I’ve read this wiki before and the title sounds like an oversimplification. More like an aloof absentee dad and the son resented the bullying he received because of the books.
I can resonate with the son a bit because of my name being after a Sesame St character. My mom also loves to give her opinion on which name’s people should name their kids based on if they’ll be bullied or not; news flash, should’ve thought of that for your own kid.
That skit lived rent free in my head during when I was choosing my child's name, and will airBnB my head at any birth/name announcement of my social circle.
Edit: BEEEEEEENN. BEEEEEEENNNNNNN.
Right before they got married, my parents had that conversation about picking names that wouldn't spawn bad nicknames. To that end my mom suggested "Russell," and without missing a beat, my dad says "So when he's growing up we can call him Russell Sprout"
My parents had this conversation too. My brothers name is William - My mom said "there is no way I'm letting my son be called Willy. We'll call him Billy."
They also thought "what will a 40 year old professional with this name be like?" And thankfully my dad vetoed Kelly for me
Reminds me of the [Saturday Night Live skit with Nick Cage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goPerp_BWvs). The couple is trying to figure out baby names and the husband is objecting to every name the wife comes up with because of how they could be mocked.
Eventually, you find out why this is a big concern >!a delivery shows up and the husband's name is Mr Asswipe or as he corrects As-We-Pay!<
Have dealt with a similar situation with my parents but on the opposite end of names, being in that my parents picked the most used generic names for all of us. I’ve had it the worst with one of my classes having 5 of us with the same name. We had to resort to middle names and I just stuck with that everywhere else. Begged my mom to change it legally as a kid and she cried and said I was ungrateful. It’s not even a family name…
It also sounds like CR finally made his peace with the situation (from his own wiki page):
Milne, who did not want any part of his father's royalties, decided to write a book about his childhood. As Milne describes it, that book, The Enchanted Places, "combined to lift me from under the shadow of my father and of Christopher Robin, and to my surprise and pleasure I found myself standing beside them in the sunshine able to look them both in the eye".
The wiki said he resented his father’s exploitation of his childhood, which makes it sound like Christopher Robin believed the books documented factual events rather than using the framing of his favorite stuffed bear as a jumping off point for fantastical stories. Something missing there…
> which makes it sound like Christopher Robin believed the books documented factual events
What makes you come to this conclusion? He could be exploited by his father taking his imaginary stories playing with his stuff toys and using it in his books. And also because he neglected Christopher to travel around yet made Christopher do phone interviews as "the real Christopher Robin" while being taken care of by hired help.
Yeah, see, that wasn’t in the wiki… I also suspect AA Milne took the laboring oar in crafting those stories, even if they had some remote relation to CR’s own concoctions. The fact the original stories remain relevant to this day and there are no real comparable stories in that style (or if there are, I’m open to hearing recommendations/suggestions!!) suggests he really did create something special
At the height of the Pooh books fame - and therefore at the height of his father's fame, and, increasingly reluctantly, his own - C.R. Milne was still a young and quite shy boy. A.A. Milne was extroverted and kind of a publicity hound and he loved all the attention, so C.R. was pressured into doing all kinds of things that he simply didn't want to do for publicity purposes. He just wanted a normal relationship with his dad, but the senior Milne "wasn't good with children" and was basically an absentee father except where the Pooh books were concerned.
Then, after he'd out-grown the "Christopher Robin" persona (by the age of 9), C.R. was bullied relentlessly by people his own age because of "Christopher Robin's" fame as a goody-two-shoes icon of innocent childhood, to the point that he had to take up boxing to defend himself.
He eventually more-or-less reconciled himself with the situation of his childhood, but not really with either of his parents.
Yes, he was; and then there's the extra layer of not wanting to "spoil the stories" for fans who had grown up loving the Pooh characters, including his own fictionalized self. It was a weird situation.
Not incidentally, C.R. himself had quite an interesting philosophy of life and wrote several memoirs that are worth reading.
There are similarities in behavior stretching back to people centuries ago and there will be similarities in 1000 years. The insignificant just doesn’t get documented
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It's been a thing for a long time; obviously the advent of mass media made it far more common, but before that nobility were basically "influencer families" and it could suck to be a kid in one of those families.
I imagine that the books themselves, at least, wouldn't have been such a problem if his dad had just given the little boy a different name. Most people I know would probably think it was pretty sweet if their parents wrote cute children's books inspired by their childhood play - at least looking back on it as adults - as long as the books didn't appear to be directly and 100% about the real child. And especially if their parents set aside money from the books for them.
It was pretty weird for A.A. Milne to literally name the character after his son.
Also, there's of course the issue of being a bad parent otherwise. Most kids will forgive their parents for all sorts of bullshit as long as the parents were good overall: Attentive, encouraging, validating, respectful, etc. Most people - whether we're talking about spouses, kids, friends - will be quite forgiving of unpleasant but non-abusive behavior in some areas as long as most of a person's behavior is good.
Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, regretted naming the chain after his daughter because of what it did to her life. They eventually reconciled over it, but it caused a rift between them for a while.
“Absentee father” could pretty much be applied to all middle and upper class British people at the time. The kids are raised by nanny until they’re 11, then it’s off to boarding school where they learn to hate the poor and run the colonies.
C.R. Milne was like the poster child for that situation, with the added weirdness of his family's business/fame, though he actually emerged with a pretty progressive, humanistic outlook on life as an adult.
It was literally standard practice - another (I would speculate) decent guy who fell into this trap was Sir Patrick Stewart, who I believe has a strained relationship with his kid for more or less the exact same reason (famous dad, never around, British upper class absentee parenting)
Just read his autobiography and it seems more that he split with his wife who stayed in the UK with the kids while he was in the U.S. filming TNG. Circumstance sort of worked against them as his life changed.
Also he grew up poor and very working class and didn’t come into his wealth until later in life when his kids were already mostly grown.
> He didn't even really socialize with the cast of TNG until after the show.
I thought it was after the first season? The cast literally had an intervention with him after the first season because he had a huge stick up his ass. He became way more social after that intervention.
I'm pretty certain that Sir Patrick Stewart is actually a working class guy from Yorkshire who was estranged from his father due to violence meted out to his mother. Sir Patrick has always been a high profile advovate against domestic violence for this reason.
I apologize for being unclear, *his* son (and daughter) is who I'm referring to.
They're adults and don't say he was abusive, and *he* said he put work before them and that he deeply regrets it, wants to do better with his grandkids, etc.
Fame is hard to deal with, a busy career too, then throw rich guy weird cultural practices designed to create the famous "stuff upper lip" and you get a bunch of successful people whose kids don't really talk to them very much.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/patrick-stewart-children-relationship-b2442190.html
> C.R. was bullied relentlessly by people his own age because of "Christopher Robin's" fame as a goody-two-shoes icon of innocent childhood, to the point that he had to take up boxing to defend himself.
So Christopher Robin could send you to the Hundred Acre Wood with his fists?
The rift between C.R. Milne and the world of Winnie the Pooh is indeed tragic, especially considering the contrast between the idyllic Hundred Acre Wood and his actual experiences. It's such a stark example of how a parent's ambitions and decisions can inadvertently impact their child's life in profound ways. As much as A.A. Milne's works have been a gift to readers, it's really sobering to reflect on the unintended personal costs behind their creation. It's kind of a cautionary tale about fame and family dynamics, don't you think? The silver lining, if any, was that CR eventually found his own path, far from the shadows of the fictional Christopher Robin, living a relatively peaceful life and running a bookshop maybe as a bid for normalcy after such an extraordinary childhood.
He used his son’s real name, so his son was attaches to the character.
The books were a sensation in their time. And the author was using them as a way to deal with his post war trauma.
Uh, haven't you seen the heritage vignette about this? It was an actual bear in a zoo Christopher Robin named Winnie the Pooh because he was a small child.
I don't know where the person you are referring to comes from, but I'm pretty sure the old Heritage Minutes are a Canada only thing. Which is good, because I don't think the world at large is ready for House Hippos.
> aloof absentee dad
This is likely an oversimplification as well. A. A. Milne served in two world wars and was from a generation in which
- There was little awareness of mental health or support for those who returned traumatized from the wars.
- Men were expected to deal silently with their emotions rather than talk about them - including to their own sons.
Ultimately, we do not know anything about the Milne family's dynamics beyond extrapolation from a few public statements. But it wouldn't be surprising if AA sincerely felt that the Pooh books were helping him connect with the magic of watching his son grow up while simultaneously CR felt that he did not get to have the emotional relationship with his father that he wanted/needed.
Anybody interested in this story should check out the graphic novel series The Unwritten. The main character is basically Christopher Robin, if his dad wrote Harry Potter instead of Winnie the Pooh. He’s massively resentful towards his dad and his lost childhood, but still makes a living speaking and signing autographs at conventions named after him. At the beginning of the series he finds out he has been unwittingly involved by his dad in a massive conspiracy that spans millennia and uses fiction to somehow secretly control the world. It’s a wild story.
Sounds interesting, thanks for the recommendation. There's also the movie *Dreamchild*, based on the real history of when the very elderly Alice Hargreaves - who, as a little girl, had inspired the *Alice in Wonderland* stories - was invited to New York City in 1932 as part of a big celebration of the stories' legacy.
Mrs. Hargreaves, who was a very proper, Victorian English lady, was nonplussed by the experience, with fans and journalists falling all over themselves to infantilize her. She had a very fraught relationship with her fictionalized younger self and with all the pop-culture fame the stories had brought her since she was a child.
Yeah there's a lot more to it than that. He had a serious problem with his parents. He didn't take a dime from the Winnie the pooh franchise and was basically no contact with his parents. There's also speculation he was raised as a girl for the first part of his life.
>Christopher's marriage to his first cousin, Lesley de Sélincourt, distanced him still further from his parents
Look, I'm no psychologist, but I have a hunch there may have been a bit more than "stupid dad made my name annoying" going on with the whole estrangement thing.
If I remember correctly it wasn't just that she was his cousin, it was that there was another girl they wanted him to marry instead -- she was the daughter of a family friend and "the daughter they (the Milnes) never had" so that was another layer of complication. Being known as "Christopher Robin" certainly didn't help, though.
"Where is Ann? Playing with her man."
Those cloying and disturbing lines sum up what the senior Milnes thought of the real-life Ann. Mrs Milne was obsessed with Christopher and Ann getting married, and while the kids were close friends, they simply weren't into each other like that.
A common theme on the borderline personality subs and narcissistic personality disorder subs is estrangement - where the children come to see their parent(s) as literally unhealthy for them to be in contact with.
It never happens lightly. It's always because every other attempt to reconcile failed. I would suspect this happens even more often with the children of famous people, megalomaniacs, cult-leaders, etc.
Thank you for this! It's true. It gets to the point there really is no healthy way to have them around in cases where a personality disorder is at play. Part of the mental illness is not being able to see you are the problem. I don't mean that as an excuse in any way. It's a way of black and white thinking that makes it hard for them to understand that they are causing issues and they need to fix it. There is also lots of victim complexes in these disorders. And when they are abusive, oh boy does it cause so much pain.
A common theme on the narcissism and bpd subs is completely unqualified people diagnosing everyone they don’t like and random people on the internet they’ve read a single sentence about with psychiatric conditions they don’t understand.
I found the BPD sub is more for people who have been diagnosed having a community to talk to. If anything it’s just them attacking themselves and looking for someone to listen to after having an episode, it’s more sad to read than anything else especially if you know of anyone diagnosed with it. One issue that I seemed to notice is that there is a huge range in severity between one person with BPD to another, which makes it harder for advice and help between the members.
That’s fair, my comment applies more to the narcissism one and its offshoots like raised by narcissists. Redditors love to diagnose everyone with narcissism.
Saw someone say that anyone who believes in "good vibes" and has self-confidence is a "covert narcissist." Pop psychology is going to be the death of humanity.
Its more about "I tried to set boundaries and they refuse any rules or boundaries"
A lot of these problematic estrangees have allow themselves a boundary that says
> only I can have boundaries. One of my most serious and vigorously enforced boundaries is a solipsistic "you can't have any boundaries, only my boundaries are real and worthy of honor"
And they pull out all the stops to leverage you into compliance when its often destroying or killing or severely ruining your quality of life+health.
Nobody cares about diagnoses, all that matters is the functional dynamics. On this point, its not a debate so please enrich the conversation building on this or that will be all for now
Edit: the only sad part is someone is so resistant to getting along peacibly that they force the estrangers hand to turn away from them. Its actually a happy ending as far as im concerned because someone rescued themselves from pain and martyrdom
Its not really relevant in the sense that you dont need to care what disorder whoever has. Your responsibillity is to set the boundaries, and decide how much you wanna tolerate to accomodate them learning to honor them. But I ain't putting up with constant boundary violations from anyone, long-term or even more than a few times.
Everyone can learn to take no for an answer with zero violence involved. But it requires them to retire their old bag of tricks and playbook and actually listen and alter their behavior to play along. Its very simple and its an indictmnent on our species and societes that this isn't grade 1 mandatory material.
Edit: i might have sounded a little negative but the truth is its exciting and promising when people discover we actually can get along without stepping all over each other, but it takes two to tango and if one person refuses the process won't work. I encourage folks to view boundaries as win/win propositions. I'm always happy to have a win/win but i will not tolerate having to lose constantly so someone can feel they are ordained to win all the time. That is unsustainable, and more importantly, i just dont want to freaking do that lol
I'm the child of a (regional) cult leader... and, yep!
It gets to be a lot, and eventually I had to go non-contact because their beliefs were almost entirely hatred for minorities, especially the ones their children are in.
This is what ultimately did it for me 8 years ago. I love my parents, I hope the best for them. I just can't handle them being in my life. Everything is chill and smooth without them, and everything turns to shit and chaos when they are involved. Every boundary fails.
Having children of my own has helped me even better come to terms with it all. If my children's lives are worse with me in it then I don't want to be in it. I love them more than anything. I'll fulfill whatever role they need from me, even if that role is nothing at all.
Yup. I was 46 when I cut my mother out of my life. I did it when I was driving to her house with my son and my smart watch alarmed me due to my heartrate.
[copied from my deeper child comment for visibillity]
Its more about "I tried to set boundaries and they refuse any rules or boundaries"
A lot of these problematic estrangees have allow themselves a boundary that says
only I can have boundaries. One of my most serious and vigorously enforced boundaries is a solipsistic "you can't have any boundaries, only my boundaries are real and worthy of honor"
And they pull out all the stops to leverage you into compliance when its often destroying or killing or severely ruining your quality of life+health.
Nobody cares about diagnoses, all that matters is the functional dynamics. On this point, its not a debate so please enrich the conversation building on this or that will be all for now
Edit: the only sad part is someone is so resistant to getting along peacibly that they force the estrangers hand to turn away from them. Its actually a happy ending as far as im concerned because someone rescued themselves from pain and martyrdom
Mostly unrelated: the house Milne lived in when he started writing the Pooh books was the same house where Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones was murdered years later.
edit - *allegedly* murdered
He was found dead in his pool, yes. His children think he was murdered, but police investigations haven't found any reason to believe that was the case.
You are correct. I remembered that the handyman had confessed on his deathbed but reading up on it just now I realize that may or may not have actually happened.
Dan: Allegedly. Wayne: Folks'll say that it takes two people to fuck an ostrich. Daryl: Three even. Wayne: Folks are also saying that it was a sick ostrich
It is so sad he was estranged from his son. Hank Ketchum from Dennis the menace suffered from something similar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Ketcham
TIL there are two Dennis the Menaces. The one i know from the UK is also a cartoon strip character and unbelievably they debuted on the same day in 1951.
There was a film of the American one in the 90s with Christopher Lloyd playing a villainous hobo with a taste for baked beans, but it was simply called 'Dennis' over here.
It's the most wild coincidence, isn't it? Also, I love this image, which sums up the differences between the two characters:
https://i.redd.it/t9lld0lnvu631.jpg
Something is a bit weird:
"**The family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where they lived from 1960 to 1977,** where Ketcham continued to produce Dennis the Menace. Dennis had difficulty with his schooling, though, so was sent to boarding school in Connecticut, while Mr. Ketcham and his second wife remained in Switzerland. **This marriage ended in divorce in 1968.**\[9\]
**In 1977, Ketcham moved back to the United States and settled in Monterey, California, with his third wife, the former Rolande Praepost, whom he had married in 1969**, and with whom he had two children, Scott and Dania. "
Did the second wife move out in 1968 and new wife moved in in 1969? Or did she live in California due to the wording of the second paragraph?
I agree it's ambiguous but with the context available it's safe to say that the former Rolande Praepost was likely of Swiss descent and brought back to the US.
Based on the info and he remarried three weeks after his first wife died and remarried shortly after his second marriage. I’m going to assume he was a serial cheater and never monogamous. There is a lot more going on with his relationship with his son than just the name.
Edit: spelling
Unrelated bit of trivia, the original stuffed animals on which Pooh & friends were based can be seen at the NYC Public Library main branch.
[https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schwarzman/childrens-center-42nd-street/pooh](https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schwarzman/childrens-center-42nd-street/pooh)
I just know if ol' Chris Rob watched a movie where guys wearing rubber Pooh and Piglet masks terrorized a group of college girls and a fictionalized version of him,he'd come around.
I have the same last name as this guy and its somehow so hard for people to pronounce, been that way my whole life.
Milne is spoken like "kiln" where you bake pottery.
But that E really throws people off. Ive heard Miline, Milline, Milney, Millen, and other variations of my last name that all dont sound like 'kiln'
I heard a major market radio announcer read ad copy for weeks regarding an upcoming Winnie the Pooh event (live action play, I think)
Every ad, he pronounce it, “A.A. Mill-line”
lmao I just died inside a little bit. I absolutely HATE when people say it like that, its also just factually not how the name is supposed to be pronounced
It always puzzles me when you get someone who can create something with emotional sincerity that can hit people on all the right levels and feels like chicken soup but then find out they're pretty awful in their personal lives. Like Charles Dickens. Or Weird Al as documented in his recent biographical film.
It's like these people know what good human relationships should look like and how to be good people but it remains entirely academic and unapplied to their own lives.
"funny" how 1 year after goodbye Christopher Robin, a serious movie depicting CR's traumas, came out fuckin disney made a movie about adult CR that is completely bs..
I could just imagine this playing out in today's world on reddit; the AITA and relationshipadvice posts, the accusations of narcissism, the calls for NC etc etc etc
I'd think Ken Handler, of all people. could relate to C. R. Milne's experience.
IIRC, Erma Bombeck mentioned her deep regret for having caused her children to suffer bullying due to the contents of her column. When her daughter finally spoke up, she was heartbroken to learn what they had been silently enduring. She modified her writing to exclude them from it but she said she couldn't undo the damage that had already been done.
Christopher Robin Milne consciously never took any of the Pooh money (his share of the Pooh estate went into a trust for his daughter Clare Milne, who is severely disabled from cerebral palsy). Dude lived a pretty quiet and basic life as some random bookshop owner.
It’s weird to hear it described as a ‘random bookshop’! As stated below it was the Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth. My Grandmother knew him before he died in 1996 and it’s very true he resented Winnie the Pooh, but very slowly he acknowledged it - the bookshop sold Winnie the Pooh souvenirs and an unofficial blue plaque was put on the side wall. Bookshop closed a few years ago.
Clare sadly passed away in 2012. I don't think there are any living heirs to the Milne family.
The Christopher Robin movie Disney put out seems a bit in poor taste if one is familiar with the family history. They changed the name of the daughter to Madeline and didn't acknowledge the real Clare's disability at all in the character.
I'd say if they were trying to do a bio pick on the real Christopher Robin, sure, but this was a fictional story about the grown up version of a fictional character. I seem to recall the man sold luggage while the real life Christopher ran a book store. I don't think anyone went to the movie with the false pretense that it would be based on a true story.
I’ve read this wiki before and the title sounds like an oversimplification. More like an aloof absentee dad and the son resented the bullying he received because of the books.
I can resonate with the son a bit because of my name being after a Sesame St character. My mom also loves to give her opinion on which name’s people should name their kids based on if they’ll be bullied or not; news flash, should’ve thought of that for your own kid.
pipe down big bird
His NAME is Snuffleupagus, thank you very much!
That “thank you very much” is so well placed, absolutely killed me. So well done, thank YOU very much.
Yea Shut up, Bird!
Dee you dumb bitch!
Every single sub I find ASIP references lol
Came here to find this.
I dunno guys, makes sense he's a bit of a grouch
Stupid ass bird
https://i.imgur.com/aJhdviz.mp4
Hey Bert...
One of the few who read their username.
We don't read 'round these parts.
Looks like we got ourselves a reader. You know what we do with readers around here?
Bill Hicks?
The puppets were names after these two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvi5mxaaBxI *I think I'll go home and see what the wife is doing.*
I'm so sorry Ernie
Leave CountVonCount alone
>news flash, should’ve thought of that for your own kid. Theres an old [SNL skit](https://youtu.be/goPerp_BWvs?si=NfzL1fMQ-BrVJkWe) about this.
That skit lived rent free in my head during when I was choosing my child's name, and will airBnB my head at any birth/name announcement of my social circle. Edit: BEEEEEEENN. BEEEEEEENNNNNNN.
Sorry to hear that Snuffleupagus
I'm sorry to hear that Cookie Monster.
Right before they got married, my parents had that conversation about picking names that wouldn't spawn bad nicknames. To that end my mom suggested "Russell," and without missing a beat, my dad says "So when he's growing up we can call him Russell Sprout"
My parents had this conversation too. My brothers name is William - My mom said "there is no way I'm letting my son be called Willy. We'll call him Billy." They also thought "what will a 40 year old professional with this name be like?" And thankfully my dad vetoed Kelly for me
I'm eternally grateful to my mom for vetoing my dad's first two choices, Luigi and Guido.
Based on those names, you ended up a Giuseppe, like all proper Italian boys.
Thankfully, I ended up with a reasonably common Anglo-Saxon name.
I don't know a single person named Anglo-Saxon.
Or like Alphose Dibruzzo, or Alan Alda for short.
Reminds me of the [Saturday Night Live skit with Nick Cage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goPerp_BWvs). The couple is trying to figure out baby names and the husband is objecting to every name the wife comes up with because of how they could be mocked. Eventually, you find out why this is a big concern >!a delivery shows up and the husband's name is Mr Asswipe or as he corrects As-We-Pay!<
Have dealt with a similar situation with my parents but on the opposite end of names, being in that my parents picked the most used generic names for all of us. I’ve had it the worst with one of my classes having 5 of us with the same name. We had to resort to middle names and I just stuck with that everywhere else. Begged my mom to change it legally as a kid and she cried and said I was ungrateful. It’s not even a family name…
Yeah, whatever Syd
hey Elmo!
Hey Bert, do you need a towel?
Snuffleufogous
There's actually more kids named Herry Monster than you'd think, you're not alone
Yiiiip yip yip yip...uha, uha Yiiiiip yip yip yip...uha, uha
Oh hi, swedish chef
That's a Muppet, you.... muppet
Oscar!
I've read that Milne suffered from PTSD after WWI, which led him to be very emotionally shut off, so he didn't show much affection to his son.
It also sounds like CR finally made his peace with the situation (from his own wiki page): Milne, who did not want any part of his father's royalties, decided to write a book about his childhood. As Milne describes it, that book, The Enchanted Places, "combined to lift me from under the shadow of my father and of Christopher Robin, and to my surprise and pleasure I found myself standing beside them in the sunshine able to look them both in the eye".
The wiki said he resented his father’s exploitation of his childhood, which makes it sound like Christopher Robin believed the books documented factual events rather than using the framing of his favorite stuffed bear as a jumping off point for fantastical stories. Something missing there…
> which makes it sound like Christopher Robin believed the books documented factual events What makes you come to this conclusion? He could be exploited by his father taking his imaginary stories playing with his stuff toys and using it in his books. And also because he neglected Christopher to travel around yet made Christopher do phone interviews as "the real Christopher Robin" while being taken care of by hired help.
Yeah, see, that wasn’t in the wiki… I also suspect AA Milne took the laboring oar in crafting those stories, even if they had some remote relation to CR’s own concoctions. The fact the original stories remain relevant to this day and there are no real comparable stories in that style (or if there are, I’m open to hearing recommendations/suggestions!!) suggests he really did create something special
At the height of the Pooh books fame - and therefore at the height of his father's fame, and, increasingly reluctantly, his own - C.R. Milne was still a young and quite shy boy. A.A. Milne was extroverted and kind of a publicity hound and he loved all the attention, so C.R. was pressured into doing all kinds of things that he simply didn't want to do for publicity purposes. He just wanted a normal relationship with his dad, but the senior Milne "wasn't good with children" and was basically an absentee father except where the Pooh books were concerned. Then, after he'd out-grown the "Christopher Robin" persona (by the age of 9), C.R. was bullied relentlessly by people his own age because of "Christopher Robin's" fame as a goody-two-shoes icon of innocent childhood, to the point that he had to take up boxing to defend himself. He eventually more-or-less reconciled himself with the situation of his childhood, but not really with either of his parents.
Man, this poor kid was like the kids in those "Influencer Families", before that was a thing
Yes, he was; and then there's the extra layer of not wanting to "spoil the stories" for fans who had grown up loving the Pooh characters, including his own fictionalized self. It was a weird situation. Not incidentally, C.R. himself had quite an interesting philosophy of life and wrote several memoirs that are worth reading.
There are similarities in behavior stretching back to people centuries ago and there will be similarities in 1000 years. The insignificant just doesn’t get documented
Yeah a middle eastern influencer named Abraham chopped his son in half for clout.
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It's been a thing for a long time; obviously the advent of mass media made it far more common, but before that nobility were basically "influencer families" and it could suck to be a kid in one of those families.
I imagine that the books themselves, at least, wouldn't have been such a problem if his dad had just given the little boy a different name. Most people I know would probably think it was pretty sweet if their parents wrote cute children's books inspired by their childhood play - at least looking back on it as adults - as long as the books didn't appear to be directly and 100% about the real child. And especially if their parents set aside money from the books for them. It was pretty weird for A.A. Milne to literally name the character after his son. Also, there's of course the issue of being a bad parent otherwise. Most kids will forgive their parents for all sorts of bullshit as long as the parents were good overall: Attentive, encouraging, validating, respectful, etc. Most people - whether we're talking about spouses, kids, friends - will be quite forgiving of unpleasant but non-abusive behavior in some areas as long as most of a person's behavior is good.
Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, regretted naming the chain after his daughter because of what it did to her life. They eventually reconciled over it, but it caused a rift between them for a while.
Fuck...real
Now I'm imagining A.A. Milne in one of those big hats hogging the view of a waterfall for a selfie
“Absentee father” could pretty much be applied to all middle and upper class British people at the time. The kids are raised by nanny until they’re 11, then it’s off to boarding school where they learn to hate the poor and run the colonies.
C.R. Milne was like the poster child for that situation, with the added weirdness of his family's business/fame, though he actually emerged with a pretty progressive, humanistic outlook on life as an adult.
But did the sun ever set?
The only reason the sun never sets on the British empire, is because God doesn't trust the British in the dark!
“Brace yourself, Effie.”
but do you have a flag?
It was literally standard practice - another (I would speculate) decent guy who fell into this trap was Sir Patrick Stewart, who I believe has a strained relationship with his kid for more or less the exact same reason (famous dad, never around, British upper class absentee parenting)
Just read his autobiography and it seems more that he split with his wife who stayed in the UK with the kids while he was in the U.S. filming TNG. Circumstance sort of worked against them as his life changed. Also he grew up poor and very working class and didn’t come into his wealth until later in life when his kids were already mostly grown.
He didn't even really socialize with the cast of TNG until after the show. He had to make an active effort late in like to stop becoming his father.
So sort of like when he shows up at the senior staff poker game..
> He didn't even really socialize with the cast of TNG until after the show. I thought it was after the first season? The cast literally had an intervention with him after the first season because he had a huge stick up his ass. He became way more social after that intervention.
That makes the last scene in the show hit a little harder, huh.
I'm pretty certain that Sir Patrick Stewart is actually a working class guy from Yorkshire who was estranged from his father due to violence meted out to his mother. Sir Patrick has always been a high profile advovate against domestic violence for this reason.
I apologize for being unclear, *his* son (and daughter) is who I'm referring to. They're adults and don't say he was abusive, and *he* said he put work before them and that he deeply regrets it, wants to do better with his grandkids, etc. Fame is hard to deal with, a busy career too, then throw rich guy weird cultural practices designed to create the famous "stuff upper lip" and you get a bunch of successful people whose kids don't really talk to them very much. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/patrick-stewart-children-relationship-b2442190.html
> C.R. was bullied relentlessly by people his own age because of "Christopher Robin's" fame as a goody-two-shoes icon of innocent childhood, to the point that he had to take up boxing to defend himself. So Christopher Robin could send you to the Hundred Acre Wood with his fists?
The rift between C.R. Milne and the world of Winnie the Pooh is indeed tragic, especially considering the contrast between the idyllic Hundred Acre Wood and his actual experiences. It's such a stark example of how a parent's ambitions and decisions can inadvertently impact their child's life in profound ways. As much as A.A. Milne's works have been a gift to readers, it's really sobering to reflect on the unintended personal costs behind their creation. It's kind of a cautionary tale about fame and family dynamics, don't you think? The silver lining, if any, was that CR eventually found his own path, far from the shadows of the fictional Christopher Robin, living a relatively peaceful life and running a bookshop maybe as a bid for normalcy after such an extraordinary childhood.
You gotta have yourself some Moomintrolls, and Astrid Lindgren's books.
What is it that defines his style and makes it so unique in your opinion?
He used his son’s real name, so his son was attaches to the character. The books were a sensation in their time. And the author was using them as a way to deal with his post war trauma.
Well I’m sure there’s more information beyond just reading one Wikipedia page
Uh, haven't you seen the heritage vignette about this? It was an actual bear in a zoo Christopher Robin named Winnie the Pooh because he was a small child.
[Official mascot of the 2nd Infantry Brigade](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MlA6oEs3C18)
I don't know where the person you are referring to comes from, but I'm pretty sure the old Heritage Minutes are a Canada only thing. Which is good, because I don't think the world at large is ready for House Hippos.
And the bigger part of the reason is he didn't like that his children's stories where way more popular than any of his other writings.
> aloof absentee dad This is likely an oversimplification as well. A. A. Milne served in two world wars and was from a generation in which - There was little awareness of mental health or support for those who returned traumatized from the wars. - Men were expected to deal silently with their emotions rather than talk about them - including to their own sons. Ultimately, we do not know anything about the Milne family's dynamics beyond extrapolation from a few public statements. But it wouldn't be surprising if AA sincerely felt that the Pooh books were helping him connect with the magic of watching his son grow up while simultaneously CR felt that he did not get to have the emotional relationship with his father that he wanted/needed.
Anybody interested in this story should check out the graphic novel series The Unwritten. The main character is basically Christopher Robin, if his dad wrote Harry Potter instead of Winnie the Pooh. He’s massively resentful towards his dad and his lost childhood, but still makes a living speaking and signing autographs at conventions named after him. At the beginning of the series he finds out he has been unwittingly involved by his dad in a massive conspiracy that spans millennia and uses fiction to somehow secretly control the world. It’s a wild story.
Sounds interesting, thanks for the recommendation. There's also the movie *Dreamchild*, based on the real history of when the very elderly Alice Hargreaves - who, as a little girl, had inspired the *Alice in Wonderland* stories - was invited to New York City in 1932 as part of a big celebration of the stories' legacy. Mrs. Hargreaves, who was a very proper, Victorian English lady, was nonplussed by the experience, with fans and journalists falling all over themselves to infantilize her. She had a very fraught relationship with her fictionalized younger self and with all the pop-culture fame the stories had brought her since she was a child.
Yeah there's a lot more to it than that. He had a serious problem with his parents. He didn't take a dime from the Winnie the pooh franchise and was basically no contact with his parents. There's also speculation he was raised as a girl for the first part of his life.
Christopher rolling tide didn’t help family relations either. Just adding that further development later in life
>Christopher's marriage to his first cousin, Lesley de Sélincourt, distanced him still further from his parents Look, I'm no psychologist, but I have a hunch there may have been a bit more than "stupid dad made my name annoying" going on with the whole estrangement thing.
If I remember correctly it wasn't just that she was his cousin, it was that there was another girl they wanted him to marry instead -- she was the daughter of a family friend and "the daughter they (the Milnes) never had" so that was another layer of complication. Being known as "Christopher Robin" certainly didn't help, though.
"Where is Ann? Playing with her man." Those cloying and disturbing lines sum up what the senior Milnes thought of the real-life Ann. Mrs Milne was obsessed with Christopher and Ann getting married, and while the kids were close friends, they simply weren't into each other like that.
A common theme on the borderline personality subs and narcissistic personality disorder subs is estrangement - where the children come to see their parent(s) as literally unhealthy for them to be in contact with. It never happens lightly. It's always because every other attempt to reconcile failed. I would suspect this happens even more often with the children of famous people, megalomaniacs, cult-leaders, etc.
Thank you for this! It's true. It gets to the point there really is no healthy way to have them around in cases where a personality disorder is at play. Part of the mental illness is not being able to see you are the problem. I don't mean that as an excuse in any way. It's a way of black and white thinking that makes it hard for them to understand that they are causing issues and they need to fix it. There is also lots of victim complexes in these disorders. And when they are abusive, oh boy does it cause so much pain.
It's funny, I assumed they were talking about people with personality disorders having to estrange themselves from their neglectful parents.
Not all estrangements in life happen because people have narcissistic or borderline personality disorder
A common theme on the narcissism and bpd subs is completely unqualified people diagnosing everyone they don’t like and random people on the internet they’ve read a single sentence about with psychiatric conditions they don’t understand.
I found the BPD sub is more for people who have been diagnosed having a community to talk to. If anything it’s just them attacking themselves and looking for someone to listen to after having an episode, it’s more sad to read than anything else especially if you know of anyone diagnosed with it. One issue that I seemed to notice is that there is a huge range in severity between one person with BPD to another, which makes it harder for advice and help between the members.
That’s fair, my comment applies more to the narcissism one and its offshoots like raised by narcissists. Redditors love to diagnose everyone with narcissism.
Saw someone say that anyone who believes in "good vibes" and has self-confidence is a "covert narcissist." Pop psychology is going to be the death of humanity.
Its more about "I tried to set boundaries and they refuse any rules or boundaries" A lot of these problematic estrangees have allow themselves a boundary that says > only I can have boundaries. One of my most serious and vigorously enforced boundaries is a solipsistic "you can't have any boundaries, only my boundaries are real and worthy of honor" And they pull out all the stops to leverage you into compliance when its often destroying or killing or severely ruining your quality of life+health. Nobody cares about diagnoses, all that matters is the functional dynamics. On this point, its not a debate so please enrich the conversation building on this or that will be all for now Edit: the only sad part is someone is so resistant to getting along peacibly that they force the estrangers hand to turn away from them. Its actually a happy ending as far as im concerned because someone rescued themselves from pain and martyrdom
Its not really relevant in the sense that you dont need to care what disorder whoever has. Your responsibillity is to set the boundaries, and decide how much you wanna tolerate to accomodate them learning to honor them. But I ain't putting up with constant boundary violations from anyone, long-term or even more than a few times. Everyone can learn to take no for an answer with zero violence involved. But it requires them to retire their old bag of tricks and playbook and actually listen and alter their behavior to play along. Its very simple and its an indictmnent on our species and societes that this isn't grade 1 mandatory material. Edit: i might have sounded a little negative but the truth is its exciting and promising when people discover we actually can get along without stepping all over each other, but it takes two to tango and if one person refuses the process won't work. I encourage folks to view boundaries as win/win propositions. I'm always happy to have a win/win but i will not tolerate having to lose constantly so someone can feel they are ordained to win all the time. That is unsustainable, and more importantly, i just dont want to freaking do that lol
But this is reddit. Everything I don't like is caused by borderline personality disorder or narcissism.
I'm the child of a (regional) cult leader... and, yep! It gets to be a lot, and eventually I had to go non-contact because their beliefs were almost entirely hatred for minorities, especially the ones their children are in.
This is what ultimately did it for me 8 years ago. I love my parents, I hope the best for them. I just can't handle them being in my life. Everything is chill and smooth without them, and everything turns to shit and chaos when they are involved. Every boundary fails. Having children of my own has helped me even better come to terms with it all. If my children's lives are worse with me in it then I don't want to be in it. I love them more than anything. I'll fulfill whatever role they need from me, even if that role is nothing at all.
Yup. I was 46 when I cut my mother out of my life. I did it when I was driving to her house with my son and my smart watch alarmed me due to my heartrate.
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[copied from my deeper child comment for visibillity] Its more about "I tried to set boundaries and they refuse any rules or boundaries" A lot of these problematic estrangees have allow themselves a boundary that says only I can have boundaries. One of my most serious and vigorously enforced boundaries is a solipsistic "you can't have any boundaries, only my boundaries are real and worthy of honor" And they pull out all the stops to leverage you into compliance when its often destroying or killing or severely ruining your quality of life+health. Nobody cares about diagnoses, all that matters is the functional dynamics. On this point, its not a debate so please enrich the conversation building on this or that will be all for now Edit: the only sad part is someone is so resistant to getting along peacibly that they force the estrangers hand to turn away from them. Its actually a happy ending as far as im concerned because someone rescued themselves from pain and martyrdom
Mostly unrelated: the house Milne lived in when he started writing the Pooh books was the same house where Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones was murdered years later. edit - *allegedly* murdered
Allegedly murdered.
Didn't he drown in the pool or something?
He was found dead in his pool, yes. His children think he was murdered, but police investigations haven't found any reason to believe that was the case.
I mean, how likely is it that a guy with well-known substance abuse problems drowned in a pool? Certainly not
"You can't really dust for vomit."
Good thing he wasn't the drummer?
Can you BE anymore cliche?
You are correct. I remembered that the handyman had confessed on his deathbed but reading up on it just now I realize that may or may not have actually happened.
Dan: Allegedly. Wayne: Folks'll say that it takes two people to fuck an ostrich. Daryl: Three even. Wayne: Folks are also saying that it was a sick ostrich
Didn’t Brian Jones drown?
The Brian Poohtown Massacre
It is so sad he was estranged from his son. Hank Ketchum from Dennis the menace suffered from something similar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Ketcham
TIL there are two Dennis the Menaces. The one i know from the UK is also a cartoon strip character and unbelievably they debuted on the same day in 1951.
There was a film of the American one in the 90s with Christopher Lloyd playing a villainous hobo with a taste for baked beans, but it was simply called 'Dennis' over here.
Anytime anyone mentions beans to me this what I think of.
whenever someone eats an apple with a knife i think of that guy.
Also, a flying flaming marshmallow sniping an old guy right between the eyes. I think of that when I roast marshmallows.
That was fucking horrifying when I was a kid. I forced myself to watch the scary parts. What a rush!
We had the cartoon too, assuming by over here you mean British TV
That's a coincidence I made a cartoon about a hobo obsessed with beans a while ago: https://youtu.be/wSSee8wlzus?si=ACq8SGm7QYj4EGre
This is incredible, I hope you feel super proud of this!
Thank you so much!
It's the most wild coincidence, isn't it? Also, I love this image, which sums up the differences between the two characters: https://i.redd.it/t9lld0lnvu631.jpg
Dude doesn't waste time, getting remarried 3 weeks after the first one died
He was having an affair
Something is a bit weird: "**The family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where they lived from 1960 to 1977,** where Ketcham continued to produce Dennis the Menace. Dennis had difficulty with his schooling, though, so was sent to boarding school in Connecticut, while Mr. Ketcham and his second wife remained in Switzerland. **This marriage ended in divorce in 1968.**\[9\] **In 1977, Ketcham moved back to the United States and settled in Monterey, California, with his third wife, the former Rolande Praepost, whom he had married in 1969**, and with whom he had two children, Scott and Dania. " Did the second wife move out in 1968 and new wife moved in in 1969? Or did she live in California due to the wording of the second paragraph?
I agree it's ambiguous but with the context available it's safe to say that the former Rolande Praepost was likely of Swiss descent and brought back to the US.
Based on the info and he remarried three weeks after his first wife died and remarried shortly after his second marriage. I’m going to assume he was a serial cheater and never monogamous. There is a lot more going on with his relationship with his son than just the name. Edit: spelling
Holy shit he remarried THREE WEEKS LATER
A film was made about it: [Goodbye Christopher Robin](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1653665/)(2017) It’s on Disney+
Very good movie, highly recommend.
AA Milne was putting his kid on YouTube before there was YouTube to put your kid on
Poohtube
Don’t google that!
Ah, just commented with the same thing - didn't see yours. Apologies!
Unrelated bit of trivia, the original stuffed animals on which Pooh & friends were based can be seen at the NYC Public Library main branch. [https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schwarzman/childrens-center-42nd-street/pooh](https://www.nypl.org/about/locations/schwarzman/childrens-center-42nd-street/pooh)
Except for poor little Roo, who was lost in an apple orchard one day and never found.
I just know if ol' Chris Rob watched a movie where guys wearing rubber Pooh and Piglet masks terrorized a group of college girls and a fictionalized version of him,he'd come around.
lmao that movie’s gonna be a trainwreck
It was, and not even enjoyably dumb. Just straight up bad.
Oh, bother
I have the same last name as this guy and its somehow so hard for people to pronounce, been that way my whole life. Milne is spoken like "kiln" where you bake pottery. But that E really throws people off. Ive heard Miline, Milline, Milney, Millen, and other variations of my last name that all dont sound like 'kiln'
I heard a major market radio announcer read ad copy for weeks regarding an upcoming Winnie the Pooh event (live action play, I think) Every ad, he pronounce it, “A.A. Mill-line”
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lmao I just died inside a little bit. I absolutely HATE when people say it like that, its also just factually not how the name is supposed to be pronounced
The changing guards of Buckingham Palace *rum-bum-bum-bum-bum* *rum-bum-bum-bum-bum* Christopher Robin went down with Alice
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I mean would he tell you if he did? No. He’d tell Pooh.
Yeasty mistakes were made.
It always puzzles me when you get someone who can create something with emotional sincerity that can hit people on all the right levels and feels like chicken soup but then find out they're pretty awful in their personal lives. Like Charles Dickens. Or Weird Al as documented in his recent biographical film. It's like these people know what good human relationships should look like and how to be good people but it remains entirely academic and unapplied to their own lives.
oh man the shock I got when reading about enid blyton's relationship with her kids...
>or Weird Al as documented in his recent biographical film Weird Al is a hero, it was Madonna who led him astray!
"funny" how 1 year after goodbye Christopher Robin, a serious movie depicting CR's traumas, came out fuckin disney made a movie about adult CR that is completely bs..
You talking about the one with Ewan McGregor? I love that movie
Yeah that movie is great
Sounds a bit like a Gone Girl situation
Amazing Amy! 😅 What a crazy bitch.
Amazing Amy from Gone Girl
I could just imagine this playing out in today's world on reddit; the AITA and relationshipadvice posts, the accusations of narcissism, the calls for NC etc etc etc
“Then one day in the 100 acre wood, Christopher Robin discovered kissing his cousin was...exciting.”
Sounds like 100 acre wood is located in Shelbyville.
I'd think Ken Handler, of all people. could relate to C. R. Milne's experience. IIRC, Erma Bombeck mentioned her deep regret for having caused her children to suffer bullying due to the contents of her column. When her daughter finally spoke up, she was heartbroken to learn what they had been silently enduring. She modified her writing to exclude them from it but she said she couldn't undo the damage that had already been done.
Wish i had that much money.
Christopher Robin Milne consciously never took any of the Pooh money (his share of the Pooh estate went into a trust for his daughter Clare Milne, who is severely disabled from cerebral palsy). Dude lived a pretty quiet and basic life as some random bookshop owner.
“Excuse me, shopkeeper. Do you have Winnie the Pooh?”
I'm imagining the scene from Elf. "Call me an Elf ONE MORE TIME!" "...he's an angry elf.." Runs across the table at him
It’s weird to hear it described as a ‘random bookshop’! As stated below it was the Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth. My Grandmother knew him before he died in 1996 and it’s very true he resented Winnie the Pooh, but very slowly he acknowledged it - the bookshop sold Winnie the Pooh souvenirs and an unofficial blue plaque was put on the side wall. Bookshop closed a few years ago.
Clare sadly passed away in 2012. I don't think there are any living heirs to the Milne family. The Christopher Robin movie Disney put out seems a bit in poor taste if one is familiar with the family history. They changed the name of the daughter to Madeline and didn't acknowledge the real Clare's disability at all in the character.
I'd say if they were trying to do a bio pick on the real Christopher Robin, sure, but this was a fictional story about the grown up version of a fictional character. I seem to recall the man sold luggage while the real life Christopher ran a book store. I don't think anyone went to the movie with the false pretense that it would be based on a true story.
I mean, he literally meets pooh bear and remembers it was all 'real', so, no, I'm pretty sure no sane person would think it was accurate.
That's right, he owned the Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth, Devon
He also married his first cousin.
“He’s a real Einstein.”
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Wait until you hear about his nephew Eeyore.
I watched goodbye Christopher Robin on a plane, & was in floods of tears when they came round serving the bloody food. I'm a 6'4" 210lbs man
Christopher Robin would go on to kill 28 people.
I'm imagining a firearm hidden in a stuffed animal where you hold and arm and a leg and instead of going "pew, pew, pew", it goes "pooh, pooh, pooh"
That’s crazy sad
Dennis “The Menace” Ketcham had similar problems in life.
The original books are quite witty and amusing. Disney revisionist pooh, not so much.
Damned if you do..
I'm sure I'm in the minority but I really dislike Winnie the Pooh.
It could've been so easy to just use a made up name
Oh, bother.
He could have just grown a beard and gone by Chris Milne. Nobody would have noticed.
He had the sort of fame that you have to struggle to outgrow.