Mum believed in a pretty laid back approach to parenting. I can’t remember her ever really giving out much. Inevitably, I was duty bound by my adolescence to push the boundaries on occasion and have to be told off. Mum used the ‘dissapointment’ card to great effect. She would never say she was angry or annoyed …just disappointed. It was always the worst thing to hear. I would have way preferred an over-reactive barrage of words about what I’d done wrong, that I could have shrugged off as parental misunderstandings of Generation X!
If I’d really misbehaved (eg. house party) I’d be sure to receive a crushing ‘I don’t know when I can trust you again’ from Mum. The beauty of this emotional blackmail was that there was nothing that you could retort even half effectively with. I remember just having to skulk back into my bedrooms feeling deflated. Mum 1 : Me 0
