I listened to the TED Talk – Alicia Maples, Recognising Glass Children. As a ‘glass child’ I found this difficult to listen to but very interesting. So much of what Alicia said made sense to me and it made me very reflective of my own childhood.
My childhood was wonderful in so many ways, but looking back my parents never really encouraged openness in talking about our feelings and I was always encouraged to keep my head down and just cope when things got tough. I’ll also always remember being told that we didn’t really have it bad compared to some families and therefore we must not moan and we must always focus on positives only. Looking back, we actually had it really tough. My sister was profoundly disabled but remained undiagnosed until the age of 28 when she was diagnosed with a very rare brain condition. I think this way of thinking was part of my parent’s coping mechanisms and they pushed this on me and my other sister also. My mother now still finds it incredibly hard to talk about the injustice of what we have been through. She keeps it all locked away which is incredibly sad but in some ways it is how she has coped for all these years. It has taught me so much about how I parent my own children, I don’t have any glass children but as one myself my experiences and childhood traumas that are linked to my sister’s disability help guide me in my parenting. I would also say the approach has taught me resilience but sometimes that carries too far, like accepting that sometimes it’s ok not to be okay. I struggle with this and my go-to position is always not to talk about the hard stuff – but I am learning to get better at that.