WellThisIsShit Mon 29-Apr-19 22:54:14

Golly the OP has taken a beating on here.



To a great extent I think what you do is your own business. But I do also think that you need to be careful that your unusual attitude and behaviour around your home doesn’t cause issues for your children’s socialisation.



My mother refused to have anyone in the house, garden (or drive!). Nor did she make any effort to facilitate play dates or socialising in any other way. And yes, it made me and my sister social outcasts all the way throughout school, both primary and secondary.



I don’t think you are going to repeat my mothers behaviour, but just be careful, and keep an eye out for if / when your limitations start to impact on your children in ways that can’t get around.



For example, I could never reciprocate play dates, and so any potential friendship just died because they assumed I didn’t like them enough to have them back to my house, or I was not as fun to be friends with as other children whose parents would do fun stuff with their children and friends together. I was just ‘too weird’ & too one- way to bother with.



It made things worse that I felt I had to try and make excuses for my mothers behaviour. Children are terribly loyal. So it wasn’t ‘that child with the mother who is anti-social’, it was ‘that family who are all anti-social’ ... I lacked the words or the courage to ever tell people how bad it really was, living in that way.



I wish I had said ‘my mum is weird and paranoid and freaks out when I try and step foot into the real world. I hate it, please let me be friends anyway, even if I can’t do any of the things normal friends do, its not my fault, I want to, but she won’t let me’... but it’s humiliating, and I had all that misplaced loyalty...



Until late teenage hood all I ever managed to say was ‘I can’t, I’m sorry’ and wait for people to turn away.



Like others have said on this thread, people really don’t seem to ‘get’ how someone can seriously mean this, so they never really believed me when I told people, even when I was older. They didn’t believe me and then when they experienced it, usually her making me carry it out for her, people drew their own (wrong) conclusions.



I still struggle now with friendships, it’s something I never learnt how to do, but I was and am desperate to have.



I should make it clear, it wasn’t just the ‘no one over the threshold’ stuff, it was other stuff too, but this was one of the only outwards signs that something wasn’t right about our family.



So, I don’t want to add to the negativity on this thread, but I do want to say that you need to be careful to manage this, as your children’s needs develop.