I don’t love my child and it’s breaking me down. Please help

Post Reply New Topic

Sounds like you have a hard time dealing with and understanding children, but fortunately he is going to grow up and be an adult. Don't worry about loving him. Just treat him well and help him grow.

You know, my mother loves me, but I was still raised in a household where I was constantly punished and hit and yelled at. My mother loved me, but she had a hard time understanding how to treat me. Had she not loved me, but treated me well, I would have never known the difference. Ever.

It looks to me like you have the most important aspect of parenting down, which is treating your child with kindness, dignity and respect. Perhaps you don't love him because he has not yet matured into an adult? Not everyone has the patience to understand and find importance in the trivial things that a child goes through, you just don't have any way of seeing eye to eye with him.

But if he grows up to be a good and sweet man, someone with a life and good values and morals, then you have done everything right.

Love is a hard emotion to pinpoint? Is it a feeling? Is it an action? Is it both? There are too many variables to really answer that and people always like to pretend like they have the answer for it.

Think of it this way, you show your love through actions, because you don't feel it. This is how you express love. You feel bad because it isn't conventional. But it is still doing the right thing and being a good person and there is no reason, none at all, ever in a million years, that you should fault yourself for taking good care of a child.

You are doing your best. You may not feel like doing your best, but trust me. Doing your best 'is' the best.

Kids know when someone doesn't love them, you should have give dad alllll custody when he was still very young so he wouldn't remember you. The older he gets the more he'll notice.
I think it's better not to raise someone begrudgingly than carry on and watch the consequences later in his life.

I think you do love him after a fashion, or you wouldn't be trying so hard. Love is so difficult to define and takes many forms.

I think you are trying too hard. Perhaps share some childcare responsibilities with someone else and your feelings may change as he gets older.

Do you ever have him over with one of his friends - so that they can play together?

It sounds like maybe he is too emotional for your comfort. You don't like the feeling of attachment? Have you tried hypnotherapy? Maybe that could help you get over the feeling of aversion you have when he is with you? You obviously want to make things better for both of you, so short of running away or doing something horrible which thankfully you don't plan to do for real, the only other option is to look into ways of altering how you feel about the situation. Just keep looking, don't know what else to suggest.

As for the bold bit - I have had situation almost like that my whole life. A family member that is unnaturally attached to me and very clingy. Even though I live in a different country now, I still feel constantly harassed because this person will send me messages saying they miss me and it would just make me feel mad because I don't miss them and I don't want them to miss me or love me like they do. But I cannot break their heart and tell them I don't feel the same way because they are a very kind and nice and caring person and would do anything for me. And here I am, being horrible and uncaring. But feelings is something you cannot force yourself to feel, I've tried all my life and it doesn't work.

I really wish you luck. I hope you find a way to make it feel less horrible.

I agree 100% with this. When my exhusband and I divorced he took primary physical custody. I never bonded with my daughter until recently, had no idea what to do, or how to "balance" my AS with being a parent. I did NOT enjoy being a parent.

The first thing the ex and I did was handle time differently. I would take her for a couple hours until I would get overwhelmed and then he would come get her. I would cancel on days when I absolutely couldn't do it. Or he would have to come spend "my" weekend with us.

I had to learn to use my AS fixations to turn the tables on the situation. I would read for days on how parents in the real world work. Understand the psychology behind how small minds differed from adult brains. File all of these other parenting experiences away in my mind to fall back on when my inability to connect was present.

I am one to completely shut down quickly in a situation where someone is dependent on me. I had to learn to extend my time "outside" of my head and find rituals I could do to prevent a meltdown if she was with me alone. I even had to learn how to bring her into those soothing rituals (such as my cleaning habit or gardening).

It's taken 2 years of research, experimenting, failures, crying, emergency latenight calls to my ex but I'm now able to handle her for 3-4 days at a time on my own. I have created routines and fall-back schedules to cover when I hit that wall and want to persevere through it.

What I'm trying to say is, this happens. You're not a failure. And it's possible to fix IF you want to. It takes a lot of work but the reward is interesting if you're able to get through it. Start small and work your way up.

This is so true. There are many parents who 'love' their kids, but they're lousy parents. Many abusive parents 'love' their kids. Does that make them good parents? No.

It is showing love to try to be the best parent you can, even if don't feel it. You're showing it. There are many types of love. Your effort over time will show him your kind of love. He probably has other family members that love him dearly, right? Kids get something different from each family member. What will he get from you? That you loved him enough to try and keep trying despite your condition.

If you have a whole weekend, you don't need to spend the whole time interacting with your kid. Organize a playdate, where you can sit there and chill out while your child plays with someone his age. Chatting with 6 year olds can be tough. It's going to get easier.

I can relate to this though I don't have a child.

I feel that way about people I should love, like my mom, friends. I just don't feel connected.

Loving them is something abstract that I have to make an effort to do, most of the time. Often others are aggravating, frustrating and get on my nerves. Feeling guilty about it does not help me. I realize that this is just who I am. So, I stay away when things are bad, and I try to do what I can when I'm not so stressed. There are times when I'm more open to interaction than other times.

Maybe you should talk to someone about having a heart to heart with your son. Tell him what you said in your e-mail (all the good things about him), tell him you want him to do well and be happy but find a way to tell him about your troubles in an honest way.

You do love your child.

I'm sure you wouldn't allow any harm on him and you will always protect him.

I remember a similar feeling when I had my daughter, I felt that I wasn't good enough and that she deserved better than me. This is not true.

You are s great mother, if you wasn't you wouldn't even care enough to be concerned about your love for the child.

I'm not good on the advice front, but I think if you just relax and try not to expect do much from yourself then things will work out.

I think you are very brave to tell us all how you feel.

All the best

bb

Yes you do. Just because you cannot be with him doesn't me you dont love him. You love him because you care so much about how your feeling. that's how YOU demonstrate loving. How about TEXTING him everynite. About something cool that you like in the internet. Something short.

It's too much to be with him emotionally. Remember we're impaired emotionally. We dont know what were feeling. The draining feeling you have is LOVE.

Anyway you need some Librium to help you deal with him the day your with him. Good news is that as he gets older you'll feel better.

How about going somewhere quiet with him like a library or museum? That should kill some time. Or invite a friend with him, so you don't have to be together all the time with him.

Good luck. You care = You love

Look-- KIDS ARE STRESSFUL. The fact that there are all these moms-- and it's almost always moms-- who act like they're not is a big, fat, glossy-magazine lie. They're noisy little people who have little to no sense of boundaries and an extremely incompletely formed sense of how to be human-- KIDS ARE STRESSFUL.

Now-- I went and had four of the little nervous breakdowns. Who I actually do love and enjoy (no matter how often my stupid superficial alcoholic NT best friend with her unmanageable spoiled demon-brat tells me I act like I don't love them). The key to loving and enjoying them, at least for me, is this-- STOP WORRYING ABOUT "DOING IT RIGHT."

There is an extremely short list of things that amount to "DOING IT WRONG." Things like slapping, kicking, punching, and spitting on the child. Things like constantly screaming at the child (which is distinct from getting frustrated and raising your voice, believe me). Things like verbal abuse-- calling the child, say, a "worthless dysgenic brat with no future that should not have been born" or "a sh***y little b***h." Things like leaving the kid alone in an apartment/house while you spend six hours at the library. Things like not feeding them, bathing them, or brushing their teeth.

Except the last two sentences, all things, by the way, that people with the best of intentions have told me I should do, or said to my kids-- but that's beside the point. That's pretty much the list of what you DON'T do.

Oh, yes, and you don't get sexual with a kid. Ever. Obviously.

Everything else is, basically, up for grabs. DON'T do those things and somehow, magically, if you're doing it at all you're pretty much doing it right.

That's my deal, anyway. I can be a wackjob mother who is a pretty good mother...

...and I can be an apparently perfectly normal mom who never wants to do anything with the kids, ever, because I'm constantly worried about doing something wrong. Having too many boundaries, or not enough. Touching too much, or not enough. Too affectionate, or not enough. Too structured, or not enough. It's bull.

So is the idea of "love." I do love my kids, I guess-- but I heard a preacher say one of the smartest things I ever heard about love. "Love is an emotion; it is also an action. The emotion comes and goes. The action needs to remain constant." The emotion we refer to as "love" is basically hormones and Hallmark BS. I feel it-- to a limited extent, but I do feel it. The ACTION that is love-- to treat someone in a fair and caring manner, but to do so with equal respect to their personhood and your own boundaries-- doesn't require any of the hormonal BS to carry out. Hormones may be what motivates most humans to act lovingly, but rational thought can also suffice. It seems as if you are doing that.

You do not have to show "love" in the standard socially-sanctioned way-- syrupy hugs and cuddling and mind-numbing "play" in which plush creatures "talk" to each other. I do hug and cuddle my kids-- but there are also times when I tell them that they need to sit beside me, not on top of me. I do do things with my kids-- but there are also time when I tell them that we need to just play it low-key. "Love" can be demonstrated in many ways-- treating someone with respect and kindness and simply giving a s**t are, in my opinion (and the opinions of people who keep hanging around me year after year, and so far in the opinions of my kids), some of the best.