Looking back, my mother was very important to me, but my father was just there. (A nice guy, but he didn't make a big impression on me.) Also very important were my grandmother (but not my grandfather), my best friend's mother (but not her father), and the mother of my friend across the street (but not his father).
Hmmm, is there a pattern here? ???
What adults were important to you when you were a child?
- Kate
I think my mother was the most important person in my life as a child, and she still is now that I'm an adult. She always defended me against my father when he'd make snide comments on my girliness and made me cut my hair. She let me do whatever I wanted, and I think that helped me have a smooth transition later on because when I figured out what I needed and wanted to do, I did it with no problems. My parents divorced when I was in high school, so I was glad my father moved away and I could rest easy without his judgment.
As far as other adults I related to... maybe my aunt, for being a city girl and fashionista. My mother always tells me I'm just like her cuz we're both such snobs, haha. :P My grandma loved me as well. I was her favorite grandchild, and yes, she played favorites in a very obvious way. My poor brother and cousin... :'( She was the only adult who let me play with Barbies!
I think the last person I'll comment on was my first grade teacher. She always told me she saw something special in me and she always pushed me to do well in school. I think that was significant because it was someone outside of my family who really cared about me. I got a card recently from her with a picture of when I was little that she has kept this whole time! I was surprised, but it also made me smile, because I've come such a long way.
My brother was and still is very important to me. He's the one I look up to and go to for help in whatever it may be. When my b/f broke up with me a couple years ago, my brother was the first person I went to. He hugged me and let me cry on his shoulder. Then me and him watched South Park that night to ease the pain :3
My brother has his douchey child-like days. But in the end, he's a good brother
My father was intolerably cruel to me most of my childhood so I guess I related more to my mother, but even she had her moments. This is academic now as their attitudes considerably improved after I was grownup- my father is now deceased and I love my mother very much. But as a young child I think I related the most to my grandmother, who seemed to understand my gender issues even at a very early age and would let me dress up occasionally when she kept me while my parents worked.
Wow. A very interesting question. After reading the current replies I sat back to ponder this. At first I realized that I did not relate to anyone when I was younger. My father was very strict and pushed me to be the 'all-american jock' like he had been. At best I was mediocre. My mother (and her side of the family) had moved away soon after my father got custody of me when I was 4, so they weren't in the picture. I was never very close to my fathers parents, so they are out.
Perhaps my Great Grandmother (fathers mothers mother). She has always been somewhere in my thoughts and even though she died when I was fairly young (10-ish) I do remember her as always being supportive - in a general way - and very loving towards me. You see, my family has always been very clique-ish. My Aunt, and her family, got most of the attention from my grandparents, when they were alive, and my father got basically the scraps. Though again, I do not remember my Great Grandmother as choosing favorites.
As for neighbors, teachers, etc... I was basically the ultimate loner and did not have any more contact with those types of people than I had to during the course of a day, so they do not stand out.
Embarrassingly, Wonder Woman and Cat Woman probably had more of an impact on my childhood than any actual person. I am not really sure what this says about the person I have become, but it is what it is...
Nice bike, Kate. I am so jealous now. >:-) And Heather says "You go Girl" ;D
I would have to say that most of the women in my life were the ones I related to. Especially my Mom, my Aunt Clara, and my grandmother ( Dad's Mom ). My Mom's Mom had long since passed away, and I never got to know her.
Janet
Post Merge: August 29, 2009, 06:11:49 PM
Nice bike, Kate. I am so jealous now. >:-) And Heather says "You go Girl" ;D
I would have to say that most of the women in my life were the ones I related to. Especially my Mom, my Aunt Clara, and my grandmother ( Dad's Mom ). My Mom's Mom had long since passed away, and I never got to know her.
Janet
Although I have always been closer to my mom, I always identified more with my dad. I also had an older cousin whom I worshiped as a child, and I think he had a big influence on how I turned out.
No one really. I was hated equally by all, Some just acted out on it more than others is all.
My mother, my grandmother, and my aunt in that order. My father traveled frequently and was never closely involved with any of the children. I have always been more comfortable in the company of women.
Never really thought about this much, but I think it would be my Mother and one of my Aunts.
I also know that my mother ws sure she was going to have a girl for some reason, so I was a bit of a surprise...then..
Chrissty
I always found Agent Scully of the X-Files very relatable. I always disagreed with everyone and never got anywhere with my arguments. I often find fictional characters resonate more with me (especially female characters) than real people, because the women I meet irl over here aren't much like me.
And yeah, that's an awesome bike Kate. What did you get, Suzuki?
My mom by far, we have always been great together.
My father, I didn't get along with him well as a child and later in life was no better.
My grandfather served as a father figure to me and while he served a major and important role (he taught me a lot), I related to my mother and grandmother better.
Who Did Your Relate To When You Were Young?
mother.
I can't really say I related to any family member when younger. My father's. . .unpleasantness aside, I grew up building walls between myself and others, both consciously and subconsciously. I know I never felt the way about family as I observed other children did. I never felt a closeness other than the recognition of inherited physical traits. I wondered at times if I was adopted or inhuman.
As an adult, I recognize my mother indeed influenced my general attitude and world outlook significantly more than any other family member. Yet, even now I still can't say I relate that much to her. She possesses an extra layer of compassion and patience with people I can't comprehend. It's not that I have neither; her range simply extends further than mine, likely due to having some form of faith.
Beyond family, I acknowledge two important people to my development, people who recognized my capacities in whatever was relevant and encouraged me, people with attitudes and outlooks I admired. They were both male, but thinking back now they filled the role in my life that my father didn't or didn't fill adequately or appropriately. Despite this, I wouldn't say I relate to either of them.
Truth be told. . .I can only think of one person at all. I was 17 and she was 16 when we met. My friendship with her was what first prompted me to question who I was, as I found so much of myself in her that I could no longer accept I was the person everyone saw. I knew it never really fit before, but it was my time with her that allowed me to realize that the boy people saw indeed was not me.
When I was very young, pre-kindergarten, I was strongly attached to my mom. I really don't remember a lot of my dad being in my every day life except at dinner and times like that. As I got older I started to fear my dad and tried to avoid him. But I also don't remember being so attached to my mom then either. My sister and I played together a lot.
I've looked back a lot on my younger years and see a kid who eventually created a distance between her and everyone else because she knew she was different. It saddens me that I couldn't trust anyone with my "secret".
As far as relating, I guess I really didn't relate to anyone, but I did want my parents to be proud of me, especially my dad because he was so hard to please.
Julie
I always looked up to my older brother, we ended up not seeing each other for around 6 years when he moved to cyprus; when he moved back to England people would comment on how shockingly similar we had become even though we hadn't spoken to each other in years.
Sadly we don't speak now, he only lives down the road, but he's turned into a huge jackass ::)
My father could do no wrong. He was my idol so-to-speak. I wanted to be just like him.
As I grew up that changed some but not much.
My mom and I have/had a weird relationship. Through counseling I've come to understand that I was a "dismissive child" and I believe it's because she was so anxious throughout pregnancy and into the first 6 mo of my life. She did want a girl and I was her first born, a boy. I think all of these factors have led me to try to be "strong" for her and protect her from harm which included knowing my feelings and the fact that I longed to please her and be recognized by her but I became independent and tried to live without her recognition/love.
Even now, I've told her about my desire to transition but I never ever mentioned that she might be part of the reason why because she could very well suicide over it.
At my wedding, we did the mother/son dance and I sang to her "the Momma song" by BoyzIImen and I couldn't then and still can't sing that without bawling my eyes out. I always just thought it was because it reminded me of her but now I think it has to do with something much more deep inside me.
I honestly didn't look more up to one parent than the other. Honestly, now that I think about it, I realize that I didn't spend all that much time with either of them at the time.
Dad left when I was six. Or rather, he and mom got into their first and last serious fight and split up after it. Mum ended up with a sprained wrist and has never forgiven dad for that, the fight, or what the fight was over (woman can REALLY hold a grudge!), Dad on the other hand still cares about mum and believes she saved his life, and so walked away quietly when told to leave. He gives her space and avoids coming up here when she's in town even.
Anyway. Dad left, and mom had to work. Top it off with migranes and backpains and my mom was "away" a fair bit too.
Dad'd come up on holidays and my older brother was around, so that was my "male rolemodels", I had good teachers and mum would sit with us at the dinner table, so that was my "female rolemodels".
If anything, the men in my life were more "passive" than the women.
I don't believe I really looked up to anyone all that much.
Dad before puberty. When it finally set in that I could never, ever be him or anything remotely close to him, I started rejecting traditional masculinity and started valuing traits closer to my realm of possibility.
While I never had any female role models per se (I just couldn't relate to women in that context), my Mother became increasingly important and precious to me the older I got.
So Dad as child, Mom as an adult.
I never knew my father so it was my grandmother and mother who were my family. My mother went to work at a defense plant and I spent my days with my Swedish grandmother. I adored her but she died when I was six so from then on it was my mother who had the most influence on me. As an only child, in a small conservative PA town, I found that most of my time was spent alone as my mother allowed me to roam anywhere I pleased with no supervision. She was my world but I knew that she really wanted me to get killed in some of the idiotic things I did to impress her. Things like killing dozens of rattlesnakes at the nearby creek bed. Men terrified me as my mother would date these drunks and others who treated me badly. I hated the idea that I would grow up like one of those monsters.
There was a neighbor man who I could go to for help in my hobbies of electronics and model airplanes but other than that, I was mostly alone.
I coped with the lonliness by having a dozen large stuffed toy monkeys that I read to and cared for like a mother. That nurturing behavior made me really odd in my small town and I got mercilessly picked on and beat up. You know, the pretty little sissy boy. As I look back at that time, I am amazed that I survived. I'm writing about it for a personal autobiography to deal with the hurts I endured. It will never be published as it is for my needs only.
Maggie
A handful of teachers and my mother, really. I got along quite well with my mother but she was too busy working two jobs (one either teaching college or as a college administrator, the other contracts to write the texts used by a correspondence school) to earn the money on which we lived.
As for the rest of my family; the simplest way I could put it was that they intended to demonstrate just how unfair and cruel they could be toward me. They often went out of their way in their effort, costing themselves just to ensure I couldn't have something.
I think I'm more attached to my mother. (Still young so I'm using present relations hehe) I kind of tried to relate to my dad, and in some aspects I do. I go backpacking with him, stuff like that. But he's just not someone I feel like I really can relate to in a lot of ways. (Actually, I've been looking at a lot of "passing/presenting" tips online, and it seems to me, that at least in manners of speaking, some mannerisms, my dad is actually a lot more feminine. Which might also explain why my mom, who is gay, married him)
My mom has always just been easier to talk to, especially once being bisexual/transgender/ came up. :)
My Dad - he wasn't perfect but the image I had of him was of something like a superhero. Even when I got older, I still thought he was cool. Adults on TV like Jaques Cousteau, advanturers and pilots and scientists and stuff. Greek heroes in books and scientists, explorers, etc. Hell I even thought Clutch Cargo was cool, him and SPAAAAACE AAANGEL lol. Adult guys in general, guys who held bonfires on the beach and knew how to use tools and would have parties where they cracked bullwhip and did all the FUN stuff that kids couldn't do.
I didn't relate to the men in my family at all. I loved my father and grandfathers, but viewed them as loveable aliens. The women in my family were dowdy, utilitarian women, and I didn't identify with them either.
My mother's younger brother was a slob and a jerk who I didn't like, but he was handsome. His girlfriend/fiancee/wife was who I was very taken with as a young child, who I really wanted to be like.
She looked somewhat like Marlo Thomas, except prettier, and I didn't see her much after they were married - but That Girl was on every day, and I really identified with her. I also really liked Petticoat Junction and Bewitched. Also Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 and Dianna Rigg as Emma Peel. And Supergirl in the comics. Plus several of the guest heroines on Star Trek and Anne Bolynne.
Quote from: GinaDouglas on September 02, 2009, 03:24:47 PM
That Girl was on every day, and I really identified with her. I also really liked Petticoat Junction and Bewitched. Also Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 and Dianna Rigg as Emma Peel. And Supergirl in the comics. Plus several of the guest heroines on Star Trek and Anne Bolynne.
That's really funny that you mention that. I always studied the women on TV and figured the men were just placeholders - required for the story but otherwise pretty uninteresting. I
loved how Marlo Thomas looked and sounded, but her character was kind of vapid. ::)
- Kate
Man I was always about the dudes on TV, I even liked Darren most on Bewitched. Poor guy!
Well I was always a "daddy's girl" but that's not out of any hidden ->-bleeped-<-. My father's just, as far as I know, a really nice guy. Real tolerant, trusting, hardworking, a real role model. I spent the most time with my mother though since she didn't work.
Once puberty hit, my mother began to get more strict and she's a little harder to bear much less aspire towards. She doesn't have a job, she's constantly angry, she causes a lot of social problems, she's close minded and she doesn't seem to want to solve her problems. So ultimately I aspire to become neither of them.
Famous women in this day are usually noted for not much more than their hotness as far as I see, and I'll look up to those intelligent college-graduate men which are just so easy to respect. I'm not being sexist, lots of men are dolts. In fact a vast majority seem to have little to no purpose in life (except perhaps procreation). College graduate women don't seem to different from their less educated counterparts and maybe it says something about their intrinsic maturity. I don't know.
Cheers,
Silverfang
For me I grew up in a matriarchal family. I always looked to the women in my family, Mother, Grandmother, Sister, Female cousins. My father was around but in the background. I always related to the women around me. As I got older and realized who I was I tried to relate to men around me but really had a hard time of it. I found a few things I liked about being a guy but for the most part I always felt that I shoud be elsewhere, with the girls.
Jessica
SilverFang you are right, where are today's Amelia Airharts, our Madame Curies, our hero female transport and even fighter pilots, someone's finally developed a sort of jetplane-pack that looks like an utter gas to fly with, where's the gutsy 98-lb gal making speed and distance records with it?
Even the "femme fatales" of the past were formidable. Not little twinks like Paris Hilton etc. Madonna's a bit imposing but nothing like the leading ladies of the past in movies etc who could turn the biggest toughest man's knees to jelly.
But then likewise I have to ask, where are our male heroes too? Space travel is history now and the big secret is, we will not go back to the moon. It was 10 years from when JFK said we ought to go, and we went. We had Great Scientists and explorers and heroes, and kids like me grew up watching Jacques Cousteau and wanting to be a deep-sea explorer like him.
We have of course small-time, everyday heroes. People who stop to help those in need, face down bullies, do the right thing. And we'll always have. But the "big" heroes of the past formed and molded a lot of us as kids, and made us perhaps a bit more likely to pitch in for the other guy, the weak, the wronged, etc than otherwise.
These days it's fashionable to point out how this or that heroic person has toenail fungus, burps after lunch, smells when they miss a shower, and once cussed at their 3rd grade teacher. Since irony is dead, when can be let cynicism die back a bit too?
In the beginning, women competed with men in rodeo. And I do mean compete. Some of the old photographs are of incredible women. Then in the 20s or 30s a wave a political correctness or something hit and women were relegated to carrying flags and looking feminine. It took decades before they could just do barrel racing. Yech.
Women continue to break barriers, though. There are some incredible women in India and Africa and the Muslim countries demanding status for women above that of goats. And that takes lots of courage.
Unfortunately, the US media is racing toward the lowest common denominator and concentrates on ... Oh, hell, don't get me started. :P
- Kate
Quote from: Alex_C on September 08, 2009, 03:07:53 PM
SilverFang you are right, where are today's Amelia Airharts, our Madame Curies, our hero female transport and even fighter pilots, someone's finally developed a sort of jetplane-pack that looks like an utter gas to fly with, where's the gutsy 98-lb gal making speed and distance records with it?
Even the "femme fatales" of the past were formidable. Not little twinks like Paris Hilton etc. Madonna's a bit imposing but nothing like the leading ladies of the past in movies etc who could turn the biggest toughest man's knees to jelly.
But then likewise I have to ask, where are our male heroes too? Space travel is history now and the big secret is, we will not go back to the moon. It was 10 years from when JFK said we ought to go, and we went. We had Great Scientists and explorers and heroes, and kids like me grew up watching Jacques Cousteau and wanting to be a deep-sea explorer like him.
We have of course small-time, everyday heroes. People who stop to help those in need, face down bullies, do the right thing. And we'll always have. But the "big" heroes of the past formed and molded a lot of us as kids, and made us perhaps a bit more likely to pitch in for the other guy, the weak, the wronged, etc than otherwise.
These days it's fashionable to point out how this or that heroic person has toenail fungus, burps after lunch, smells when they miss a shower, and once cussed at their 3rd grade teacher. Since irony is dead, when can be let cynicism die back a bit too?
Well, I was expecting to be challenged on my post. This is a nice surprise. My generation doesn't have much in the way of real heroes. . . just celebrities and athletes which are hardly the best ideal to follow. So there are some teachers I look up to and some people just have some really great advice. These people do not make it into the spotlights, and I'm rather lucky to know some of them as they are probably in short supply these days. Or perhaps we just never notice them. We're going to have a lot of lonely, misdirected adults who are really still kids running the world when I get older. Or at least that's what I'm seeing.
SilverFang
That's a whole other issue .... let me just say that by age 10 it was OK to take the bus into town, 40 miles away, it was OK to walk and hike all over the place, we had chores, a person was considered a wimp if (male or female) they couldn't climb a pretty decently high tree, throw a mean rock, etc. If you had a problem you could deal with yourself, you did. We played in groups, neighborhood kids, and we learned to get along or if not, to deal with it.
Very different from today's sedentary, highly adult-dependent kids. We are really seeing "adults" who are really still kids now.
My mom was a tyrant and mean but my Dad was loving and gentle - he was my protector and I idolized him (so did my sister). My two Grandmothers were the ones I really related to and I loved talking to them or just listening. They were wise women indeed.
My greatest woman hero was Mae West - I thought she was great (much to my mother's horror! LOL!) She was saucy and brash, feisty, and certainly never took second place to any man. I admired the courage of women who pioneered "non-traditional work" and pushed boundaries, women like Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson.
I related to my father because he's a cruel and cold-hearted man and my family members said I was cruel and cold-hearted.
I only related to animals and to fictional or long-dead humans.
Quote from: Felix on March 19, 2012, 12:06:18 AM
I only related to animals and to fictional or long-dead humans.
This for me too. I never had much of a thing for humans... I don't really 'get' them most of the time. I buried my head in books, where there were usually clear cut explanations for why people did crazy stuff, haha! "Oh you're going to shoot that guy in the head and steal his car, why exactly?" "Isn't it obvious, because the author thinks I need character development, so in this time of personal crisis, I'm liable to do really anything." "Ah, well okay then, carry on." That is SO much simpler than, "Oh honey, it's nothing *tear tear tear* don't mind me *sob*" "Well, okay, if its really noth-" "You're such an insensitive ass!!" "AHHH! Where did that... wait, what?! But you said...!!!"
Yes, I'll go back to my books and my pets now...
I related much more to the things in my head than to real world people. Didn't relate to my parents and had few friends; my internal world was a much better place.
Quote from: riven1 on March 20, 2012, 11:44:18 PM
I related much more to the things in my head than to real world people. Didn't relate to my parents and had few friends; my internal world was a much better place.
This x1000.
The adults in my life taught me a lot. They were superb examples of how
not to be. The other children were mostly a bunch of cliquish bores. They mostly taught me how to fight, and the value of having friends in high places...
Quote from: Malachite on March 18, 2012, 10:50:28 PM
I related to my father because he's a cruel and cold-hearted man and my family members said I was cruel and cold-hearted.
Oh, you poor thing! I know what you mean. My sperm donor was a rapist, a batterer, and a junkie. One of my fonder memories of puberty was learning that the reason my mom never gave me the "birds and the bees" talk was because she was always afraid I'd "inherit" all that...
Sailor moon muwahah
Nobody really. My father was away a lot working and my mother spent more time with my much younger brothers. Pretty much evenly ignored, so didn't really learn how to relate to others.
My nan, she was cool let me be different with out question, showed me how to cook and shop lol.
My dad and I were two peas in a pod and have very similar personalities. Too bad he's a cycling abuser and decided to be a weakling. I remember the good times when he was the person I loved most with fondness, but he is no longer that person and out of my life. I also refuse to be a weakling abuser like him.
When I was a kid, I could also relate to Scar from The Lion King. XP
As a teenager and still, I relate to Loki and several war goddesses.
Now, I relate to several anime characters all of whom are male.
Quote from: amdee on April 11, 2012, 07:36:56 AM
My nan, she was cool let me be different with out question, showed me how to cook and shop lol.
Same here!
The next door neighbour's two girls. One was a year older than me, one was a couple of years younger.
That was my first experience of putting on makeup (the Jokeresque oversized lipstick endeavours still make me smile thinking about it), wearing our parents' heels that were several sizes too big, putting on dresses that were also miles too big and had the sleeves hanging down to the ground, memorising the lyrics to cheesy 80's songs ('Total Eclipse Of The Heart' by Bonnie Tyler still has a soft spot in my soul because of that). To all intents and purposes I was one of them. And it felt carefree and natural. They didn't seem to either care or understand that I wasn't a girl physically. And interestingly, neither did anyone else. Evenings, weekends, and long school holidays spent doing each other's hair, painting nails, working out dance routines to the self-same cheesy 80's pop songs, holding makeshift tea parties under a sheet that their mum had draped over the washing line in the back garden to form a rudimentary tent-thing. From the age of five to the age of twelve, when they moved away, I felt like I fitted in somewhere, that I had people who understood me.
Good times.
After that, nothing and no one really came close. The harsh realities of a life both physically and mentally unwanted bore down with a vengeance.
When I was a child, I got along with most teachers, and my mother... and that's about it. I didn't care for my extended family, and I didn't know any other adults.