The child needs to be trained first and foremost by their parents, who have hopefully survived well enough to make good enough decisions. If they don't, miserableness ensues. Eventually, some kids down the ancestral line will react by making better decisions. Yes, they'll be damaged. But they'll also get on a better path.
For the lucky o…
The child needs to be trained first and foremost by their parents, who have hopefully survived well enough to make good enough decisions. If they don't, miserableness ensues. Eventually, some kids down the ancestral line will react by making better decisions. Yes, they'll be damaged. But they'll also get on a better path.
For the lucky ones, the parents will make enough bad decisions that will not break their kids, but will nevertheless teach their kids to not trust other people, and then their kids will have a chance at truly changing things - because they question everything.
School is not the answer. University is not the answer. Government is not the answer. The answer has always been within ourselves. And the sooner everyone starts listening to their intuition, the better.
'Tis a shame, of course, for the littlies that are not yet old enough to either think or act for themselves - they are entirely at the whim of their parents. But, that is just how it is. Offspring are meant to be with their parents. That is how Nature works - for better or for worse. Bad parental decisions = unhealthy kids. Eventually those genetic lines will die out. Just give it time (although, yes, it is awful to watch that scenario unfold!!!).
I learned a very very important thing: even bad decisions parents make, are good to their children if those parents made the dicision with love for their children and because they sincerly thought they choose the best option for their kids.
So...very very important because this is what goes wrong and does indeed damage the kids: if the parents choose (partly?) what was best for themselves! And by far the most damage will be caused to their child if they also lie to child by stating their decision was made by them in the childs interest!!
And my guess is that you haven't thought about this facts, because you automatically choose for the best interests of your kids....then there is probably a while nobody on your list...than your partner/husband/wife/all mentioned before ;-)) and than maybe you have yourself listed next....
This is in fact the sad truth that the parents who don't think very much about the interests of others and unfortunately mostly even less of the interests of (their own) children, are the same peope who are not interested in parenting for the sake of their children and will not ever learn that thing of which I guessed you know very well: thinking about good parenting is thinking in the interests of your children and to do so, you need to think from the childs point of view and not your own. Of course to serve this childs point of view/skills/talents/interests you can and have to use your life experience, always combined with you love for your child.
And in your case...you know... automatically etc etc etc
Oh, I DO think a great deal about the best interests of our children, because I grew up in a single parent household where my mother made almost all decisions that suited HER. She changed our names and said we wanted them changed. We were 6 and 8. She made us be vegetarian and didn't think about the consequences of that. I got very little protein growing up. Ate way too much ice-cream and dairy products (and I'm allergic to dairy but no-one ever checked me for that as a kid!) as well as eggs to compensate, plus when I starting working at 14, I bought tuna and ham with my own money - and ate it outside because we weren't allowed meat inside the house! I also have asthma but was never checked for that. Fell on my backside and broke my coccyx but was never taken for an X-ray. Just sat on a cushion for a week. My first memory is of a broken collarbone and my mother saying "I know it hurts, darling" - and taking my skivvy off OVER my head instead of cutting the damned thing off! Money was a bit tight, shall we say? Our health came in a lowly 5th or 6th place I suppose. Got left alone a lot as kids/teenagers. My mum was out at work literally half the evenings each week. She never explained anything. She rarely stepped in when we were suffering. I'm not sure she knew how to? Occasionally I got a pat on the head. Was told I was loved about 3 times my whole childhood that I remember. I could give you hundreds of other examples, including being hit with a stick and called every name under the sun. So I know AAALLL about bad parenting. I experienced it far too much. However, we had a roof over our heads and I got a good schooling and I ended up with nice friends (who had nice families!) and so I got to experience surrogate families and what 'normal' family life is like - although I rather knew what I had was NOT normal! I just didn't know how to change it at the time. Nevertheless, lots of time, hard work and perseverance has shown me that you CAN change things a lot in just one generation.
My Mum is not a bad person. She's a product of her own parents, and never received enough love herself. Plus she's Asperger's. She was also the recipient of domestic violence which ended the marriage and left her a single parent at a time when most parents were 'happily married'. Yes, she made lots of bad calls - but she also made some very good calls in there. And we survived (although much of that was by luck, I think!). I understand it all now but it wasn't much fun going through it all, let me tell you! And I would NEVER put anyone through what I went through as a kid. If all kids went through what I went through I think most would've committed suicide by now, I honestly, do.
And no, my Mum still doesn't make great decisions and yes, she still makes them for herself. She's not changed. Both my parents are pretty selfish. Always have been. I understand this now. I guess I keep her at arm's length now. It's safer that way. But she still sees my kids and we talk a few times a week on the phone. She's still my mother, I suppose: not that I need mothering anymore because I'm well and truly grown up, and she wasn't much of a mother anyway, but there you have it.
My father, well, he's even less in my life these days! He has made some very bad calls yet could never understand why I was so screwed up by my childhood! Ha!!
Anyway, I won't say I'm a perfect parent, but I'm pretty good, and my kids are happy with me (I check in with them now and then to see and they are all still very happy with me!). We have also recently made a major geographical move to help them along, and they are glad for these changes. We are, too!
I think I've just done most things opposite to what happened to me growing up and we're in a pretty good place, ha ha!!
Sorry for the long post, Mig, but I just wanted you to know that I DO know how the other half lives - because that's what happened to me & my sister growing up. Our father had a shitty upbringing (violence, alcoholism, no money etc) and my Mum grew up in money, but had no love or even nice clothes. So I guess my sister & I were both starting out behind the 8-ball - but we've overcome a lot of obstacles to be better mothers than the last few generations our family have seen! We've made different decisions in there (she's pro-covid, I'm anti-covid etc) but we're both much more loving parents than those before us were. I guess it's complicated.
And it's not that my parents don't love me. They do! In their own ways. They just weren't much good at raising kids and should never had had them TBH.
Thank you for your story! I am blessed with the same background, and I knew this from the moment I red your comments, and enjoyed your immense positive power.
You needed it. To survive. And I think you are doing great, but that you are ready to put the crown on your work for yourself, and to do this is the best gift to yourself and even better for your children.
Let me try to explain to you what I mean.
You are the example to your children. The way you live is their way in future.
Doing things the opposite of what you know is bad, is better of course than doing them bad again. But opposites are in most cases the other side of the 'unbalanced' medal. There are like uncountable ways in between.
And just one is YOUR way. There is no such thing as parents that love you, or holy ways to do things. And if they do exist, the holy way IS your way.
The last step is to trust your own intuitions, thoughts, knowlegde and, most important: feelings. To wonder what it is you feel, and act accordingly.
Example: It is you that decide if your parents add something to your life that is valuable or not, and after that you can decide if they are worthwhile to meet your children, and if they are, how you can manage that they do not damage you or your children anymore.
You have not learned to be protected by your parents. But you must protect your children. And, very important, you cannot and must not protect your parents. That is their call. They are responsable for their own lives, and not you. You are not in the position to live their lives, but you must live your own for yourself and your kids.
Everybody that is not capable of loving you and worse if it wants yours, and even far far worse it gets when your children are being treated wrongly.
If something is not good, bad or a treat to you and or your children, is up to you.
If your parents love you, you can feel it. If you don't feel love for your parents in your heart, which is most likely in your situation, and you keep on tolerating damagable persons like your parents in your family, so will your children in theirs.
It is possible to think of what you want and do not want your parents do in your family. You can ask them and when they don't, they can have all reasons in the world, but that doesn't mean anything more than that to you. So you, nor your family, is going to pay the price for their problems anymore.
And what that is and how to do it? Try to think that you could choose anything in the world, and put yourself and your family first...
Believe me, this is harder to do than you think
But...believe me please on this one too: the rewards of developing yourself are unbelievably big, to you and to your children as well, really, automatically, you can almost litteraly see it happen on them the moment you choose your own choices..just because...they are yours!
Yes, we made a decision to move 1000km north...and my mother recently moved 700km south of where we were (to be near my sister who moved there a year earlier)...so now we're 1700km apart in Australia - instead of 300km apart like we used to be! My Dad lives in southern California. We're just a tad spread apart in our family ha ha. I've got cousins all over the globe and aunts/uncles here and there, too.
We don't make our family decisions based on what's best for our parents. We do what's best for us and our kids. And our move has been a good one. Not perfect, but much better than where we were!
Ultimately, my hubby & I are just waiting for our parents to die. They're all in their 70s. They have some health issues. It's just how it is.
It's not easy growing up in the households we grew up in, Mig, this is true!!! But my hubby & I also know that WE need to grow, and we no longer live in our parents' shadows. We are our own people, and we have done a lot of work to get where we currently are, and we know there's still a lot more work to continue on down the paths we have chosen.
I love my intuition and I trust it greatly. And we have plans and ideas for our future, as well as providing opportunities for our kids, and we are slowly working towards our goals. It feels good :-)
The child needs to be trained first and foremost by their parents, who have hopefully survived well enough to make good enough decisions. If they don't, miserableness ensues. Eventually, some kids down the ancestral line will react by making better decisions. Yes, they'll be damaged. But they'll also get on a better path.
For the lucky ones, the parents will make enough bad decisions that will not break their kids, but will nevertheless teach their kids to not trust other people, and then their kids will have a chance at truly changing things - because they question everything.
School is not the answer. University is not the answer. Government is not the answer. The answer has always been within ourselves. And the sooner everyone starts listening to their intuition, the better.
'Tis a shame, of course, for the littlies that are not yet old enough to either think or act for themselves - they are entirely at the whim of their parents. But, that is just how it is. Offspring are meant to be with their parents. That is how Nature works - for better or for worse. Bad parental decisions = unhealthy kids. Eventually those genetic lines will die out. Just give it time (although, yes, it is awful to watch that scenario unfold!!!).
I learned a very very important thing: even bad decisions parents make, are good to their children if those parents made the dicision with love for their children and because they sincerly thought they choose the best option for their kids.
So...very very important because this is what goes wrong and does indeed damage the kids: if the parents choose (partly?) what was best for themselves! And by far the most damage will be caused to their child if they also lie to child by stating their decision was made by them in the childs interest!!
And my guess is that you haven't thought about this facts, because you automatically choose for the best interests of your kids....then there is probably a while nobody on your list...than your partner/husband/wife/all mentioned before ;-)) and than maybe you have yourself listed next....
This is in fact the sad truth that the parents who don't think very much about the interests of others and unfortunately mostly even less of the interests of (their own) children, are the same peope who are not interested in parenting for the sake of their children and will not ever learn that thing of which I guessed you know very well: thinking about good parenting is thinking in the interests of your children and to do so, you need to think from the childs point of view and not your own. Of course to serve this childs point of view/skills/talents/interests you can and have to use your life experience, always combined with you love for your child.
And in your case...you know... automatically etc etc etc
Oh, I DO think a great deal about the best interests of our children, because I grew up in a single parent household where my mother made almost all decisions that suited HER. She changed our names and said we wanted them changed. We were 6 and 8. She made us be vegetarian and didn't think about the consequences of that. I got very little protein growing up. Ate way too much ice-cream and dairy products (and I'm allergic to dairy but no-one ever checked me for that as a kid!) as well as eggs to compensate, plus when I starting working at 14, I bought tuna and ham with my own money - and ate it outside because we weren't allowed meat inside the house! I also have asthma but was never checked for that. Fell on my backside and broke my coccyx but was never taken for an X-ray. Just sat on a cushion for a week. My first memory is of a broken collarbone and my mother saying "I know it hurts, darling" - and taking my skivvy off OVER my head instead of cutting the damned thing off! Money was a bit tight, shall we say? Our health came in a lowly 5th or 6th place I suppose. Got left alone a lot as kids/teenagers. My mum was out at work literally half the evenings each week. She never explained anything. She rarely stepped in when we were suffering. I'm not sure she knew how to? Occasionally I got a pat on the head. Was told I was loved about 3 times my whole childhood that I remember. I could give you hundreds of other examples, including being hit with a stick and called every name under the sun. So I know AAALLL about bad parenting. I experienced it far too much. However, we had a roof over our heads and I got a good schooling and I ended up with nice friends (who had nice families!) and so I got to experience surrogate families and what 'normal' family life is like - although I rather knew what I had was NOT normal! I just didn't know how to change it at the time. Nevertheless, lots of time, hard work and perseverance has shown me that you CAN change things a lot in just one generation.
My Mum is not a bad person. She's a product of her own parents, and never received enough love herself. Plus she's Asperger's. She was also the recipient of domestic violence which ended the marriage and left her a single parent at a time when most parents were 'happily married'. Yes, she made lots of bad calls - but she also made some very good calls in there. And we survived (although much of that was by luck, I think!). I understand it all now but it wasn't much fun going through it all, let me tell you! And I would NEVER put anyone through what I went through as a kid. If all kids went through what I went through I think most would've committed suicide by now, I honestly, do.
And no, my Mum still doesn't make great decisions and yes, she still makes them for herself. She's not changed. Both my parents are pretty selfish. Always have been. I understand this now. I guess I keep her at arm's length now. It's safer that way. But she still sees my kids and we talk a few times a week on the phone. She's still my mother, I suppose: not that I need mothering anymore because I'm well and truly grown up, and she wasn't much of a mother anyway, but there you have it.
My father, well, he's even less in my life these days! He has made some very bad calls yet could never understand why I was so screwed up by my childhood! Ha!!
Anyway, I won't say I'm a perfect parent, but I'm pretty good, and my kids are happy with me (I check in with them now and then to see and they are all still very happy with me!). We have also recently made a major geographical move to help them along, and they are glad for these changes. We are, too!
I think I've just done most things opposite to what happened to me growing up and we're in a pretty good place, ha ha!!
Sorry for the long post, Mig, but I just wanted you to know that I DO know how the other half lives - because that's what happened to me & my sister growing up. Our father had a shitty upbringing (violence, alcoholism, no money etc) and my Mum grew up in money, but had no love or even nice clothes. So I guess my sister & I were both starting out behind the 8-ball - but we've overcome a lot of obstacles to be better mothers than the last few generations our family have seen! We've made different decisions in there (she's pro-covid, I'm anti-covid etc) but we're both much more loving parents than those before us were. I guess it's complicated.
And it's not that my parents don't love me. They do! In their own ways. They just weren't much good at raising kids and should never had had them TBH.
Thank you for your story! I am blessed with the same background, and I knew this from the moment I red your comments, and enjoyed your immense positive power.
You needed it. To survive. And I think you are doing great, but that you are ready to put the crown on your work for yourself, and to do this is the best gift to yourself and even better for your children.
Let me try to explain to you what I mean.
You are the example to your children. The way you live is their way in future.
Doing things the opposite of what you know is bad, is better of course than doing them bad again. But opposites are in most cases the other side of the 'unbalanced' medal. There are like uncountable ways in between.
And just one is YOUR way. There is no such thing as parents that love you, or holy ways to do things. And if they do exist, the holy way IS your way.
The last step is to trust your own intuitions, thoughts, knowlegde and, most important: feelings. To wonder what it is you feel, and act accordingly.
Example: It is you that decide if your parents add something to your life that is valuable or not, and after that you can decide if they are worthwhile to meet your children, and if they are, how you can manage that they do not damage you or your children anymore.
You have not learned to be protected by your parents. But you must protect your children. And, very important, you cannot and must not protect your parents. That is their call. They are responsable for their own lives, and not you. You are not in the position to live their lives, but you must live your own for yourself and your kids.
Everybody that is not capable of loving you and worse if it wants yours, and even far far worse it gets when your children are being treated wrongly.
If something is not good, bad or a treat to you and or your children, is up to you.
If your parents love you, you can feel it. If you don't feel love for your parents in your heart, which is most likely in your situation, and you keep on tolerating damagable persons like your parents in your family, so will your children in theirs.
It is possible to think of what you want and do not want your parents do in your family. You can ask them and when they don't, they can have all reasons in the world, but that doesn't mean anything more than that to you. So you, nor your family, is going to pay the price for their problems anymore.
And what that is and how to do it? Try to think that you could choose anything in the world, and put yourself and your family first...
Believe me, this is harder to do than you think
But...believe me please on this one too: the rewards of developing yourself are unbelievably big, to you and to your children as well, really, automatically, you can almost litteraly see it happen on them the moment you choose your own choices..just because...they are yours!
With love to you, Mig
Yes, we made a decision to move 1000km north...and my mother recently moved 700km south of where we were (to be near my sister who moved there a year earlier)...so now we're 1700km apart in Australia - instead of 300km apart like we used to be! My Dad lives in southern California. We're just a tad spread apart in our family ha ha. I've got cousins all over the globe and aunts/uncles here and there, too.
We don't make our family decisions based on what's best for our parents. We do what's best for us and our kids. And our move has been a good one. Not perfect, but much better than where we were!
Ultimately, my hubby & I are just waiting for our parents to die. They're all in their 70s. They have some health issues. It's just how it is.
It's not easy growing up in the households we grew up in, Mig, this is true!!! But my hubby & I also know that WE need to grow, and we no longer live in our parents' shadows. We are our own people, and we have done a lot of work to get where we currently are, and we know there's still a lot more work to continue on down the paths we have chosen.
I love my intuition and I trust it greatly. And we have plans and ideas for our future, as well as providing opportunities for our kids, and we are slowly working towards our goals. It feels good :-)