A few minutes ago, I was reading a preview of a book by Kelly Williams Brown titled "Adulting: How to become a grown-up in 535 easy(ish) steps" when my mom walked in to ask me to watch my baby niece here in a bit. As she left, she said something to me that inspired me to write this log.
"We need to get a screwdriver and tighten this doorknob"
It got me thinking a lot about the way I was raised (or more specifically wasn't) and why I felt the need to read this book in the first place.
If you're unfamiliar with infantilization, you can read about it Here. My mother lies on the severe end of this spectrum. I've proven my compatence as a young man and my potential to become a fully functioning adult in a variety of ways; I work fourty hours a week and pay a big chunk of bills and other expenses. I've renovated my room pretty much entirely by myself, and was a driving force in several other renovation projects in our home. Despite this, she's cleary not recognized that it's about time I start doing things on my own. A normal parent would've told me that I need to tighten the doorknob, because it's the door to my room and therefore my responsibility (its worth mentioning that doing so took me less than a minute) . Infantilism is a particularly dangerous form of abuse because it's easy to misinterpret it as typical parental love or worrying. I remember complaining to people on Omegle in my youth about how my mom spoiled me and made me feel small, and plenty of responses were something among the lines of "Well don't you think that means she loves you?" furthermore, whenever I tell people about the time my mother had a panic attack because she didn't know my exact location for thirty fucking minutes, I'm often dismissed and told that "Moms just can't help but worry about their kids!"
I'm not a fucking kid anymore. Can people really not see that?
Loving your child is normal. Spoiling them is not normal. Protecting them from bullying and shame is normal. shielding them from criticissm and learning is not normal. Anxiety about your kid being out in the world is normal. Anxiety about your adult son being out in the world is not normal. Wanting your precious little angel to never grow up is normal. ACTING on that desire and sabatoging their development is not normal.
Love is normal.
Infantilization is not normal.
Regardless of whether or not you think infantilization comes from a place of love, fear, deprecation, or resentment, the fact of the matter is that it's harmful to childrens development. You can hurt someone by hugging them too hard, y'know. There are far too many outlandish incidents and bizzare parenting decisions my parents made throughout my life to list them all here, so I'm going to give you a list of my moms infantilist behaviors and how they affect me and my relationship with her.