Still thinking about Bioshifter
Jan. 18th, 2024 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feotakahariIt took a long time for me to figure out why Hannah’s mother sucks so much, because Hannah herself can’t think objectively about it. It’s too painful and too close.
Hannah’s mother is very concerned with doing the right thing as a parent. She will always try whatever should be reasonable and should solve the issue at hand. But children aren’t one-size-fits-all, and sometimes what should be the right thing backfires. It’s simply not possible to parent perfectly.
Hannah’s mother wants to solve whatever issues crop up, but this is secondary to her desire to reassure herself, Hannah, and anyone else around her that she made no mistakes. She will always emphasize that she did everything perfectly. Hannah interprets this as an assigning of blame, and since her mother isn’t to blame for whatever went wrong, Hannah herself must be. But her mother either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care how hurt Hannah feels to be “blamed.” She just sees it as Hannah continuing to act like she did something wrong, so she keeps insisting her choices were perfect, and keeps forgetting that there was originally a problem they were supposed to solve.
Hannah learns that if she brings up a problem to her mother, her mother will make her feel at fault and probably not even solve the problem. So she stops opening up. Hannah’s mother takes this as an accusation of error—why wouldn’t Hannah talk to her unless she made a mistake? So she hounds Hannah to talk to her, while insisting she didn’t do anything that merits not talking, and she can’t get it through her head that it’s beside the point who screwed up or didn’t screw up.
Hannah’s mother is very concerned with doing the right thing as a parent. She will always try whatever should be reasonable and should solve the issue at hand. But children aren’t one-size-fits-all, and sometimes what should be the right thing backfires. It’s simply not possible to parent perfectly.
Hannah’s mother wants to solve whatever issues crop up, but this is secondary to her desire to reassure herself, Hannah, and anyone else around her that she made no mistakes. She will always emphasize that she did everything perfectly. Hannah interprets this as an assigning of blame, and since her mother isn’t to blame for whatever went wrong, Hannah herself must be. But her mother either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care how hurt Hannah feels to be “blamed.” She just sees it as Hannah continuing to act like she did something wrong, so she keeps insisting her choices were perfect, and keeps forgetting that there was originally a problem they were supposed to solve.
Hannah learns that if she brings up a problem to her mother, her mother will make her feel at fault and probably not even solve the problem. So she stops opening up. Hannah’s mother takes this as an accusation of error—why wouldn’t Hannah talk to her unless she made a mistake? So she hounds Hannah to talk to her, while insisting she didn’t do anything that merits not talking, and she can’t get it through her head that it’s beside the point who screwed up or didn’t screw up.
