Quote:
Originally Posted by Perna
Which leads me to, where do you get off deciding that, "I see some of the ways that my son reacts to hurt and closes himself off from people that remind me of some of the direct effects from the abuse that was done to me as a child" is what is happening? Your son is not you! He's got his own problems. You are not your abusing parent(s), you have your own problems!
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Well, not a bad insight, I could have done without the hostile preface, "where do you get off?" It had not actually occurred to me, despite the similarity of his responses, that I might *not* have actually done this to him.
However, I live within a community where even though none of my family members were survivors of the Holocaust, you see what parents who are survivors implicitly communicate to their children, which is "be afraid, people will try to kill you because you're a Jew." And then events like 9/11 happen which makes Jews feel particularly attacked. Children of Holocaust survivors and even those of us who are Jewish develop this sense of fear even though nobody has ever tried to kill us personally.
It is this transmission of experience that I am concerned about, and I do think there's a legitimacy to it that you perhaps don't see. I do appreciate acknowledging the other possibilities and the general reminder to not blur the boundaries between myself and my child, and to see his experience for what it really is, not just through my eyes, and to help him cope with it as his parent.
Anne