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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

> She would say, “Dave, you only got one award this year. Remember when you won seven last year?”

> If it wasn’t that, maybe it was also because I am gay. My mother was never really happy about this

Ah, the absolute pinnacle of neurosis parenting. That's a solid one-two punch to the child's psyche, which gives them a drive to please while at the same time ensuring it can never be met. Well done; you ensured your child would work hard forever by guaranteeing that no matter how hard they work they won't actually be happy, because they can never meet your standard for approval.

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> She would say, “Dave, you only got one award this year. Remember when you won seven last year?”

I've had stuff like this from parents.

Nothing is ever good enough, I have a friend who is massively more successful than me that I've been friends with since we were children. Went to same nursery, school and university.

When I told my parents I got a bonus one year, instead of great, well done. I got asked how much, followed by asking what bonus did my friend get (them knowing his position, that his bonus would be a couple of orders of magnitude more), seemingly, just to put me down.

I've been told by my dad, despite me having my own place and what I consider a decent job, that I failed in life as my friend has so much more money than me and a better title.

I now just don't care what my parents think.

I feel you. My parent are same way. The constant comparison and criticism has driven me anxious and depressed. I am from Pakistan, and this is pretty common for our community.

The worst part is that they went above and beyond for our education. So now I constantly hear about how they sacrificed their pleasure for us and how we are so ungrateful. They complain that I cannot take a little bit of constructive criticism. Which makes me feel even more guilty. Perhaps I am too sensitive.

I am pretty successful, more successful than most people my parents are actually friends with. I support them financially more than most of my friends. But, of course, that's not good enough for them. Lately, my mom stopped talking with me because I defended my son against their criticism.

In our culture, parents and elders are like God, we are not supposed to say anything back. From childhood, they start programming our heads with stuff like children owe so much to parents, there is heaven under mother's feet, and a lot other such sayings.

I have been to therapists for this and they all recommended that I distance myself from my parents but this is something I just cannot do. They provided food, shelter, the best education. They were there, it is not like they abandoned me. So how can I leave them.

There is a lot of support and literature about parents who abandoned their children or were physically abusive but you don't hear songs about parents who emotionally abused their kids. I don't know how to deal with this.

I drew the line with my dad when he looked down my girlfriend’s shirt and said he could see why I liked her and when he made anti-Semitic remarks about the faculty at my brother’s graduation. (I’m not Pakistani by birth but my mother was and my dad’s grandfather migrated). It started with that sort of behavior you describe as well as misogyny. If you don’t nip it in the bud now there’s no telling where it will end up. This isn’t the pind in Punjab (where his grandfather was from) where you can scratch your balls in public for eternity and no one will say anything.

Instilling ambition and an optimistic hard working spirit is a good thing many children don’t have, but if they are never willing to congratulate you, especially when you are happy about an accomplishment that sounds like borderline abusive behavior.

I would recommend getting a lot of long-term distance and lowered communication to discover your own mental space (german word „abnabeln“).

I've seen this type of thing with my son's friends. Hyper-competitivity in 2nd graders is bizarre to me. I experienced another extreme. :)

End of the day, parents do wacky things, usually in an attempt to protect their kids from their own insecurities, regrets and failures. Both sets of my grandparents were immigrants who experienced both incredible highs and dark low-points. That experience manifested in a bias for risk aversion. After I graduated from college and started my first job (at a bank), my grandmother would mail me application packets for civil service exams for the NYC Sanitation, NYPD, etc. (Note that I didn't live near NYC at the time at all) Her argument was that the stability of a civil service, union gig, close to the nest, was very important.

I try to hold my kids to a high standard of performance, but focus on doing the work and improving, not on some preconceived notion of outcome. In my professional experience, 95% of people focused on getting awards are bullshit artists, so it's not something that I encourage or discourage.

This is it. When we're young and the main/only positive feedback we receive is due to our achievements, it becomes part of our identity and source of self worth. Such a common trap for the combo of smart kid and anxious or narcissistic parents.

After a bunch of therapy I eventually realized that many of my similar behaviors to OP were driven by a false belief that anything less than stellar success would result in annihilation. I felt like I had no worth if I couldn't achieve/succeed/impress. And of course I would feel that way because that's how I derived all of my worth as a child.

At the end of the article the author mentions considering therapy. I really hope he does it.

The author is very deliberate about blaming his mother for negative outcomes in his life. Despite the likely case (guessing here) of the mom loving him unconditionally, but wanting to imbibe ambition in him.

The phenomenon of disliking one's parents for being too harh is much more prevalent in the West. And yet, parents in China and India are harder on their kids, while those kids are growing up to loving their parents more frequently, than being distraught.

My point is, there is some social conditioning in the West that is leading people to dislike perfectly good, well intentioned parenting. Wanting and preparing one's kids for generally accepted notions of success isn't bad parenting, it's love, because it's easier to simply not put the ground work into imbibing a culture of success

> And yet, parents in China and India are harder on their kids, while those kids are growing up to loving their parents more frequently

Got any evidence for that? Those cultures place a stronger emphasis on duty and obedience to parents. That's not the same as love though. It's possible to dislike one's parents but still take care of them in their old age because it's what society expects of you and you'd be considered a bad person if you did otherwise.

> The phenomenon of disliking one's parents for being too harh is much more prevalent in the West

Citation needed.

If you look a few comments up you'll see some people not from the West discussing harsh parents. They're also affected negatively.

Your idea that people complaining about how they weren't parented is them simply disliking their loving parents is not well thought out.

As another gay man that was raised this way, I couldn't agree more. The worst thing you can do to a child already doubting their self-worth (by being in an invisible minority) is to quantify it with impossible standards. Please don't do this to your child, no matter their orientation.

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