Breaking Free from a Toxic Childhood

Most people when they first become parents, tend to look back at their own childhood for inspiration and guidance on how to raise their children, by remembering how their parents raised them. But what do you do, if you grew up in a toxic family, and did not have many good experienced to being raised in a healthy and loving family?

Hi, Im Usha. Im the author of ‘Breaking Free’.

My parents and siblings were all immigrants from India. Dad came to the UK in the late 1960s, my mum and siblings came in 1979, and I was born in the UK in 1981. By the time I was born, my siblings were all mid to late teenagers, with my sister, who is the next oldest then me, being 16. So me being born wasn’t exactly planned, and this is something I felt throughout my life.

Most of my life, I felt like I was an afterthought. Nothing was ever planned for me, such as trips to the park, my birthday, or even things planned for me to do at home since I spent most of my time there. Everything just was done to get by and to keep me alive, so to say.

My siblings, due to the age gap, were more like an extra parents rather then siblings who I could play with and spend time with, and I had a different dynamic with each one of them. With my eldest brother, he was pretty non existent, as he was the oldest out of us kids, so he was expected to go out and work and earn a living as he was about 20 years old by the time I was a toddler. My second brother was the one I do have a few fond memories with as a child, of riding his skateboard by standing by his legs and holding on tight. I even have memories of having snowball fights with him. My sister, who you would assume was the one to be the closest to me as she was a girl too, was the one I had the least in common with, we were, and have always been total opposites. She was a tomboy to the extreme. She had a mentality of proving that she was just as good, if not better then any boy. Due to this mentality, I ended up being raised as a tomboy without a say in how I wanted to dress, or things I wanted to do.

The biggest influence in my household was definitely my dad, as it usually is in most traditional Asian families, but the toxic traits of my dad were not obvious to me until I was in my late 20s, and especially after I got married that my dads narcissistic behaviour was clear to me.

As with most Indian families, the dad usually is the head of the household and usually has the last say.. which was what was the norm in our household too, but what was the toxic trait was dads say was the only say. No one, including my mum was allowed to have a say in anything or to make any choices, so me as a child grew up following the rules and learnt from a young age, never to question anything that my dad said or asked me to do.

Now growing up with a narcissistic dad would have been hard enough, but throw in an uncle (my dads friend) who took complete control over my educational choices, and thought he knew better than my teachers and school, meant that school life wasn’t a happy place for me too, as I never got to do things at school, such as join clubs, attend after school events or anything that wasn’t deemed ‘educational’ enough by this uncle.

So childhood was pretty lonely, as I struggled to make school friends due to being an introvert, and things only got worse for me at home when my brothers got married when I was 8, and my sister in laws didn’t like me much. The eldest one wanted me to be her little dress up doll, and put me in pretty dresses, short skirts and girly tops, but with my dad being strict, she wasn’t given the freedom to dress me as she saw fit, so she started to ignore me and spend all her love and attention to my dad’s friend daughter, who was given pretty much all the freedom, that her dad had denied me my entire childhood. My other sister in law, unfortunately didn’t just ignore me. She instead started a 20 year cycle of bullying me, and being mean to me at every opportunity she got.

As parents, my siblings were not an example I wished to follow either when I had my own kids.

As mentioned, my eldest sister in law didn’t too much about me, and ignored me. But unfortunately this wasn’t limited to just me, she ignored her own 2 sons in favor of my so-called cousins. As she had boys, she couldn’t dress them up, or buy them make up or do all the girly things she had wished she could have done herself as a young girl growing up in india. So she ignored them, to the point that I, at the age of 14, was more of a parent figure for them, then their actual mum. I was the one who watched their fave TV shows with them, who knew how much they loved horror movies, and would go out of my way to buy the best and scariest movies for them for their birthdays and Christmas. I was the one who stayed up past my bedtime to wrap all the presents for them and be ‘Santa’ for them. Apart from feeding them, and keeping them clean, my sister in law had very little to do with her boys, and since they lived across the road from me and my parents house, I felt sort of responsible to try and give them at least a few happy childhood memories, even if I was barely a teenager myself.

With my other sister in law, the one who bullied me, she took the total opposite route. For her, her 3 sons were her entire life and not in a good way. She spoilt those kids to the point that they believed that they could do no wrong. No matter what her boys did, wether they spent £100s on trainers, or racked up £100s on speeding tickets or parking fines, she was proud of them, and flaunted their faults to everyone and anyone stating ‘my kids are bad boys, and no one dares mess with them’. This however came back to haunt her when her boys were in their 20s and each and every one of them got into legal trouble, and 2 of them spending time behind bars.

With such examples, I was at a total loss when I gave birth to my eldest daughter. I had no idea on how to raise a child, nor did I have any help looking after a newborn, as I had had enough by that time, and cut all ties with my family. So me and my husband were all alone and trying our best.

Raising my eldest was a steep learning curve. I may not have known how to raise a child, but I did know, from my own childhood experiences on how I didn’t want to raise her. I showered her with love, I brought her all the educational and fun toys that I could afford. I made sure everything I did, was with her in the forefront of my mind. I took her to playgroups, my husband took her to the park, and we tried to arrange a trip out once a month to a museum or somewhere outside our local area. All this was done whilst I suffered with depression, was fighting a legal battle against my siblings in court, and living in the same house where everyone knew where I was, so most days was scared of stepping outside for fear of bumping into my siblings. Things did get a bit easier when I was pregnant with our youngest daughter, as me and my family managed to move across the country from London to the West Midlands.

For me and my husband, our 2 girls have always been our priority. Even our move to the West Midlands was to give my daughters the best life possible, to have them grow up in place where there was open space, and parks. We ended up in the Black County, and have been happy ever since we moved here.

In the last 6 years, my eldest has been part of 4 book projects that have been published and been Amazon best sellers, both my girls have absolutely thrived at school, and always have amazing feedback every parents evening. Both my girls are learning how to swim, and will be enrolling in martial arts this summer, and they are hands down the best daughters I could ever ask for. Yes, they do fight each other all the time, and drive me crazy a lot, but they love each others just as much, and as someone who was never close to her siblings, this love is what I have always wanted between my kids,

As as first time mum, 10 years ago, with my first newborn at the hospital with no idea how I was going to raise this little life, I had just given birth to, I think I’ve done pretty well following my gut, and not making the same mistakes my parents did with me…