Did your BPD parent play with you as a child?

[lm1109]

I was just thinking about this because we are finally getting some nice weather and I'm planning to take my kids to the park tomorrow. It dawned on me that my mother never took me to a park... . I mean literally... I have no memory of it EVER! She never did anything with me or my brother, her excuse was that we didn't have any money... which is understandable. But really... she couldn't manage to take me to a park and sit on a bench? There was one right down the street from my childhood house. I wasn't allowed to leave my yard either(insanely paranoid) so it wasn't like I could go do anything on my own. I don't get it... I take my kids to different parks and meet up with a friend and her kids at least once a week if not more. My husband and I take the kids on walks nearly every evening in the summer. My parents never once took me for a walk. All I really remember doing is playing by myself in our yard or watching TV ALL the time! She never wanted me to invite friends over either... . and on the rare occasion she allowed it her and my dad would get into huge embarrassing fights right in front of my friends! I look back and I honestly cant think of one thing she seemed to enjoy about being a parent. Just wondering if anyone elses parent/parents were like this? Did they ever play with you?

[HazelJade]

I have the same experience. Sometimes I even force myself to recall pleasant memories cause I tell myself "Come on, it can't be all bad, what did I do all those years? There must be nice memories somewhere". The reality is that the only memories I have are either bad, or non existent.

Specifically about playing; the only memories that I have of my BPD/NPD father playing with me are two:

- a game he had invented and that all the family should play while he was "directing" it. I hated it and never felt like fun.

- teaching me to play poker when I was 7. I didn't like it, so he changed the name for it and tried to teach me again.I still remember the way I looked at him when I realized it was the same game.

Children tend to lose respect for this sort of things.

[Lily77]

I remember my mother reading to me a lot when I was very little, she never really played with me. It as always, "Go play, I'm busy" growing up even though she was home most of the time. It's something I never really thought about or realized until recently. She would take us on outings though, to the movies, to the beach, that sort of thing. She just never played board games, or played with dolls with me, or anything like that.

[HappyChappy]

Did she heckers like. But our Dad took us places - with BPD Mom in tow. So we occasionaly went to the park. But we were playing on the street from nippers. Less BPD time we had the better.

[Daliah]

I have actually spent some time thinking about just this. The short answer is: no, my parents didn't play with me.

The 'exceptions', broadly speaking, were these:

Sometime in our preteens, I don't recall our exact ages, my father had bought my sister and me a toy train... . that he had really bought for himself. It was the model he wanted, not the (incidentally, cheaper, but to us more appealing) model that my sister and I would have liked. And he said he would play with us. He wouldn't let go of the controls. His 'playing with us' consisted of letting us watch, and load and unload a couple of train cars once or twice. When my sister and I got tired of watching him play with it, it was duly interpreted as ingratitude for and disinterest in the toy train, which he promptly confiscated for his personal use. Whether he had deliberately or subconsciously set it up this way, it was the only possible outcome he would have allowed from the start, as I now know. But it was the only time that his focus and our focus was on the same toy/game at the same time in the same location.

My mother would sometimes take me along to professional appointments, and I would wait in the car or a waiting area somewhere, depending on where it was. These tended to be long apointments, and a long wait especially for a relatively small child. So, on rare occasions, if we were in the vicinity of a particular playground, she'd stop there on the way back to let me play for 20 minutes (she always said 20 minutes; I was a child and I don't know if she stuck to it. It was always rather short when it happened). But this wasn't a regular thing.

But what I remember more than anything is how annoyed my parents were to be bothered by us and by having much to do with us at all. In my mother's case, I find this quite astonishing because she wanted to have at least three children, preferably more, and would have continued to get pregnant if her health had permitted her to, as I later heard. She had to stop after no. 2. Which was good, because my sister was born and then promptly stapled to my side. I'm not quite three years older. It turns out this was a highly unusual thing to happen given the relatively small age gap. Some of my earliest memories consist of being a four-year-old and having to wrangle a baby. And a little later, being sent outside 'to play' all the time, but not getting to play because I had to keep a toddler from running off, getting killed and/or having a nuclear meltdown. Complaining about it to my parents got me punished, so I had to stick it out. My parents wouldn't be bothered with us.

Although I am a proponent of letting children play on their own and/or with friends a lot of the time, given that a noteworthy number of parents I currently know believe they must be their children's full-time entertainers for the first two decades of the children's lives (the other extreme), I know that it would have been more normal and that it shouldn't have been too much to ask to have my parents play with me (and also to allow me some playtime without my little sister) every once in a while, while also focusing on us/me, on our/my enjoyment, and without seeming terminally annoyed throughout. For the longest time I couldn't figure out what might possess someone to have a child - or even two! - and not be willing to engage with it/them once in a blue moon. I have the answers now, of course - not that personality disorders are a particularly satisfactory one, but they are an explanation, to an extent, and I'm glad to have at least that.

But, reverting to the shorter version: there was was never any actual playtime with my parents. On a few occasions there were physically present when they let us or me play somewhere or with something, but it annoyed them visibly and they didn't engage.

[justchillinit]

My parents "worked" and my grandparents primarily cared for me for those childhood years. My grandparents did play with me for the most part (take me to the park), but I also played with my older brothers and their friends often. I put quotations around work, because I don't believe they "worked" the 12+ hours they always claimed to work since they are avid gamblers, which I knew at a young age and it proved to be worse than I thought when I was old enough to understand what they really did at "work." As said earlier by someone else, I at times wonder why they even had 3 children if they barely played with one. They also have told me since I am the youngest, "we ran out of steam with you," which is a pretty lame excuse knowing they spent most of their time gambling. "Playing" with my uNPD father was helping him fix the satellite TV dish so he could gamble on horseracing. I remember sitting at the TV for several hours on the phone with him while he was on the roof fixing the TV dish and me telling him when there was a good signal.  I used to hate that and he would reward us afterward, even more frustrating now looking back! He even taught us how to use his "secret" method of scoring the horses so we could do it with him or gamble $1 on who we wanted (His "secret" method never worked, btw ). It was not all bad, he did play sports with us on occasion- mainly my oldest brother since he was first born son (granted we were terrible and he was a superstar coach, of course ) Then "playing" with my uBPD mother was usually non-existent since she was always "so busy" and jealous my grandma actually did play with me and take me to the park. Mother typically dropped me off at a friends house, we usually never had friends over since my parents had an image to uphold if we had outsiders over. When I was age 16-17, she did start "playing" with me as far as taking me to the casino with her and giving me money to gamble with her as well as supporting the idea of me going into bars with her/ordering for me even being underage. Anytime I asked her to do any normal mother/daughter things (get our nails done, go shopping) she was usually too busy or it was so late in the day the place would be nearly closed. She would usually be jealous of how much time I spent with my grandma and I remember her always saying some sort of remark about it when we did spend time together (i.e. "I know I don't do things like grandma does, but I am your mother!"