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I've been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting on my teenage/college years , particularly compared to what my husband and friends experienced, and I feel sad for the things I missed out on because my uBPD mom was so strict and so paranoid.

I'm also wondering if this is a BPD thing, or maybe it's just her personality or how she was raised...? This fear of the world, and consequently sheltering her kids to a pretty extreme degree.

A few examples I've been thinking about...

-In our state, kids could get a drivers permit at 15 and license at 16. But my parents made me wait an extra year and not get my permit until I was 16. After I finally got my license at 17, I was only allowed to drive to a few specific places (ie, church, school, and dance class), was not allowed to have music playing in the car (too distracting), and was required to call my mom each time I arrived to my destination and before I left to come back home.

-I wasn't allowed to go to youth group at our church, because she thought the kids were too "shallow" or would be a bad influence.

-I was homeschooled, and under our homeschool curriculum you could choose one of two "tracks" for high school -- basically either college-prep or no-college. The college-prep track required a few more high school credits, more math and science, etc. My mother convinced me that I didn't need/want to go to college, that I wouldn't like it and it would be "too much" for me, and I didn't need a college degree anyway, and also that the high school college-prep route would be too hard (because I didn't like math and science) so she pressured me - in a very convincing way that made it seem like MY choice - to choose the easier high school curriculum and not go to college.

-Recently I was looking at the Instagram of a young 20-year-old friend and she's posting pictures of going out on all these adventures around the city with her friends - hiking one day, then ice cream, then the beach the next day, etc. And I felt sad because I never got to do things like that with my friends. If I did, my mom was with us. I had to call to get permission to even go from church to a restaurant with my friends. Likewise, my husband just mentioned how he drove from Michigan to Alaska with his brother when he was 17. That's so astounding to me as I remember having to practically peel my mom off me in the driveway before a road trip, from her "are you SURE you don't need me to come with you?" when I was driving 3 hours away and I was 24!!

This is long winded and I apologize. I'm sad and angry for what I missed out on, and that I didn't even know at the time I was missing anything. I just see it in hindsight, realize that my teens and 20s were so manipulated and controlled and restricted.

Did others with BPD parents experience this?
Or is this something else?

I don't think I missed out on anything but I was parentified as a teen ager and it seems you were too- being held responsible for your BPD mother's feelings. I did thankfully have "normal" teen age experiences but at home, things were different.

I don't think the driving restrictions for you were unreasonable actually. Teens are not known to be the safest drivers. Another aspect is auto insurance which is costly for teens. Waiting another year can add safety and cost benefits. It may not be the case for all teens but some parents do ask kids to wait.

The other ones- not allowing you to go to youth group or take college prep classes- IMHO are overly controlling and restrictive. Teen are going to meet all kinds of other kids- some may be good influences and some not- but teens also need some amount of autonomy and learn self regulation and this is how they learn. If a teen was getting into trouble with one group, that may be grounds to intervene but to not let them go to usual teen activities is restrictive.

College "fun" isn't all it's presented to be. I didn't really enjoy the social scene at college- and for some students, who don't want to be involved in drinking, partying, college is not all a happy experience. I know of some home schooling parents who are very selective of where their kids go to college for this reason. Also college is expensive and if a parent is paying- they do have a say in where the child attends. That your mother restricted your academic choices in high school was not allowing you to see your potential IMHO.

However, it isn't too late to change these outcomes. You may have missed out on some teen experiences but also, some aren't all that much fun- it's what we imagined them to be. I think some of us need to indulge our "inner child" as adults ( and still act age appropriate). We can take a trip, go to the movies, beach, ice cream- with friends now.

Community colleges have the college prep level classes such as math, science, and english to prepare a student for a 4 year college degree or award a 2 year one . They are less expensive ways to gain fundamental college credits towards a major. You can enroll in a couple of classes to see if this is something you want to pursue.

While my mom does not have BPD, she does have cPTSD, and my sisters and I grew up religiously conservative and homeschooled.

I can share some of my experiences, and also some of what I've seen my H's kids experience (their mom has many traits of BPD), so you have some examples to reflect on as you untangle your past.

My older sister is currently not in contact with my parents. Both my younger sister and I agree that she seemed to be hit the hardest by conflict with my parents; conflict that continued into adulthood. My parents were and are not able to empathize with her very well. She moved out right when she turned 18. She and her H have chosen not to have children, and take the time to give themselves experiences and adventures as adults that they were not given or could not do as kids. Her H is the oldest child and grew up taking care of his mom, so both of them, in their own ways, experienced not having "typical" childhoods of adults focusing on the kids; instead, they both strongly experienced either adults focusing on adult emotions (my mom), or adults needing help from children (my BIL's mom).

The driving limitations you shared sound "generally normal" -- that is, within the wide range of normal parenting behavior, which can range from the permissive side ("Here are the keys, see you whenever") through the authoritarian side, which sounds like your mom's position. It doesn't sound pathological but that doesn't mean that in other areas in life everything was fine. And, it can be common in disordered families for "generally normal" parenting to not be experienced that way, to not feel that way, due to the overarching dynamic in the family. So it makes sense to me that you'd be questioning the driving rules, or feeling a certain way about them as you reflect back, even though at face value the rules are fairly normal... because of the bigger context of your family life.

To find another angle on it -- the kids' mom (uBPD) has sometimes given them advice that is good advice. But it takes me a minute to be able to treat it as such, because it's not being given in a vacuum. It takes a lot to be able to say: "Just because BPD was involved, doesn't mean that every word coming out of her mouth is unhealthy. And -- just because she gave good advice once, doesn't mean that everything else going on was somehow OK". It's definitely a balance.

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These experiences did stand out to me as emotionally controlling:


I have seen that dynamic in play with my H's kids. I heard their mom use the nearly the same verbiage when trying to convince H's oldest, at age ~9, not to go on a trip with us: "Oh, of course it's fine to go... but are you sure you want to?" She had plausible deniability -- "I never said you couldn't go, I never said you had to stay with me" -- but in disordered and dysfunctional families, it's "emotionally clear" what the message is -- Mom doesn't want you to go, Mom doesn't want you to do that. But it's framed as "I always give you a choice, I always ask you what you want" when really it's undermining the child's confidence in choicemaking.

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Not being allowed to go to youth group does strike me as beyond normal range parenting (again, I grew up in a church with a youth group, so I understand the dynamic a bit)... because it's the youth group at the church your parents chose to attend. That does land as micromanage-y, or wanting to control the other relationships you have outside of family. I wonder if your mom may have felt threatened about you developing good relationships with the youth group leaders? Or even just friendships with peers, as those would take focus and energy away from your mom.

My H's oldest is now 19, and (fortunately) works full time out of the house, which is a relief. She has no friends here in town, which is not an exaggeration, so when she got this job, I felt grateful that she would be creating new relationships, even "just" through work. It does sound like she is fitting in there, and people like her. But she spends much of her off time taking care of her younger half brother at Mom's house. We hear about her doing many, many "parenting" type things for him. So her mom's overwhelming emotional needs have meant that (a) she did not have energy/bandwidth to develop & maintain normal peer relationships, and (b) instead of Mom being a parent at Mom's house, Mom tends to abdicate that and parentify SD19.

Anyway... I guess the way it ties in is that in BPD-influenced family systems, the kids, often the parentified kids, generally don't get to have or develop normal-range relationships with peers or other adults.

Were you the "golden child", or do you think you had a different role in the family?

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Really glad you're here sorting that out. I occasionally have to do that, too, in my therapy sessions -- reflect back on things I remember from a religious homeschooled background, and think through: that feels super normal, but was it? And if not, how much of that was from my mom's overwhelming emotions, how much was from the religious stuff, and how much was notable but still normal range?

You are not alone in feeling sad and angry about what you missed out on by having a mother with BPD. Part of having a mother with BPD is her fears of abandonment can translate into never wanting her children to grow up, because if they become adults, then she will feel abandoned. The first time, I realized something might be wrong with my mother with BPD, was when she said with distress in her tone of voice and body language, that my brother and the little girl across the street who were in kindergarten liked each other. Mom went out of her way to ruin every romantic relationship her children ever had, and only one of us got married, and she was terrible to my BIL. I have missed out on so many things in life because my mother would not allow me to grow up and do things that were normal for my age. Around seventh grade, I cooked dinner for the whole family as an assignment from the Girl Scouts. I was so delighted everything had gone well until mom walked into the kitchen, and the only thing she had to say was how terrible the food was. So yes, there is much to be sad and angry about when we miss so many normal life experiences because of how our mother with BPD has affected our life. Having a mother with BPD is life long sorrow. How are you doing now? 

I remember the cooking project. We had a cookbook for kids and I picked out a recipe for meat loaf with mashed potatoes and made it. My mother's response was to go on and on about how I smashed the meat so much into the pan that it came out hard as a brick. She would immitate the hand motions for smashing it into the pan. I don't recall that I did that and thought the meat loaf came out just fine.

Enmeshment - when the BPD parent is overly involved, restrictive, and connected to the child is an issue. Another is when the child is the scapegoat child. My parents attended college and expected their children to, so for me, college was a way to get distance from the dynamics in the family.