Toxic Traits We Learned From Our West Indian Parents

(and are trying to forget .) I love my parents dearly, and I will forever be proud of my Caribbean heritage. I can't help but acknowledge, though, how my culture affected my parenting.

1. Caring way too much about reputation.

@chilltfout / Via twitter.com

You don't have West Indian parents if you didn't grow up with them constantly comparing you to your friends, their friends' kids, your siblings, your cousins, and anyone else they could think of. Everything you did was determined by what other people were doing and how it looked to other people. Granted, they had many reasons to worry, but I think we all would've been better off growing up without the weight of appeasing the entire world on our backs.

2. Perfectionism.

@zwavy7 / Via twitter.com

Growing up in a Caribbean household, everything needed to be perfect. Let our parents come home and see a dish in the sink or toys left out on the floor after they had a long day at work and it would be World War III. Getting grades in the 90's at school wasn't good enough, and getting 100's still wasn't special because it was the expectation. Our parents strived to make us be the best we could be, but their standards were often overwhelming and unrealistic.

3. Not Showing Love.

@socamomdc / Via Socamom.com

It seems like all West Indian parents have interesting ways of showing love. Your parents might never have said "I love you" too often, but they expected you to just know that they did. The sacrifices they made to raise us (cooking, cleaning, keeping the lights on, etc.) were the measure of love, and outward intimacy or closeness in the way American kids seem to have with their parents was pretty rare. I'll always appreciate the ways my parents extended themselves to meet my needs, but sometimes I wish they would've shown their love more in a more obvious way.

4. Dismissing Our Feelings.

@celestemariaa26 / Via twitter.com

"You have nothing to be sad about" and "Stop crying before I give you something to cry for" are phrases I couldn't forget hearing as a child. As kids we were told that if we weren't paying bills we had no reason to be depressed, and if we were ever upset with our parents we were being ungrateful. We had to self-nurture a lot of the time, because our parents didn't tolerate complaining and being emotional was considered a negative trait.

5. Not Believing in Mental Health.

@lestan22 / Via twitter.com

I truly believe that all West Indian parents need therapy. I mean, everyone does, but our parents really didn't believe in therapy or the idea of mental health, and that definitely explains why they handled our emotions the way they did. Trying to tell your West Indian parents you're depressed or have anxiety is like saying "I'm insane, I've gone mad and I need to go to the mad house immediately". West Indian parents are some of the strongest, most resilient people I know, but they 've caused us some suffering with their mindsets on mental health for sure.

6. NEVER APOLOGIZING.

@breedadon / Via twitter.com

The best you can hope for is some cut up fruit. Some days after you've argued, your mom might poke into your room and tell you that dinner is ready. That is the apology. On a good day. On a bad day, it could mean you getting ignored, beat, gaslighted, or simply called ungrateful. They might know they're wrong, but they'd never admit it, and that tore us all the way up as children.

We laugh about it as adults, but we all know that some of those toxic traits really hurt us as kids. For some new parents it's their goal to raise their children differently, and for others these well-known traits are considered a rite of passage for their children. We know our parents must've had it even worse from their own parents, so we can't put all the blame on them. Either way, it's nice to know we aren't alone, and we weren't crazy for thinking that our West Indian parents were at least a little crazy.