Let’s set the scene: You go over to a friends house for a sleepover around the age of ten. Your friend is the same age as you and though most kids have already had a fair amount of sleepovers, this is your first one.
As you enter her house, your friend’s mother is watching television and her husband (your friend’s father) is in the kitchen preparing dinner. They are both cheerful and happy to see you when you walk in. Later, as you sit at their dinner table, your friend is talking to her parents about her day, your plans for the weekend with her, and anything else on her mind while her parents nod and make comments back and laugh when she says something sassy. You are nervous, confused, and uncomfortable. You try to put on a happy and content face so that you don’t seem weird to your friends parents and you succeed.
At the end of the meal, You and your friend go upstairs and play some video games. You and your friend lay down and start to drift off to sleep and you decide that you can’t hold it in anymore; you have to ask that which has been eating at you all evening.
“Is it always like this here?” and she sounds confused as she responds, “What do you mean?”
“Does your dad always cook? Does your mom always get to sit back and relax? Do they always let you talk at the dinner table? Is your dad always so nice to you?…” The questions start to pour out of your mouth and you can’t stop them. This is the first time you have ever seen a healthy dynamic between a father and daughter and now you are confused.
This sums up the day that I realized my home life was a bit abnormal. When I hit my twenties, I discovered that it could also be considered “Unhealthy”.
I grew up with my mother, father and two younger sisters in a small town in West Virginia. All in all I had a nice childhood. I had a clean house to come home to, food to eat, clean clothes, all the necessities of life. From an outside perspective, it would seem that I didn’t have a lot to complain about and I never did complain. Besides, if I did, my speech would fall onto deaf ears.
Now that I am in my Mid-Twenties I find myself looking back on my childhood and having waves of memories flood into view. Memories that make me ache inside and leave me feeling confused. I decided that the time had come to stop shoving them aside and to let myself feel their sting and try to make sense of my own feelings.
One memory in particular cuts into me as I recall being in the single wide trailer I grew up in. I remember being in the small bathroom with my pregnant mother while my dad was yelling on the other side of the door. I specifically remember my three or four year old self telling her “Mommy, don’t cry. We are going to have a new baby soon.” I can still see her in my mind’s eye, rubbing her baby bump as tears streamed down her face.
Before I get much more into my father, I need to preface it by saying very clearly that my father never physically abused my mother or any of us girls growing up. My sisters and I would receive physical punishment in the form of a hand or a belt on the behind but it’s hard to consider that abuse when everyone around you is raised with virtually the same punishments for misbehaving. Though today, that kind of parenting leaves people completely aghast, back then it was how it was.
My father was a mechanic and even owned his own muffler shop for a while. He worked a lot and so did my mother. Mom worked at McDonalds for a while, Walmart, and eventually started working with my Dad in the muffler shop that they owned together. Like my father, my Mom can weld, change oil, change brakes, rotate tires, etc.
Mom is strong, and she raised us to be so. Not only could she do all those amazing things, but she has always been talented. You name it and odds are she can do it. She would do all these while taking care of me and my two younger sisters. She’s a mother that others should look up to. She always made sure she had time for us, always put herself last, and always tried to cover up for my father and his complete disinterest in his own children.
My father never changed a diaper, fed us, bathed us, dressed us, or any of the things that dads eventually end up doing. In fact, if my Mom would ask him to help with us in ANY sort of way, she would be met with sighs of exhaustion or just plain anger.
I specifically remember one occasion where my mom had to work, so she asked my dad to pick me up from preschool. I waited inside my little church basement school as all the other kids got picked up. I was the last to leave and my teacher went outside to see if she could see him coming. She popped her head out, popped back in, and asked me what kind of car my daddy drove.
“Daddy drives a big black truck,” I said proudly. She said okay and went back outside for a second and when she came back in he was walking behind her. My Dad had never picked me up from school before, so I was excited. I said to him, “Hi Daddy! This is my school. Isn’t it so pretty?” to which he replied in a Callas tone “yeah, let’s go”. The whole way home he was so mad he wouldn’t say a word to me.
Later that night, mom came home, and he started into her, “Why did you make me do that? I had to go inside that stupid little church to get her. I thought they would send her out! I waited there for an hour and a half until that teacher came outside to get me!”
Looking back, I believe this was the last time, as a child, that I was happy to see my father and I learned at a young age what was expected of my sisters and I by him. My sisters and I were to be “seen not heard”. No talking at the dinner table, in the car, when the TV is on, when we have company, or when we were out in public. If we were at home, and we wanted to play then we had to make sure Dad was either in a good mood, not in the room, or not at home at all.
To list all the subjects Dad had rules about or was particular about, would take a lot of paragraphs, so I will stop there for now.
For most of my childhood, I believed that every family was like this: Dad doesn’t pay attention to you, Mom takes care of you, and children aren’t allowed to talk when dad is around; but after I experienced the healthy family dialogue at my friend’s house, I was confused. It wasn’t long after that, I began to ask myself a disturbing question: “Am I living in an abusive home?”
I would try to talk myself out of this idea. “Dad is just strict,” I would say to myself “He takes care of us. We have food, beds, toys, and we don’t get bruises or broken bones. I am lucky to have both of my parents. Some kids that I know, don’t even have a daddy and/or a mommy. Some of them get beat and have cuts and bruises all over. My parents aren’t divorced and my sisters and I don’t have to split up our holidays between different sides of the family…”
For years, I would keep reciting this to myself over and over. To make it even more concrete in my mind, I would have other friends TELL ME that I was “lucky that my parents were still together” and “you don’t know what it’s like to be sad about your mommy and daddy”.
Thus, my pain was deemed INVALID. I was supposed to push all my feelings down and to stop “being so dramatic” about them. My opinion doesn’t matter. I had to be “thankful” because I HAD a dad that was around and a mom to take care of me.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I am thankful. I know that I didn’t have it as bad as most children did/do; but It would have been nice to feel as though my pain was as important as my peers.
The confusion about my home life stayed in the forefront of my mind. I knew that the things that were happening weren’t right, but I was being told otherwise. My friends with divorced parents or no parents at all told me not to complain while my friend with a healthy and supportive home life was worried about me and my sisters.
So what was going on? Was I just being dramatic or was my fathers behavior not what it should be? I had enough of asking my self questions, so I did some research and I discovered the word that best suited my dad’s style of parenting: “Uninvolved”.
The word fit better and better the more I thought about it; he wasn’t neglectful to the point of abuse, but we also never had any attention from him. We had everything we needed to survive and be content, but we lacked the care and affection that we craved from our Daddy.
According to the article Uninvolved Parenting : Characteristics, Effects, and Causes by Kendra Cherry the style of an uninvolved parent looks pretty much how it sounds. The parent might provide basic needs for their children such as food, clothing, and shelter, but otherwise they are quite uninvolved in their lives.
After reading this article, I had come to the conclusion that my father is CERTAINLY fits this description.
He was emotionally distant, would constantly avoid having a single conversation with us, never made sure we were even still in the yard or house as we played, never expected anything out of us, NEVER showed us any sort of affection, be it physical or otherwise, and he never wanted to come to any of our important school or extra-curricular activities.
I specifically remember when I competed in the West Virginia State Track and Field Tournament, I hoped beyond hope that my father would come to watch me compete. My mom was there and had told me before my events “Your Dad said he would try to come if he could close the shop early,” but I knew she was covering for him to save my feelings; the shop wasn’t open on the weekends and this was a Saturday.
I gave it all I had throughout both of my events of Shot-put and Discus, thinking the whole time that my Dad might actually show up this time. I put everything I had into both, and I was fortunate enough to win the State Championship Title. As I heard them announce my placing and turned around to my family in the stands, I searched through their faces. My father was nowhere in sight.
Five members of my family came to cheer me on but not the one person I had so desperately sought the approval of. I was crushed but couldn’t show it as I didn’t want to offend the rest of my family by acting as though their presence wasn’t good enough.
I called him “Dad,” I practically screamed into the phone “I won! I’m a state champion discus thrower.” All I wanted, was to hear him say what every girl wants to hear from her father (“good job, I’m proud of you!”) But once again, I was let down.
He said in a low, indifferent tone “Well, good. How did you do in Shot-put?” He knew that I had qualified for this event but I had told him in the past that I was only doing Shot-put to help increase my upper body strength for Discuss. Discuss was my passion, and he knew how much it meant to me to do well in that event.
I responded “eh I got 8th, which is better than I thought I would do!” I was already feeling pretty down by his responce to me winning in my favorite sport, but then he said “Have to train harder for next year I guess, Congrats though.” and I wanted to throw that medal in the trash.
One might say that in that moment, I was set up for disappointment for anything else I would try to achieve in the future. It would make sense to assume so.
From that point on I started to notice the disappointment in his voice when I would tell him any ideas or plans that I had: college study choices, hobbies, and even down to what new diet I would be trying. Nothing was good enough and nothing was what he would want me to do. He would not offer any ideas of his own, but still insisted that all mine were garbage. My transition into adulthood was overshadowed by disappointed looks and a lack of support.
Aside from my own personal experiences, how does being a child of an uninvolved parent affect a person as they grow up? If you take the time to read “What is Uninvolved Parenting?” by Valencia Higuara you can gain some insight. In the article, Higuara discusses how the children of these types of parents do not develop an emotional connection with the uninvolved parent. It can also negatively affect their social skills, coping skills, and in the long run when the person who was raised by an uninvolved parent has children of their own, they find it difficult to break the cycle and in turn, they are more likely to become uninvolved parents themselves.
So what can my fellow children of uninvolved parents and I do to combat such a bleak prediction about our futures as parents? The answer is pretty obvious: counseling. Which is what I certainly plan on doing, sooner rather than later.
Having the relationship with my father that I did, definitely had a fair amount of negative effects on my life. I have had issues in relationships (both romantic and friendly), I look for approval in complete strangers, I give too much of myself which often leaves me feeling empty, and of course my father and I have never and probably will never be as close as I want us to be. I often over share my personal information with people after they act like a friend to me, I have issues committing to hobbies or career choices, and the constant feeling of not being good enough consumes me on a daily basis.
A common question that I get from friends about my childhood and how it has affected me is “How are your sisters handling it?”. My youngest sister, Morgan is 18, my middle sister, Courtney, is 23, and I am 26. Courtney and I are moved out of our parents house and each of us live on our own. Morgan still lives with my mom and dad. Each one of us are handling my father’s parenting style in different ways but in strong accordance with our personalities.
All us Nicholson sisters are strong, capable, and tough, but we also have some issues that we are going to have to work through every day. As time goes on we will heal and grow; I am confident in that.
I hope that by reading this, your eyes might become open to your own or even someone you know’s situation in their family life. More than that, I hope that you never feel as I did when I was a child: that your pain is invalid and your suffering is being blown out of proportion in your own mind. In the end, only we as individuals know our true feelings.
Comparing your own pain to that of your peers, is no way to get over how you feel. It’s important to look inside of yourself and trust yourself. You know how you feel and you know that just because someone else has it tougher than you doesn’t discredit your feelings.
