I wish I had a parent that I felt truly loved me for who I am.
A parent that never belittled me, that did not criticize me when I am working to better myself.
A parent that actually put me before them once in a while.

I wish I had a parent who treated me like a human being, and not a burden. I wish I had a parent who protected me, and kept me from harm,and stood up for me. I also would of liked to have a parent who put my needs first before their own.I wish I had a parent who liked me. I wish I had a parent who loved me unconditionally,no matter if they were mad at me or not.I wish I had a parent who told me good things about myself, instead of blaming their problems on me. And always saying bad things about me all the time, and talking to their friends about me in a whisper..I could go on and on, but you get what I am saying.Really good post....

I'll have to say that the first two replies say exactly what I would have said. I see a pattern here, maybe abuse and neglect are very similar no matter when and where they happen.

I suppose I could sum up my childhood by saying I wish I had a parent who was on my side. I don't mean in any particular situation, I'm talking about the whole thing. They were good to me at Christmas time, but I'm talking about being there when I needed someone to back me up and support me.

Looking back now, I can't see how I could have treated a child like they treated me. I mean, what kind of parent hears that their sick, underweight child is getting beat up at school and does absolutely nothing? The advice I got from Dad was to fight back. Fight back against a whole mob of bigger and older kids? Instead of talking to the school authorities, they punished me for "fighting"...same parents who told me to fight back.

That was when I learned I was on my own in life. I think I was eight at the time.

I WISH IS HAD A PARENT WHO : LOVED ME, SUPPPORTED ME, HUGGED ME, HELD ME, NURTURED ME, LET OTHERS KNOW HOW MUCH SHE/HE LOVED ME, ET. I AM 62YR. OLD AND OF COURSE WOULD ALWAYS WANT THESE THINGS BUT WILL NEVER GET THEM BECAUSE MY PARENTS HAVE PASSED....THE TRUTH IS, I WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN THEM WHILE THEY WERE ALIVE!
ONE DAY AS I REALIZED "THIS WAS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN" I BEGAN TO REALIZE I WOULD HAVE TO GIVE THESE THINGS TO MYSELF...I HAVE CRIED A MILLION/ZILLION TEARS, ALLOWED MYSELF TO HAVE MY FEELINGS, BEEN THRU THE DARK PIT OF HELL A MILLION/ZILLION TIMES, ALLOWED MYSELF TO FEEL HATRED AND THE SELF-HATRED, ETC....WHATEVER I WAS GOING THRU, I TREATED MYSELF THE WAY I WANTED MY PARENTS TO TREAT ME.
I DIDN'T BERATE MYSELF; INSTEAD I BEGAN TO SUPPORT MYSELF, HUG MYSELF, VALIDATE MYSELF, NURTURE MYSELF; I STOPPED CONDEMNING MYSELF. I HAVE TO TO ACCEPT THE "GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY" OF MYSELF. THIS ALLOWING PROCESS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR AS I SAID, ALMOST 33YRS...I NOW HAVE WEEKLY/SEMI/WEEKLY CLASSES IN MY HOME LETTING OTHERS KNOW HOW TO GET THRU ALL OF THIS...RE-PARENTING HAS WORKED FOR ME! I WILL ALWAYS WANT OR HAVE A DESIRE FOR A MOM WITH SKIN ON THAT LOVES ME UNCONDITIONALLY. BUT IT ISSN'T GOING TO HAPPEN...SO I MUST CONTINUE TO ACCEPT ME AS I AM....
I WAS PHYSICALLY ABUSED BY MY MOM (WILL LEAVE DETAILS OUT) HAD A DAD WHO IGNORED HER BEHAVIOR (WHICH BECAME JUST AS IMPORTANT TO DEAL WITH OVER THE YEARS) A STEP-BROTHER WHO MOLESTED ME FROM AN EARLY AGE, AND SEVERAL OTHER NASTY ENCOUNTERS.
WE CAN OVERCOME...WE CAN OVERCOME...WE CAN OVERCOME....BUT WE HAVE TO "KILL" OUR PARENTS EMOTIONALLY (AND ALL OTHERS WHO HURT US) AND BEGIN TO PARENT OURSELVES. I REALIZED BEFORE I BEGAN MY HEALING JOURNEY, I BEAT MYSELF UP WAY MUCH MORE THAN MY PARENTS EVER DID............THIS IS WHAT I HAVE DONE FOR ME AND MY "LITTLE VICKI" HAS FINALLY BECOME AN ADULT...WELL, SHE STILL ACTS OUT AT TIMES, BUT I CONTINUE TO LET HER KNOW SHE IS LOVED UNCONDITIONALLY...I TALK TO HER AS IF SHE WERE MY CHILD AND TREAT HER THE WAY I THOUGHT MY PARENTS SHOULD HAVE TREATED ME...BLESSINGS TO ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE SURVIVED WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN THRU...THERE IS A WAY TO PEACE! MANY OF YOU WILL NOT LIKE THIS, BUT I CHOSE TO NO LONGER PLAY VICTIM TO WHAT HAPPEND TO ME AND BEGAN TO SEE EVERY LITTLE STEP I TOOK FORWARD AS BEING VICTORIOUS..........THERE IS A PLACE IN WHO THAT YOUR PARENTS OR WHOMVEVER HURT YOU, THAT THEY COULD NOT TAKE FROM YOU.! WE MUST DRAW ON THAT PLACE; IT IS THERE. HUGSZZZ
I AM NOT TRYING TO PROVE A POINT HERE; EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN JOURNEY AND WILL FIND A WAY THRU IT OR THEY WON'T FIND A WAY THRU IT...I AM JUST SHARING ONE OF THE WAYS I FOUND "PIECE IN ALL THE BROKEN PIECES."

You mentioned exactly the issue I've been wrestling with, vjewel...killing off the remnants of our negligent and abusive parents that live inside us.

Maybe that's the key to "re-parenting" ourselves...we have to fully understand that our parents were wrong about us, that we are worthy of love and affection. Maybe then we can forgive ourselves for "failing" and stop hating ourselves.

My parents are deceased too. Yet still I feel guilty, like I've done something bad whenever I criticize the way they raised me...even if I do it only in my mind. There are days when I think about what I might have become in life if I had left home in my teen years and built a life entirely on my own...a life without their boozing and my sister's groping and all the criticizing and undermining.

I have found over the years, guilt is just another way of inflicting pain upon myself....Facts are facts: our parents didn't do such a good job raising us. That's not being critical, it's just a fact. I didn't do such a good job raising my children...that's a fact. However, I have done such healing and introspection, that it has led me to apologize to my childen and make amends for my errors. I have shared with them much of my past and we have been able to get to a place where are relationship is quite good...it took lots of work.
I look at my past life now and see how it has brought me to this very moment. Without every experience, I would not be the person I am today. I never really did think about how my life could have been different.
Just a question...do you dwell on how your life might have been if you would have left home and built a life of your own. I was kicked out at 16; so I guess I did build a life of my own outwardly. But, what I need to change for me was the "inner." The journey began thirty-some years ago when I went to hit my daughter with a wooden spoon and I wanted to hurt her. All she was being was a typical 3yr old. I thru the spoon down and I told myself I needed help...and that's when my process of healing began. It's a challenging, trying journey as I knew nothing about loving: loving others and definitely not loving myself....One of the greatest lessons I was taught was learning I would have to "emotionally kill my parents; and some beliefs that teachers and others in society had taught me." So...that's what I did. Actually, I learned to love all of me; the good, the bad and the ugly....I learned to embrace all of me.
You are very aware and I believe awareness is one of the first keys to healing...the next key is allow; allow the healing to take place. Many of us who are used to pain seem to stay stuck in the pain as we don't know anything else...I've always said, "when your raised in manure, manure smells good. If one want to heal bad enough, one will do anything to do so! Kudos to you and blessings on your journey!
Hugszzz, Vicki

I wish that I had a parent that would have guided me to understanding what it takes to be a man and assertive. I am finding that more and more those important life skills are missing and replaced with guilt and shameful thoughts that just haunt me, I am working on them, to challenge their negative impact, it is getting better. I have to struggle with it daily, I know that if there were some words of encouragement or guidance that they would have been amazed that I am their son, Hell I would even settle for middle of the road and they said or did nothing at all. sure could have done without the abuse.

No doubt we all would have turned out better without the abuse.

Every so often I think about how things might have turned out if I had packed up and left...but I don't dwell on it. I try to work with what I have now. My parents taught me to give in to whatever they did to me, to be obedient to authority of any kind. I think that just sets a person up to be kicked around by anybody that decides to take advantage of their submissive attitude.

You're right, Vicki...it's that inner part that's so hard to fix. We can change our demeanor, our bad habits, all the external stuff...but if we don't weed out those self-defeating thoughts somehow, we keep thinking we don't deserve to be happy or successful. I didn't believe this at first, but I'm beginning to understand that legacy of low self-esteem I inherited and how it sabotages me.

Lately I've been trying to trace my negative moods and thoughts back to their roots...always questioning...why, why do I think I should let everyone take a place ahead of me while I sit back and feel sorry for myself. It always seems to go back to those early years when everyone told me I was weak and defective in some way, not deserving of things...not deserving enough to spend money on myself, not deserving to be happy about anything.

It seems like I've spent my whole life trying to prove that I'm worthy, that I deserve a place in life. That feeling of unworthiness is totally irrational, yet deep inside I accept it as truth. I've worked hard all my life, I've earned college degrees, built a business from nothing, but still I feel like a screw-up who can't get anything right. It just settles over me like a dark fog, and makes me doubt myself and forget all my accomplishments in life.

I felt like you Richie for most of my life. Second best, unworthy, not deserving. I also felt that I had to prove myself worthy to everybody. At a much higher standard for myself than what I accepted from others. That's the role we succumbed to in our dysfunctional families. We play that role for so long it doesn't just go away suddenly when we're all grown up.

We all have inner parts/inner children that served some role for us - usually primarily to survive (IFS - Internal Family Systems by Schwartz). There are some parts that develop to take on the same role as our parents. Those parts feed the other parts the same messages. Hence why you've internalized the earlier messages from your parents. As Vicki has stated, we need to learn to embrace all parts of ourselves. It's much easier to do this when you view each inner part as fulfillng a role that led to your ultimate survival. That critical inner part took on the same role as your parents in it's limited capacity to understand what it was doing but with the ultimate purpose of trying to help you to survive. I've been working on this in therapy with the goal of bringing compassion with understanding to all my inner parts. Hope this might help in any way.

I wish I had a parent who had been a good role model for me. I never learned from my father what a man should be, because my father hated me so much that he couldn't stand to have me in the same room with him. I used to blame myself because he hated me so much, yet I never did anything to earn his hate. Now I see him for what he was, and I don't blame myself for what he did to me any longer. It was not me who was at fault.

Just the other day I was feeling down as I often do...and I saw an image of myself. I saw this guy who tried so hard to do the right thing and get through life as best he could. It was like looking at another person, and then I felt a wave of compassion come over me.

Maybe that's a healthy thing...to see ourselves without all the distortions, as we really are...and realize at a deep level that we have been trying to do the best we can. Maybe I'm finally moving beyond all the brainwashing I grew up with, all the blaming and shaming for things I couldn't help.

I wish I had a parent who had good parents so he/she had a good example to follow.
I wish I had a parent who took responsibility for his own problems instead of hiding behind god and the bible
I wish I had a parent who admit that had a problem and that there wasn't anything wrong with looking for help
I wish I had a parent who didn't feel like everything he said was right 100% of the time and what I said was wrong 100% of the time.
I wish I had a parent who didn't sexually abuse me.
I wish I had a parent who didn't hit any of his children.
I wish I had a parent who didn't hit the other parent.
I wish I had a parent who realized what wonderful children they had.
I wish I had a parent who noticed my desire to be loved and nurtured.
I wish I had a parent who didn't make me feel inadequate.
I wish I had a parent who encouraged me by just letting me be.
I wish I had a parent who I could trust.
I wish I had a parent who made me feel welcome in my own home.
I wish I had a parent who respect me as a human being.
I wish I had a parent who...

I wish I had a parent who love me

HELLO, I WISH I HAD BEEN LOVED AS I DESERVED, AND NOT FEEL SO LONELY, ALONE, AND SEE MY BROTHER AND SISTERS BEEING ALWAYS BEST***
I WISH MY FEELINGS HAD BEEN RESPECTED, AND BEEN TOLD THE TRUTH AND NOT LIES, AND MORE LIES, MY FATHER ALWAYS INSULTED ME, NEVER COULD MAKE HIM HAPPY, I WISH MY MOTHER HAD TOLD ME WHY ,HE HATED ME SO MUCH, WHEN I DID NO WRONG***
I WISH HE DIDN'T HAVE THAT OTHER EVIL WOMAN,WHO CAUSED NOTHING BUT TROUBLES**
I WISH HE DIDN'T HAVE RAGE, OR INSULT ME **
I NEVER SAW HIM FOR FIVE YEARS UNTIL HE DIED..
I FEEL NO GUILTY ,IT WAS MY SURVIVAL STRATEGY, STAY AWAY, NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN**
MY SISTER HAS MENTIONED IT, I TOLD HER NOT DO, I WILL NOT ALLOW MYSELF TO FEEL GUILT, I ONLY HAVE SADNESS AND SORROW, I SHOULD HAVE LEFT EARLIER, AND NEVER LOOK BACK**
A CHILD IS INNOCENT AND LOVES UNCONDITIONALLY, WHERE WERE YOU WHEN I WAS SEXUALLY ABUSED, ALL YOU CARED WAS YOURSELF, NOT ME**
NOW I AM FREE, AND LIVE MY LIFE, AND I WISH I HAD STAYED WITH MY GRANDPARENTS , LOVE YOU GRANDMA, YOU WERE GOOD TO ME***
SO SORRY HE DESTROYED OUR RELATIONSHIP, SO SORRY***
LOVING HUGS ,L****

I wish I had a parent who protected me.