Comment by LiquidPolymer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LiquidPolymer | Hacker News Reader

I've been pondering this lately because of the dynamics of myself and my siblings. We did have a rough time growing up and my mother did the best she could in a bad situation. From a large gaggle of siblings and cousins, I am the only one who emerged into a middle class life with an interesting career. Poverty, addiction, and early death are the norm for my family.

My mother was nurturing and supportive. She realized my potential and encouraged me the entire time. I help support her these days and I'm proud she lives well. We talk on the phone frequently about philosophy, religion, politics and more. She is lively and engaged. Yet my half brother and sister complain endlessly how their lives were ruined by our mother. They have very detailed stories of privation and emotional abuse. They are older yet we lived together growing up. I don't recognize any of the things they claim. Its like they lived a completely different life. My mother takes their criticism to heart and it hurts when they loudly make these claims.

Yet, I must consider that my siblings seem emotionally stunted. I think this is genetic. At various times they both have demanded their "inheritance" early which is non-existent. My siblings fail the marshmallow test over and over again as adults. Any financial windfall is drained away immediately on frivolous items. I just found out my brother got a PPP loan somehow (he has zero employees) and spent the funds on a large van and a bunch of expensive guns. I'm guessing this will be eventually discovered and once again he will face dire consequences. (he just got his felony record expunged - hence the guns).

I don't know what to make of this. I feel like an alien being whenever I see my siblings or cousins. I live in a house and still have my teeth. I don't smoke meth or fent. Their life decisions are a mystery to me.

Well, I can vouch for your siblings’ experience. Both me and my brother were raised by same parents but we turned out very different. I remember endless poverty, my parents fighting, lot of chaotic moments regarding my education progress and merits, being chastised for every little mistake and a lot of abusive parenting in guise of strictness and it had been so traumatic that I still suffer from panic attacks when I have waves of my childhood.

My brother has an entirely different memory, loving and supportive nurturing parents, wealth and prosperity, very friendly parents who never fought, lots of social interactions, overall a good childhood.

The thing is, when I was the only child, my father was rising out of poverty, I was born to a very underaged mother(she decided to keep my while my father wanted abortion), then my parents had extremely unrealistic expectations and wanted to raise me as the ideal model kid and unintentionally abusing me by following wrong parenting advises from wrong people because sadly children do not come with a user manual(my mom’s joke). But once my brother came in the family, my father has achieved wealth and better understanding of parenting and was less stressed, so he and my mom took their lessons from my childhood and raised my brother correctly(imho).

So, it is indeed possible to have entirely different childhood for siblings in the same house. Heck, when my brother was growing up, I still suffered some old strict parenting which was only limited to me because the dynamic was already there for me, but my brother was different.

My so often realises these beahviors when we get together at my parent’s place. My brother is sometimes surprised that, the parenting I received was something that he could never withstand and he is grateful that my parents did not repeat that, though sometimes he also claims that it could be different generation thing.

That being said, I have no grudge against my parents, poverty can make people do weird things and parenting is hard. But yes, living on the same house under same parents, siblings can have polar opposite experience.

Have you considered that you might have been the golden child and they weren't?

People can cause great harm with the best of intentions. Especially when they are overwhelmed.

Children who have been neglected end up having impaired emotional regulation in adulthood. You can view it as genetics, or see it as a lesson of what you could have been had you been born in different shoes.

It isn't a satisfying conclusion or story, but it is what it is. What matters is picking up the pieces and moving on.

Raising children and watching others raise them, I compare notes in detail.

I recently had an outing where I was the only "active" father. I had a dozen children begging for my attention. They were cutting in line to engage with me. Other fathers looked on. They all knew my tricks, jokes but I was the only one engaging.

I do not hear about a father figure. Did you have one and they did not?

I ask because while single moms may put in the effort the results are inconsistent. I had a mostly absent father but his direction and instruction kept me grounded. I didn't thrive until a new father figure encouraged me and helped me see my potential.

> I recently had an outing where I was the only "active" father. I had a dozen children begging for my attention. They were cutting in line to engage with me. Other fathers looked on. They all knew my tricks, jokes but I was the only one engaging.

On occasion I'll go to the park to play with my son and other kids will start following us around and sometimes even come up and ask if I can also toss them around. (Sorry, no can do!)

Being a parent is a full contact sport. :D

It is sad so many adults are either unwilling or unable to engage with kids.

Not an expert, but I believe the human brain uses some mechanisms to stay on the same track even if there are problems with that track. Practically, if something bad did happen to your siblings and it was memorable, it's possible they held on to it and lived as though their lives were predetermined from that. This means they are choosing to ignore your example and your mom's example.

(edit: almost forgot, remember they are afraid of your mom and afraid of leaving their current state, contributes to them staying where they are)

I often think the same thing...usually one can cook up a theory of why something might have an evolutionary advantage, but this one kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. And on top of it, that our super advanced scientific culture full of experts pays little more than lip service (regardless of who is in power, and one doesn't have to be in power to push agendas) to the problem is also rather counterintuitive.

Children that grow up in narcissistic homes often report having different recollections of their childhoods based on the particular role assigned to them by the narcissistic parent. These roles range from golden child, to lost child, to scapegoat, truth teller and many more. Some children also end up taking on the enabler role unknowingly. My mom is a covert narcissist and it took me many, many decades to realize it since most of the literature online deals with overt narcissism. I don’t mean to sound prescriptive, this may or may not be relevant to your specific case but hopefully it’s helpful to someone in a similar situation as mine.

> My siblings fail the marshmallow test over and over again as adults.

The marshmallow test is one of those pseudo scientific things that fails to replicate. It’s not actually a thing and has no proven correlation to anything of substance.

I'd fail the marshmallow test. It's one extra marshmallow I'm losing, who cares?

Now, if it was $100,000/$200,000 instead of 1/2 marshmallows, the outcome would be completely different.

Regardless of whether the stakes are trivial or immense, the amount of thought, deliberation, and care going into the decision will be at least correlated with the stakes, for me.

It's easy to fail this test when you know from your experience that you won't get the reward later on anyway.

Gp is invoking the pop-culture understanding of the marshmallow test as a rhetorical tool to underline a point. I don't think their siblings are being asked to defer literal marshmallows.

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