They’re Not Like Us

Our family was little. Our family was comprised of just us.

I feel the sting of tears and I can hear her voice state clearly,  “don’t be sad, ninzie”.

Boy, momma. I sure am trying. You aren’t making it easy on me though. This one is a doozy.

I feel so weird with no one hovering. I feel like Linus without a blanket.

My mom WAS a helicopter mom.

She was anxious about everything all the time, for one thing. She also wanted to spare me the harshness of the world at large. She recorded television shows for me but removed from them any parts that might be scary and as many of the ads as she could get rid of before I got to see. I couldn’t walk to school or go places on my own until well into the age of double digits. My mom took being a mom very seriously and lived her life making decisions so that mine could be better.

And people have been calling me “spoiled” for over forty years.

Because they aren’t like us.

According to a lead researcher on attachment theory the idea that attention and affection will turn our children sour somehow is totally bananas. In my early twenties I remember reading that “spoiling is what happens when you leave things on a shelf too long”.

You don’t spoil a child by loving them too much. You don’t spoil a child when you offer caring support and safety. You don’t spoil a child just by being soft around the edges, having humility or treating them as though they have valuable things to say.

My mom would tell you that she didn’t have to punish me as a child. My mom would tell you that, for the most part, I made decisions that aligned with her expectations of me without needing a heavy hand.

I would tell you that my mom knew what power and presence looked like without harshness. My mom knew how to motivate me to please her intrinsically. Without control.

I wanted to do things to make her proud because she was gentle with her demands of me. Because she treated me carefully and thoughtfully I was inclined, driven even, to make good decisions.

But my “good” decisions don’t look so “good” to everyone else, I guess. Because they’re not like us.

My mom remembered every time someone hurt her feelings. Empathy is the greatest gift she gave me and it came from having an incredibly sensitive heart. When it hurts so intensely to be treated without care you go out of your way to be careful. She taught me to think about how the choices I make impact others. She taught me to put my energy into filling the sails of the people around me.

She taught me these things by example. Her love and dedication to me and my children never wavered even as we aged. My mom’s whole world was built around the love she had in her heart for us and she never stopped working on a better future.

I probably would have always been a deep feeling human being. No matter how I was brought up there were probably always going to be functional gaps in my persona.  I have mental health struggles and neurodivergence and blind spots in my abilities that are likely just a part of how I’m made.

Treating me with respectful love and kindness didn’t make me a difficult person. It has given me a reliable foundation of support even when I have been a difficult person.

My mother made her world about making my world better. She put me before almost everything for the near – entirety of her stay on the planet.

She taught me that there’s nothing i would rather build my world around. She showed me sacrifice without resentment.

And I’m standing on this hill on my own now facing the behaviour and opinions of people who don’t understand the basics of psychology and don’t care to learn telling me that I’m spoiling my children and doing them a disservice by parenting like my mom did.

But that’s alright, I wouldn’t expect them to understand.

They’re not like us.