on her at that time and never ceased to try to damn with faint praise. I grew up wary of her and others, but was also sure that whatever it was was not my fsult and i did not have to internalise her view of me.
ReplyDeleteFly: That was a healthy reaction, not internalising her views. A lot of children do absorb their parents' opinions of them and it does them a lot of damage.
DeleteI believe childhood makes the adult, for better or for worse. The adult either overcomes childhood or succumbs to it.
ReplyDeleteJoanne: You've summed it up in a nutshell. And I guess I'm one of those who've (on the whole) overcome rather than succumbed.
DeleteI have had ambivalence at times in taking care of my mother. In time I find it one of life's privileges to know her so well. But as much as I had seen myself as a career woman and no haus frau; I am my mother in so many ways. I remember when I did not hassle someone over a bit of money. I thought my mom would be so irritated. I turned around and she was so relieved. The arguing was not worth the money to her either.
ReplyDeleteI've always been a bit awkward socially. My big grief with myself is I hide behind being funny. Some of it is a family trait to joke a bit and the other is I rely on it to socialize with people. But the humor is a wall in itself.
Ann: In general I don't think I take after either of my parents, though my father was also lacking in self-confidence and social skills. I think I also tend to hide behind being funny.
DeleteI watched a doco about trauma recently. The doctor presenting it suggested that the whole, higher functioning person is in everyone and can surface when trauma is addressed.
ReplyDeleteHe has written numerous books and I feel like it might be worth exploring more of his work. His name is Gabor Mate
Kylie: I'd never heard of him, but his books look very interesting. Must check them out. Alice Miller is another person who has written about the effects of childhood emotional trauma.
DeleteI know I still try to do very peculiar things that I know stem from childhood incidents - I'm thankful I can see it coming.
ReplyDeleteSx
Ms Scarlet: I have some very strong obsessions that are clearly connected to my childhood, though why an apparently trivial experience should become an obsession is a mystery to me.
DeleteI agree, the things that happen in childhood and young adulthood highly influence you as an adult.
ReplyDeleteMary: How could they not? The childhood mind is very impressionable and absorbs all sorts of negative (and positive) attitudes.
DeleteThe child mind can see things very oddly. Figuring out what was real when you are an adult can be very odd, too. For years, I refused to see my mother's adultery and her compulsive lying. When I recently mentioned the lying to my brother he was relived to hear me say that since he wasn't sure of his observations, either.
ReplyDeleteLinda: Indeed, figuring out what was real can be tricky. It only dawned on me gradually that my mother lied about all sorts of things - to avoid "being a burden", to avoid upsetting me etc. She consistently made out everything was fine and she didn't need any help. It was only after she died that I realised she had needed a lot of help but simply wouldn't admit it.
DeleteI definitely agree that our environment and experiences when we were young, and throughout our life influence the type person we are. I certainly know that has been true for me.
ReplyDeleteJoared: It seems obvious really, but there are still people who say you can leave your childhood behind and not be influenced by it.
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