My childhood royally f**ked up my mental health. I’d like to state upfront that my parents weren’t my main caregivers. I mean, they paid for everything but didn’t feature much in my life whilst growing up. My grandmother raised me and she was a walking nightmare.
I was born with a learning disability for math/anything math-related (visual perception difficulties+spectrum dyscalculia) but I excelled in the humanities. I did pretty well and attended top schools (including a premier junior college and the National University of Singapore) but this was never good enough for my grandma. She always called me stupid, compared me to other people and demeaned my achievements. I was a recipient of the MOE Humanities scholarship back in JC and my grandmother was the only one in my family to mock me for it. She insisted that the whole thing was a fluke and that I was only awarded the scholarship because she prayed to God and therefore He gave it to me. I had home tuition in order to improve my math and science grades; on too many occasions my grandma would literally walk in halfway during lesson and instruct the tutor to give me more math homework because I was “lazy”. She never once went easy on me and would constantly scream at me for my “terrible” math grades (for crying out loud I consistently achieved solid As/Bs from secondary school all the way till JC which I was pretty proud of given my disabilities). She would go on a rant about how disabilities are fake and that I was just plain lazy. She even yelled at me during the rare instance when I brought home an A for math because that A was typically a low distinction. Even now, she’ll demean any As I score in university if they happen anywhere below 80. I once got an 87 for my mid term; ever since she believed that attaining anything below an 80 meant I wasn't sufficiently hardworking. She used to slap me if I ever dared to defend myself or “defy” her wishes.
Not to mention that she was (and still is) incredibly overprotective. She didn’t let me take public transport on my own until I was 13 years old and even then, if I didn’t arrive home by a certain time (an hour after my classes ended), she would go berserk. She used to feed me until I was about 15 years old. I would obviously tell her to stop but she’d just ignore me. She STILL personally applies dermatological creams onto my skin because apparently, I am too retarded to apply them myself. I have mild eczema and she obviously blames me for my condition.
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2019/05/my-grandmother-who-raised-me-was.html
I was born with a learning disability for math/anything math-related (visual perception difficulties+spectrum dyscalculia) but I excelled in the humanities. I did pretty well and attended top schools (including a premier junior college and the National University of Singapore) but this was never good enough for my grandma. She always called me stupid, compared me to other people and demeaned my achievements. I was a recipient of the MOE Humanities scholarship back in JC and my grandmother was the only one in my family to mock me for it. She insisted that the whole thing was a fluke and that I was only awarded the scholarship because she prayed to God and therefore He gave it to me. I had home tuition in order to improve my math and science grades; on too many occasions my grandma would literally walk in halfway during lesson and instruct the tutor to give me more math homework because I was “lazy”. She never once went easy on me and would constantly scream at me for my “terrible” math grades (for crying out loud I consistently achieved solid As/Bs from secondary school all the way till JC which I was pretty proud of given my disabilities). She would go on a rant about how disabilities are fake and that I was just plain lazy. She even yelled at me during the rare instance when I brought home an A for math because that A was typically a low distinction. Even now, she’ll demean any As I score in university if they happen anywhere below 80. I once got an 87 for my mid term; ever since she believed that attaining anything below an 80 meant I wasn't sufficiently hardworking. She used to slap me if I ever dared to defend myself or “defy” her wishes.
Not to mention that she was (and still is) incredibly overprotective. She didn’t let me take public transport on my own until I was 13 years old and even then, if I didn’t arrive home by a certain time (an hour after my classes ended), she would go berserk. She used to feed me until I was about 15 years old. I would obviously tell her to stop but she’d just ignore me. She STILL personally applies dermatological creams onto my skin because apparently, I am too retarded to apply them myself. I have mild eczema and she obviously blames me for my condition.
More at https://www.domainofexperts.com/2019/05/my-grandmother-who-raised-me-was.html
