Also, for the sake of maximising engagement - what mistakes did adults in-general make when interacting with you as a kid, that you avoid replicating today?
Honestly my mom is so weird:
Like, when I was a kid, she’ll cuddle with me, encourage me to sleep in their bed, and like show affection, and she had moments when she was so wholesome and lovely. She frequently tells me how much she loves me, how smart she supposely thought of me.
But also, often times like… she can easily flip and like yell at me for small mistakes and scold me and belittle me… and I’d cry…
My brain is so fucking confused… lol… what the fuck was that?
Why was I shown love, then she flips on a different mask and becomes a different person like an hour later?
Bipolar?
Idk I have a truma bond to her, so confusing.
As for dad… idk he is just like chilling and doesn’t really show either affection much but neither yells much either… like apathetic…
But anyways, if I ever have children, I’ll do the affection thing, but I’ll make sure I control my emotions and never show anger directed towards my children. I will never make my children feel scared like the way I felt when mom always did to me. Never again.
Reproducing in the first place. I’m not making that mistake.
Deciding to keep me at 15 & 19.
I love my life, am absolutely happy to be alive, don’t get it twisted. But 2 teenagers not having an abortion is the original sin of their poor parenting choices
Having children.
I think when people think in terms of “my dad did this, I won’t do that”, they often miss what the real issue was. They end up being bad parents, just in a different way.
My wife and I raised three kids, and I fucked them up in my own special way. Not anything like how my parents did me.
If I were to look back over my life and offer advice, the advice I’d offer is: get some therapy. Have a disinterested, professional person to talk to every, single, damn week for the rest of your life. Being a parent will fuck you up.
And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t regret having kids.
When I was first thinking about having kids, I was thinking I didn’t have the right personality. I spoke to my brother who had one child at the time, and he explained that when you have a kid you’re so filled with love for them that nothing they do bothers you.
I had a kid. From birth to about 18 months, he screamed. He screamed for everything. He would scream for hours about anything that bothered him. My mom worked as a nurse in a hospital nursery. She cared for her kids, friends kids, family’s kids. She said that in her entire life she never heard a baby scream so loud. My MIL was also a nurse and worked in maternity. Same deal. She was amazed at how loud he was.
I called my brother up to yell at him. He said I was right and he got it wrong. His first kid was easy. His second kid would get him so tight he’d have to leave the house to get away from her.
Back to my kid: Everyone asks, “oh, was it colic?” No. Not colic. The instant he started talking, he stopped screaming. The screaming was just what he did to communicate before he could talk.
I mention the story about the screaming because that was the easy part of parenting.
The instant he started talking, he stopped screaming. The screaming was just what he did to communicate before he could talk.
Oh man, I wonder if there’s any way to fix that for them. Must be a problem other people have faced.
Some have had success with baby sign language. We tried but it didn’t take.
Please adopt. None of us are individually all that special, you don’t need to see your bloodline continue. The interests of DNA are not our interests. If having your own DNA reproduced is more important to you than raising a child who needs a parent, you probably shouldn’t be a parent at all.
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I wouldn’t hit my kids. At least not until they can reasonably fight back and only if we are in a ring because they agreed to fight.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt that of course you would split the profits from the ticket sales; you just left it implied.
Lots of spanking involving hard shoes. Bonus that my sister and I had to pick the instrument of our prolonged beatings… and if we picked something ‘too soft’ our dad would get a much worse item. Never found out what it would be, but the extra level of terrorism was a nice touch.
Cold, distant mother who was not a victim of abuse as we were. She didn’t care what he did. Your classic malignant narcissist who was expert at praising herself in just about any conversation. ‘Oh you did well in that programming course you just took? My teacher told me I was the best he ever saw’. Both in reference to Visual Basic for an extra level of rank stupidity.
Both of them seemed to view their friends as commodities to be exchanged as soon as they lost their value or someone better came along. I can’t remember how often I got to hear about some ‘friends’ who they didn’t associate with who “didn’t know what they were talking about” in reference to some interest of one or both. Horse riding, wine tasting, etc.
I had alcohol poisoning at 12 due to both their view we should be able to drink at dinner (absolutely fine in a vacuum) but having the kind of friends they did at the party this happened at.
My mom tried to get me to at least puff on a cigarette when I was 5… I already thought her smoking was gross so I didn’t.
And my favorite was at 7 when I suffered a severe TBI that resulted in swelling on my brain and diagnosis that I needed surgery at alleviate it. My mother, a mildly famous biochemist who was conveniently anti science in most of her views, realized I need some veggie smoothies and psychic healing instead. Phew, good thing it doesn’t cause problems to this day almost a half century later.
Maybe that’s why I just shrugged when she died a couple weeks ago.
I’ve tried exceptionally hard to not be them, both in adult relationships and those with my stepdaughter and her kids. I’m not terribly close with the former by her choice (none of the family is as since she joined a VERY fundamentalist church and went all in on madness) but both of our grandkids are a nearly daily part of my life.
if they’re introverted, don’t treat that as a “defect” that needs to be fixed
“No buts! Because I said so”
I explain things to my kids so they know WHY we are doing them. If they have an idea as to why we should be doing it differently, like give me 10 more minutes first, or I like it this way, then I listen, consider a compromise, if at all possible.
For example, if it’s time for bed, but they’re in the middle of a fortnite match, then I let them finish it. If it’s time for school, and they just started a match, sorry, turn it off, you knew we had to leave soon.
There’s a time and a place for that, but sometimes you just want them to not run across the road right now.
That’s why you grab them and explain so they don’t do that anymore.
beating them with a belt.
throwing ALL their stuff out into the street because the kid was late one time
these seemed like mistakes to me so I didn’t do them with my kid
I think you’re making the right call.
Hmm… All of them?
I don’t have kids.
Ha, ha, yes, I’m very funny :P
To answer your secondary question, well, I’m not sure. I can think of infuriating things adults did when I was a kid, but it isn’t something I think a lot about day-to-day.
Things like hearing a dismissive “No one ever said life was fair”, maybe.
Not teaching me a lot of basic shit, like how to shave, how credit/debit works, exploring food like sushi, teaching me about other countries.
I was taught a lot, especially common sense. I can troubleshoot and diagnose like a madman, even things I know very little about. But my dad wasn’t a talker, so didn’t get much there.
I talk to my kid about everything, we lookup what we don’t know or want to know more about. I go over mistakes I made in life giving him examples of how to not make the same mistakes and save himself the time and trouble.
We call everything “experience”, even bad things, and we learn from them, not unlike skill points and experience points in video games. You can learn from anything, not just good things.
Not teaching me a lot of basic shit, like how to shave, how credit/debit works, exploring food like sushi, teaching me about other countries.
omg… this is so me. I try to justify it by telling myself they might be on the spectrum
Sounds like you’re doing a great job though
Yeah nah, not having kids. I do like kids, but I recognise my ability to withstand stress and sleep deprivation is pretty limited. My own parents did a number on me besides, and I’m not introducing a living thing into this world to perpetuate that trauma
