Living with Ridicule as a Child

Growing up in my home, it never occurred to me that many of the things that happened there where not appropriate. But one of the most confusing things for me was the ridicule that was so easily brandished by my mother.

I think I was nearly forty before I realized that my mother had been a name caller. It's weird to me that I always remembered the names but never thought about it being wrong. They just seemed to be more like pet names to me.

My mother had them for most of us. My oldest brother somehow escaped one and my youngest sister but all the rest of us, we had our names.
One of my brothers she called Al Capone after the gangster. He was always in trouble according to her although I don't remember him doing anything much different than other kids.

The next brother under him she called Ichabod Crane. She would screech his name at him when he would whine. "Oooooooooo Icaboooood." with a curl of her lips and a scrunch to her face that I can still envision in my mind today. I always felt so sorry for him.

He had spent the first six months of his life in the hospital sedated because of a rare operation. He wasn't even supposed to live but she could never forgive him for not thoroughly taking to her method of teaching children not to cry. The fact that he still whined drove her crazy. Maybe it was the fact he lived that drove her crazy. I guess I never thought of that before now.

The next brother's nickname was the Rat. Like the others, it was wielded like a weapon. By the time he was two that name made him cringe. He hated it.

And what was mine? Well, my name was Two Ton Lil. Because of that name, I always thought I was fat. Imagine my surprise to find that my weight is what the doctor's charts say it should be. Even now when I'm 30 pounds heavier than I would like to be, my weight ratio to height with age factored in is within the range the doctors consider healthy.

There were lots of other ways that my mother ridiculed us but they were not as obvious at the name calling. Funny how that word obvious seems to stick in my throat. So obvious it took me until therapy to even figure out it was ridicule.

Reading through the blogs of other multiples, I realize that ridicule seems to be an integral part of keeping us under their thumbs! It makes me wonder what other forms of ridicule there were that might still not be obvious to me.




multiple personality disorder MPD dissociative Identity disorder did