Desalvo's Own Relationship With Her Mother example essay topic

One Sunday, no different than any other Sunday, I woke my daughter, Kimberly, up for church. She just turned four, so we are still struggling with communication, so I thought. A few minutes before it was time to leave, she went into one of her occasional tantrums due to having spent the weekend with Grandparents. Spending time with Grandma and Grandpa means no discipline whatsoever. She didn't eat her cereal and wanted a bagel. I had offered her a bagel fifteen minutes prior and she piously shook her head no to me, but then at the moment of departure she just needed to have that bagel, with cream cheese.

Classic. She threw herself into a crying tantrum, legs kicking and all. At this point I was highly aggravated, and I explained to her that this was not allowed and told her to go sit on her bed until she felt better. She proceeded to her bed and threw herself on it dramatically, and her father and I waited through fifteen minutes of wailing, which caused us to miss church. After she calmed down I decided that I would go in and talk to her calmly.

She appeared to be feeling better. She sat up and said "Mommy I just needed you to understand something. I changed my mind and decided that I wanted a bagel but you wouldn't listen to me". After hearing this I decided I would pinch myself to make sure I was awake. My four year old just talked to me like an adult.

It struck me that when I was telling her not to talk back to me, at what I thought and was taught was out of respect, she took it as I was not listening to her or maybe being silenced. DeSalvo talks about being silenced as a child. I cannot tell a true rendition of a memory where I felt silenced as a child because I am no longer a child. But now that I relive my childhood through my daughter, I can listen to her and speak on her behalf and maybe Louise DeSalvo as well.

In the book Vertigo DeSalvo talks about her relationship with her grandparents. They like other grandparents basically spoiled her rotten and take her side during parental battles. I can see how this shapes a child's behavior. My daughter is a different child after she spends a weekend with Grandparents. All the spoiling goes right to her head so to speak. DeSalvo talks of how she goes to the Opera with her Grandfather.

She talks about how he won't take anyone else but her. She also talks about how she loves to be with her mother and how her mother spoils her while her father is at war. My husband travels a lot, and I can relate to the more relaxed atmosphere when he is not home. I cater to my child out of fear of boredom and of course natural love. When Daddy comes home the daily routine is definitely no longer a routine.

Instead of Barbie workbooks it is work clothes laundry and basically making time for Dad. Since I miss him, I may at times give him more attention than my daughter. I can see how this upsets her because she is used to 100% attention. DeSalvo tells in her memoir, about when her father came home from war. Before all the fathers came home the children basically had the run of the house. Mothers attended dinner parties and sent happy photographs to the fathers away at war.

DeSalvo became very accustomed to this lifestyle and didn't take the transition of her father coming back very well. This meant she was no longer the center of her mother's attention. She basically held a grudge against her father for leaving as well as coming home. She felt silenced when her father returned home from war.

The rules of the house came into play once again. No talking back. Eat all your food. Do as your told. I think that when a child's world gets turned upside down by a traumatic event, their personality can also turn up or down. It is very important to keep consistency in a child's life.

When DeSalvo's father left and returned it was traumatic and changed her life both times. The consistency in discipline and rules shifted as well. I think that having these things constant in a child's life gives them comfort and when you upset the comfort zone a child may describe events later in a dramatic fashion. I can see how DeSalvo didn't feel all so silenced as a child when it was just she and her mother. Mothers have this way of letting their child say everything they want, all the while we are not really listening. At a young age children don't seem to pick up that we are not all together listening.

I believe we pick up the most important things and give appropriate responses to questions that make no sense and rambling imaginative stories that need a second make believe person involved. DeSalvo writes about how her mother let her play in the dirt and she pretended to have a garden. The other mothers were feeding their children but she was allowed to continue to play. Her mother would anchor down a bucket with a cookie in it and she would eat and play. I can see how a young child could become very accustomed to this lifestyle. She was extremely spoiled by her mother and grandparents.

I think that her mother was the comforting person in her life. Without her father around things were simple and fun. She really didn't have to answer to anyone. Her grandparents spoiled her consistently as well as her mother.

When her father left she was very young. There was probably next to no discipline due to the child being dependent on the parents. As time passed and DeSalvo grew older her lifestyle became being the spoiled child. Her father was gone at this point and she was her mother's first child as well as her grandparent's first grandchild. When her Father came back into the picture he upset her whole world. He made rules to be followed and stuck to it.

When I was a toddler my parents got divorced and for a short period of time I lived with my mother. Why my mother received custody is a mystery to me. No judge in his right mind would have given my mother custody of a goldfish, let alone children. At that time and even still today Ohio's custodial laws are very old fashioned and unless you can prove the mother is hooking on the street corner, she usually gets custody. Well, my mother was hooking all right but not on the street corner, so things swayed in her favor. It was only a matter of time before she messed up and custody was given to my father.

This was after a dramatic release on her part in court and two weeks of foster homes for my brothers and I. The time frame was small since my father was out of the picture but I had become very accustomed to running my own show, doing whatever I wanted, when I wanted. This came to an abrupt halt and left me stunned. Rules and regulations were put into effect. There were way too many rules for a toddler to remember, so punishment was dished out often due to forgetfulness. I can relate to DeSalvo's story and relationship with her father.

I was definitely silenced as a child but I just remember it now as respect for your parents. My memories have been reconstructed so to speak. Thanks to my daughter and I realize the point is DeSalvo is trying to make. I see this as an intelligent trait that maybe not all children possess. DeSalvo tells the stories of how she is very intelligent and can read at the age of four. She is also figuring out problems with life and school that any normal child couldn't do or even remember to tell the story years later.

I feel that my daughter is one of these intelligent people. She has a phenomenal memory and a way with critical thinking that to me is not normal for a little girl her age. Sometimes when we look back at what happened in our childhood, we may not tell the whole truth due to holding grudges or not being happy with our current life. Memories can be remembered different and reconstructed when a person is a peace with a troubled relationship and content with themselves. As the reader we may not have these similar feelings so it can be interpreted as an embellished story. I think that DeSalvo seems like a spoiled child and when her life came to an abrupt halt she held a grudge on her mother as well as her father.

The rules her father dished were extreme punishment and her mother abandoned her. What her father said was the law and her mother obeyed as well. This didn't go over well with DeSalvo as a child and probably still doesn't. In school DeSalvo tells about how she is smaller than the others and can't see the blackboard, this results in her doing the wrong assignments. She ends up doing the second graders work although she is in first grade. She seems to paint the picture of the girl who knows the answer to the question but doesn't get called on because she knows all the answers.

I can see how she would feel silenced in this situation. She tells of how she has a big attitude and a big mouth, and at one point the nun puts tape over her mouth and physically silences her. In later teenage years DeSalvo talks about she is running the show with the guys but still not winning with her father. They argue but it ends up with her at the library, reading. She loves to read but this is a place where she is silenced as well. It doesn't help that she spends so much time at a place where silence is a virtue.

My father and I never argued because what he said was law. If I even thought about running out and going to the library straight after an argument, I would have been hunted down like a wolf by a pack of dogs. Now that is being silenced or in my mind respectful. From a young age we are taught that you must respect adults.

Talking back is not appropriate. Proper English should be used and to be courteous. Do unto others, as you would like done to yourself. I think that DeSalvo was so busy holding a grudge against her family members that she couldn't see anything else. I think her father was trying to be a father.

Doing what was taught to him by his father. I also think that because he wasn't at home during a crucial bonding time for his daughter, that this may have set the scene for their relationship. In another part of the book she touches again on her relationship with her Grandfather and how on the last of their many trips to the Opera, the American Opera is very good and he is offended out of ignorance and pride of his homeland Italy, where he would venture back to leaving his family for months. This ended their close relationship because once again she felt silenced.

I believe the only person she didn't feel silenced by was her Grandmother. I think it was because she was always either listening to her or taking the money she offered her. It may have also been that anytime she saw her Grandmother there was sure to be a fight between grandmother and mother. Rarely did they get along and I feel this may have shaped DeSalvo's own relationship with her mother. This obviously shaped how DeSalvo felt about her mother. She loved her Grandmother very much and her mother did not.

She may have felt she had to choose sides and because she was already disappointed in her mother it was easy for her to choose. DeSalvo had a sister that committed suicide as an adult. I don't feel that her sister had anything to do with the feeling of silence that DeSalvo felt because she even as a child was always battling depression. Maybe as an adult after her suicide, DeSalvo may have felt silenced because her mother could never get over the death. So there was no line of communication to really talk about the memories that help people mourn and heal.

All in all I feel that the memoir of DeSalvo was very detailed and imaginative. Her relationship with her family reminds me somewhat of my own although they are very different. I can see how in many situations that she felt silenced as a child. I also think that she may have mistaken respect as silence and as a result missed out on what may have been great relationships..