Bean Dad and bad parenting

Content warning; racism, swearing and dickish parents

On twitter today, Bean Dad is trending. Basically a bloke told the story of letting his daughter struggle to open a can over 6 hours and didn’t help. He posted the story to twitter in a proud parent/teacher kinda a way. He’s now deleted his twitter account. Here’s a reddit thread with more context.

But seeing other people telling stories of living with dysfunctional parents got me thinking about my up bringing and I might share some stories here.

My family

I describe my self as coming from a bogan family; think aussie low class. This Bogans “Royals” parody is actually filmed in Tasmania (the state I grew up in):

My mum had me at 19. I was definetly unplanned. My parents have never married but they are still together after 30 odd years and 3 kids together. I’m the eldest, my sister is 4 years younger and my brother is 9 years younger than me.

I’m the only one in my family to go to uni. We grew up poor low socio economic when I was going to school and transitioned to better off bogans by the time my brother was going to school.

My Mum

I get on really well with my mum. We can talk for hours on the phone and when she visits Sydney and we go sight seeing we never get sick of each other.

She works as a receptionist at a doctors surgery with some cleaning work on the side. We both have a history of depression, obesity and a history of not getting along with our respective fathers.

My Dad

He’s pretty yobo. Think tradie, blue singlet, tattoos, short temper, not many teeth left and 9.5 fingers (he lost half a finger in a sawmill accident). Dropped out of highschool in year 8 and use to struggle with reading and writting (the internet has done wonders to his literacy). I still love him but he really knows how to piss me off without even trying.

My dad use to drink a lot when I was growing up. Nearly every weekend he’d be pissed in his shed with a few mates playing loud music. Would probably go through a carton of beer with a friend or two over 1 night. He doesn’t drink so much now.

My harsh critic has my dad’s voice

My internal harsh critic sounds an awful like my father. I think that’s why he irritates me so much. I’ve internalised his short temper as my self talk.

When I say, “for fuck sake Sam, you can’t do anything right”, I’m remembering myself in my Dad’s shed trying to help him with some project and passing the wrong tool. He would just say stuff like that without even thinking but I internalised it.

I haven’t spoken to Dad since March

I’ve called on his birthday and christmas and exchanged pleasantries but I haven’t had an in depth chat since March and had a period of not talking to him at all.

We were chatting about the pandemic and supermarkets running out of toilet paper/supplies. He said, “It’s those fucking chinese tourists, going to towns on buses and taking everything”. I tried to tell him that’s wrong/misinformation but he wouldn’t have any of it.

He then responds, “I fucking hate them [chinese] cunts, it’s all their fault”. I broke down into tears. I felt like he was criticising my friends. Working in tech I often work in teams with more people born in Asia/India than Australia. He just hung up on me. I remember tweeting something angry on twitter and complaining to my partner. I said, “that’s it, I’m not talking to my dad any more. He’s a racist cunt.”

One time I tried to confront my dad with how he made me feel. He only told me to grow up and act my age. Real mature. The last time I had confronted him before that was when I 16 and wrote a fake suicide note just to try express how much his words had hurt me. I think he had called me a fat lazy bitch after an argument.

Continueing with therapy

I had a chapt with my psychologist today and we might try some Imaginary Rescripting or chair work to work through some of my child hood traumas as part of schema therapy. It sounds like it will be hard but I’ve heard it can be quiet healing. I’ll keep you posted with how I go with it.