How did your parents' mistakes, in raising you, affect your later life?
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My parents were the precise type of people, who they had always warned me, to stay away from, in life.
Answers to this question:I don't know whose mistake but I believed it's the generation gap. They seemed to be too busy and we, too free.
Many children oddly flourish in such parental vacuums; it's almost as if much closer parental supervision/ management would have surely spelled disaster, given parents' obtuse and uneducated approaches to child rearing.
Oh my goodness. I've dwelled on this for years and really should chuck the topic in the garbage heap. But I never can seem to. I apologize constantly to my departed parents for saying such bad things about them ... some very true, some exaggerations. The truth is that they were doing the best they knew how. But they used the same techniques on my sister and me that were used on them. They didn't really look past how they were raised into what might be a better approach.
Everything my parents did has affected my life today. The extent of that effect is difficult for me to parse out. I'm too involved in the whole thing. I've had some counseling in the past but I never saw any value in psychoanalysis and so never went that route.
What might have had the largest effect upon me is that my parents used fear as a means of control. What comes most immediately to mind is that they would always tell me to stay close to them when we were out shopping because when it was time to go home, if I wasn't with them, they would leave without me. They said this to a three year old child. Later, when I was a bit older and we also had my sister (three years younger than me) along, they made me responsible for her as well. I have a lot of fear and security issues as a result. I've worked hard on them over the years, but they are pretty stubborn.
"Dwelling" on this topic, can release such useful self insights, that one can finally 'exit' such a 'dwelling', by the back door of forgiveness.
(I, like you, am convinced that our dead loved ones hear what we say and think about them, and that our own 'apologies' and 'forgiveness' offered, after rapier judgements about them, are wholesalely appreciated, by them.)
One must learn to unlearn fear.
Prayer, is fear, gone brave.
I wouldn't say my parents made any mistakes in raising me. I saw them work hard, treat others with respect, and always do the right thing. I grew up doing the same. While I want my children to have a good work ethic, and treat others with respect, when it comes to doing the ‘right’ thing, I hope they do what’s ‘right’ for them, and not what they think is expected of them. Looking back there are times I wish I hadn’t done the right thing, or what I thought was expected of me, I wish I had maybe left some things to chance. Because my parents were such good people, such wonderful parents, I never wanted to do anything that could have disappointed them.
A powerful parental gravity, a centrifugal goodness that guides rather than crushes; perhaps your prison bars, are simply gilded expectations.
What WOULD you have done differently, than what was 'expected of you'?
I can think of a couple of times I would have thrown caution to the wind, and see where it took me. I hope my children do that now and then in their lifetime. The past is past, I wouldn't change where I"ve ended up or with whom.
One has to wear a protective breathing mask, when traveling to Canada, from these United States, from native pollution of 'caution thrown into the wind". -haven't told me a bloody thing you'd have done, differently...
Maybe I'll write about it one day. . .
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Two things I remember I didn't like about my parents: The way they used to scold us and the top high requirements regarding school performance. Today, I've changed violent spankings for 2 minutes meditation time in an asigned place, then talking with my children. And for the other issue regarding school performance, I expect my children to be good at school, but I hope they enjoy it as well, so I sit and make homeworks with them and motivate their intelligence.
My parent's biggest mistake was to make a loving secure home for me and my sibs, insulating me from the real world. Geez, it's tough to be loved and cuddled by loving parents, later to be thrown to the corporate wolves for work and a crappy dating world set up for personal abuse. I really think if they had been negligent, alcoholic, over-the-top on something, anything, I could have been jaded enough to deal with real life. Now I am constantly disappointed by people who cannot keep their word, an appointment, have any self discipline or self respect. Damn, it's tough being kind, considerate, mannerly and dependable. There must be some kind of comfort in being shallow, so many carry it so easily. Maybe if I drink . . .
One sometimes becomes a bleeding heart, one most sensitive to others, only after being stabbed in the back, themselves, many times.
It also appears to me as well that although the world can certainly be a singularly most horrid and evil place, one must do everything in one's power, everyday, to try to change that.
A most revealing and splendid open confession.
Affection,
Paul
Total Answers: 6, Total Page Views: 466.I learned by their mistakes and did not let history repeat itself. I made better choices for my children. I did the things my parental units did not do.
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