I’m not saying a parent knows your inner feelings, but I am saying that after watching repeat behaviour patterns you notice stuff. And with younger kids they don’t really connect these dots. So yeah, to some extent we do know our kids better than they do
But this all has limits. And expiration dates.
They “know” their kids through the lense of their experience. So they’ve experienced more therefore they feel they know more.
They’re making educated guesses outcomes. That’s not knowing.
We’re all making educated guesses including about ourselves.
It doesn’t really matter if you think you know yourself, external behaviors do.
You’re not wrong
They’re making educated guesses outcomes. That’s not knowing.
Oh shit do we need a crash course in epistemology here
No but it sounds like you could use one I’m coming decency.
Honestly that was uncalled for.
It was a light hearted joke about the definition of “knowledge,” which is notoriously slippery.
“I know you better than yourself” my parents say like it didn’t take them 5 years and my therapist outing me to realize I was serious about liking guys x3
No way
How horrible was that
It was certainly an interesting conversation haha :3
(I thought uhoh, meant to come back and edit and say “wait that should probably be treated as rhetorical!“)
heh thankful that particular crap’s past!
Dear parents, if you’re always romping around your house ranting about your convictions, your politics, your religion or your opinions of other people, your kids are NEVER going to be open and honest with you.
If you have ever told your kids “You can tell me the truth” and then proceeded to lose your shit when you heard the truth, your kids are NEVER going to be open and honest with you.
If you do this and you think your kids are just the sweetest, kindest and most obedient and well-behaved kids in the world, you’re DEFINITELY going to end up in a home.
And to make it crystal clear - trust doesn’t magically reset as soon as a kid hits puberty. If you’ve been dismissing them and their concerns throughout childhood, they aren’t going to suddenly come to you with their problems, no matter how much you tell them they can.
I remember my parents ignoring my complaints as a kid. Then around the age of 12 or so, it was like a switch was flipped. I was being told frequently that I could “come to them with any problem.” Cool, just one question - where was this attitude a few years ago, when all my issues were “silly kid stuff” to you? I was basically trained throughout my life to never to bother you with my problems. You can’t just undo that by saying a few magic words over and over.
My dad was borderline abusive when I was young, but as soon as I hit puberty he stopped being like that and started saying “you can come to me about anything”
Is he a better person now? Yeah, probably. Do I trust him more now? Yeah, probably.
Will I ever go to him for help before exhausting literally every other option? Absolutely not
I’m quite convinced that linear-minded parents just project everything they hated about themselves as children onto their own children without even thinking about what the kid is going to remember or not. My earliest memory, like age 3, was my dad getting angry for no reason and pushing my face in the dirt when my mom wasn’t looking. It was my first formative memory and still as sharp in my mind as when it happened, because it confused me and made me feel betrayed and forever unsure what was going to happen in the future.
edit: And what happened in the future? A lot more sneaky abuse and psychological torture. Until I finally went no-contact at 35. He eventually died alone from alcohol overdose after having alienated everyone in his entire life or driving them to self destruction. I say again, you reap what you sow.
My mother, now that she is old, frequently asks if I remember random things: people I used to know, places I’ve been, hobbies I used to enjoy. And when I say yes, her response is, “Oh, but that was so long ago!” or, “But you were just a child then!” I think what she actually wants to know is if I remember all the horrible things she said and did to me. 🙄
My mom’s the opposite. I bring up memories to her and she doesn’t recall them. She claims not to remember any of the shit she said to me during my formative years, which leads to her now with the “missing missing reasons” whenever my siblings and I don’t talk to her.
Mine loves to reminisce, but she also claims to not remember actions that make her look bad, or she claims they never happened and I’m lying because of my “insecurity.” But I think her preemptive “oh, but you were a child!” suggests that she actually does remember these things. If she didn’t remember her actions, she wouldn’t be trying to make me doubt my own memories of them decades after I stopped arguing with her and just distanced myself.
Ugh, that’s gotta be so frustrating. At least my mom knows my memory is better than hers - she admits it during neutral and pleasant times, like when sharing old stories. But when it comes to things she said or did that hurt me, she goes from “Yeah, that sounds right,” to, “I don’t remember that.” I don’t know if it’s a subconscious block, conscious denial, legit memory lapse, or what.
I know the tree remembers what the axe forgot and that my mom has never been one to self-reflect on her actions much, so it could go either way. Which reminds me, she absolutely expected me to master certain skills as a child that she still has barely grasped even today. Skills like anticipating others’ emotions, being able to laugh at one’s self, recognizing when one is wrong, and so on. Things that she insisted I do, but never set an example of how. She legit has told me, on numerous occasions, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
Ohh, don’t worry, Ma, I’m way ahead of you. Why do you think your grandkids (my nieces/nephews) ask me to hang out all the time instead of you?
“Do as I say, not as I do,” was a common saying in my family, also. It sounds like she wanted you to be an adult while she still felt like a child. I think some parents never grew up.
If you have ever told your kids “You can tell me the truth” and then proceeded to lose your shit when you heard the truth, your kids are NEVER going to be open and honest with you.
This is one of the things I told myself I would never do, and I’ve stuck to it. I’m a father of 5, including three daughters. When they started going through puberty, I made it a point to let them know that they can come to me with questions if they wanted to, and that I will never, ever make them feel weird about it. My eldest is 14 now and has held me to that promise.
A good parent often will know more about their child than the child themselves. Unfortunately, many bad parents think they know more.
It’s also ages dependent. Till the late teens, children often don’t have a good handle on their internal state. They can often get there by 10-12, then teenage hormones do a number on it again.
Finally, it’s down to the parents to teach the child how to understand what they feel. This also requires open and honest communications. You can’t help and train them to cope appropriately, without knowing what’s happening. You can’t know what’s happening without communication.
I think it’s going to be only accurate on specific types of behaviour, and will fall away exponentially as the kids age.
I’m not saying it always goes to zero but seeing my parents with their parents makes me think it’s possible to actually go negative.
As the years go by and I approach my {redacted}'s, I am frequently reminded of and learning of ways in which my parents were both smarter and stupider than I ever could have known.
My mom can accurately describe a dozen different behaviors that I expressed throughout my childhood that indicated add or autism or something, yet still she was (and still is) adamant that I am a perfectly normal human being. I can’t tell if she’s just trying to be supportive in her own dysfunctional way, or if she can’t accept that she produced a defective offspring. She is responsible for the quote “I don’t need a doctor’s permission to be weird”, and I fucking love that.
From someone who’s on the spectrum to another: To classify a difference in focus or a difference in processing as a defect is inaccurate. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will go through life believing it is stupid”. There are things that come naturally to neurodivergent brains of which neurotypical brains are utterly incapable. “Hyperfixation” is just a way of saying that we become subject matter experts faster than other people. Even the reviled “attention deficit” is just our mind getting bored of things we’ve seen before. You are an explorer of the cosmos. If someone else says you are less, just because you find it difficult to care about the meaningless monotony of social constructs, that is a limitation not of you, but of them. Fuck 'em. Find your superpower, and follow it.
I figured out that I am preternaturally talented at classifying bits of knowledge and drawing them together to form syllogisms and comparisons. This has made me find my life’s work in teaching chemistry. I get go be paid to be an alchemist, teaching the arcane secrets of the universe to students, showing them how we have learned to bend the very fundaments of reality to our will. I think that’s pretty neat.
It’s an inheritable condition. It’s very common for parents of autistic/ADHD kids to think they’re ‘normal’, because their idea of ‘normal’ is themselves or their own parents, who also have them.
I feel very much that the gap of what is normal have narrowed a LOT in my 50 years. Especialy in school. While there are laws that say everyone should have adapted teaching, it is just more and more classrom and less and less practical work. With a lot more burocracy for teachers. (Norway)
My mother was constantly telling me what my thoughts, feelings, and needs were when I was growing up. She never tried to get to know me. When I would explain my actual feelings or opinions, in detail, she’d accuse me of lying. I think she was actually just projecting everything she didn’t like about herself, and sometimes her mother and sisters, onto me. Some of the qualities I supposedly had were mutually exclusive, or just didn’t make sense when applied to the life stage I was in. She was telling me she hated how haughty and arrogant I was since I was 3 years old, at least. When I was a teen, out of nowhere, one day she started to tell me how sad it was that I was so insecure. I was like, I thought I was arrogant. How can I be arrogant and insecure at the same time? She said I’m arrogant because I’m insecure. But, she’d been characterizing me that way since I was a small child. What small child thinks or acts that way? Little kids are notoriously honest and straight-forward. What 3 year old has the emotional sophistication to behave arrogantly to cover up insecurity, and what does a 3 year old have to even be insecure about?
Yeah, that ranks pretty high on the fucked-up scale
heckacentipede isn’t as clever as they think they are. As a grown adult I find myself biting my tongue in every interpersonal relationship I have to avoid making others feel bad. It’s not a superpower, it’s an application of basic emotional intelligence.
“You never tell me anything!”, they complain.
I vaguely remember that I was generally quite chatty in like, kindergarten, in stark contrast to today. Though to be fair, it might not have been my parents, or at least not only my parents, who fucked that up.
There’s a time and a place for some intellectual humility, and that swings both ways. There are a lot of things we just don’t know about the people we’re close with, and at the same time there are a lot of things we don’t fully understand about ourselves, that the more objective outside observer may be able to identify pretty easily.
And that goes both ways in a parent-child relationship, a sibling-sibling relationship, a friend-friend relationship, or even a spouse-spouse relationship.
My wife certainly knows certain things about me that I myself have blind spots about. And vice versa.
My mom and I actually talked about this. We love each other very much, but, outside of horror movies, most of our interests are different. On a car rise we went thought some things. Favorite song, movie, etc. As I’ve gotten older and gotten the language for it, I’ve explained what overwhelms me and when I need to be alone and our relationship has gotten way better. We actually had a fight last week and it was pretty… Normal. I had said something snippy, and told her soon after I didn’t even feel that way because I was upset and was snapping at her, which is why I wasn’t ready to talk to her. She actually let me cool off and we spoke later, explained ourselves, and made plans for if the situation happens again.
My mom has put a lot of work into understanding me and giving me the space to make mistakes. I learned a lot of her quirks and preferences through trial and error as a kid, but she had to do that with me as an tight lipped adult. It’s not 100%, there are still things I prefer to discuss with someone else, but the work as really been paying off for us.
However, this only works with certain parents. 👀
I was always jealous of most of my friends parents.
Mine were fine as parents, but we never got close because they’re Baptists and I rejected their church as a teen. I self censor a lot around them. Which is tiring, so I don’t try to see them more than a couple times a month.
Most of my friends, their parents took up more of a close friend role I noticed in our 30’s.
Edit; I guess it bothers me more now because I know they’re not around for much longer.
I work in a job that has to deal with a lot of parents. These types are absolutely not uncommon in the United States. I have seen so, so, so many kids completely traumatized by their shitty parents or their parents’ shitty religion, to say nothing of my own miserable experiences. I think a large part of it comes from, as usual with Americans, total arrogance. I think a lot of parents just assume they’ll know how to raise their kids, and don’t actually do any research or study into developmental psychology to try and understand good parenting habits. Being a parent isn’t easy and reading literature is a great way to learn ways to be better at it. Considering how the concept of learning is under attack in the U.S., I don’t think it’s a stretch to say a lot of parents don’t really know what they’re doing, don’t have any interest in doing better, and a lot of them end up being shitty because of it.
That moment, when something on the internet triggers traumatic memories and you’re tempted to tell them to the randoms, but all you want to do is to look at pink fluffy unicorns instead for 10 hours straight.
I don’t mean to tell you how to live your life, but maybe if those unicorns happened to be dancing on rainbowe they’d help you calm down even more. :)
Indeed, they do. 🦄🌈
I’m personally sad for the person that posted that. Not every parent is a bad parent.
Way too many, though, and even the ones who are good or at least neutral on the whole might still not be cool about a lot of topics.
You tied my brain into a knot.
way too many
I’ll grant that; if only one bad parent existed, it would be one too many. Yet this will drag us into defining what a bad parent is. And by extension:
even the ones who are good or at least neutral
What defines one and the other and what separates one from the other?
might still not be cool about a lot of topics
Which ones? Give me an example, please. And are all people supposed to be open or receptive or knowledgeable about every single topic?
A surprising percentage of the world is okay with making their children homeless if they are any variety of LGBTQ+.
Where? Because I would go straight to jail if I tried to pull that stunt in my country.
Abandonement, deriliction of paternal duties, abuse, mistreat… these are just from the top of my head. The list can grow longer.
Child abuse and neglect are illegal, but not always enforced in my country. United States.
I was a gay child that was medically neglected and later homeless. Even more frustrating, they claimed me on their taxes when I was an adult and got money for caring for me even though I didn’t get any support. I knew a girl that was beaten by her parents and social services didn’t do anything because she was fed and housed and the foster system was overwhelmed in her area. I even knew someone that was removed from their home because they were beaten by their parents so bad they went to the hospital. Their siblings were not removed (so they remained living with an abuser) and they were forced back to their parents after six months. No jail for any of these people.
That is simply awful. I have no words to express what is going on in my head right now.
Nobody, no child, no human being should ever go through such an experience.
I sincerely hope you are in a better situation today and as happy as you can humanly be.
What you are telling just illustrates how callous and inhumane the system is there.
Thank you. I am doing pretty much as well as one can given the circumstances.
Unfortunately I have lasting damage that has disabled me and makes it pretty much impossible for me to do anything of real substance to make things better, but I am doing everything I can.
I grew up in Oklahoma, and the cops showed up once when I was around 7 because I was being abused. They said my stepdad was allowed to hit me and made it understood that I was the one disturbing the neighbors and I needed to behave.
The Oklahoma board of education is just now this year making legislative headway into a law banning teachers from hitting disabled students. Not all students, just disabled students. They’ve been arguing about it for years because there’s enough parents saying that being allowed to hit a kid with crutches is part of their religion.
You are very lucky to have grown up somewhere other than the US. I can’t wrap my head around this level of abuse not being normal. It sounds wonderful.
Speaking from experience, this culture is just as common outside the US, and outside Christianity too.
People with even halfway decent parents don’t realise how lucky they are.
My father was abusive. He often told me I had it good because unlike his father, he didn’t use the belt to punish me. I was under surveillance at school because that little sentence slipped from my mouth once and he was warned that if I ever gave signs of being abused, they would immediatly call the authoritiesm
Meanwhile, my grandfather from my mother’s side, raised my mother with care, concern and respect and nothing beyond a stern word ever came her way. That same man told my father he’d beat him to death with a shovel if ever hit after I showed up bruised for visiting my grandparents.
And at school, we had a teacher that found it adequate to twist kids ears and bang their forehead on the blackboard. When that came to be known by my father, it was the only time he stepped up to prevent abuse on me and threatned to beat the woman if she was ever to lay a finger on me.
Corporal punishment is wrong. But let me add one caveat: under extreme circumstances, extreme measures are required.
I do not hit my children. I’m stern but I don’t take myself too serious and my pants don’t fall to the ground if I have to apologize for a wrong decision or word from me. But I do not subscribe to the quasi-cult of ever showing or even imposing hard limits to kids. And kids, more often than not, like to push boundaries and test limits. And there are extreme cases where one single swift swat replaces quickly and effectively hours of negotiation. It saddens me to watch grotesque scenes play out in public venues with kids throwing tantrums, screaming their heads off and demanding this that and the other because parents, and now I quote a couple I personally know, “do not believe in negative reinfforcement, be it by words or actions”. Theirs and other kids alike are horrible humans.
I’m sad for what you personally lived. It’s inhunane and monstruous. And belief is never an excuse for any behaviour.
Just out of morbid curiosity: where do those religious folks find the backing in their books to uphold those rotten ideas?
But let me add one caveat: under extreme circumstances, extreme measures are required.
And it should be up to the parent to show that it was indeed an extreme circumstance that needed an extreme reaction, it shouldn’t be assumed. There was an undercurrent of catrastophization in a lot of the abuses I witnessed, where a parent or teacher assumed that if a child’s disrespect went unpenalized, they’d lip off to a biker and get killed, and that was used to justify corporal punishment. It could have been dangerous, therefore corporal punishment was required. It wasn’t seen that the child viewed them as a safe adult to vent about how stupid their homework was, their judgement was not to be trusted and they needed to be penalized as if they had insulted a stranger’s mother. And that’s not taking the religion aspect into consideration, where you can substitute ‘killed by a biker for insulting him’ with ‘go to hell for eternity for thought-crimes’ and corporal punishment starts sounding more appealing.
As far as the religion aspect goes, I actually have an archived article that explains it with far more eloquence than me. I sent it to my therapist a while back to help explain my standing. https://archive.ph/Dre0R
Large swathes of the continents of North America and Asia, and parts of Africa?
Like in anything, it depends.
Growing up, I lived in an area where many people came from Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, etc, and there was a large tolerance towards being non-heterossexual in that community.
I’ll even risk I am how I am because I was exposed to those positive examples. People were just people.
I’ll gladly admit I lack knowledge regarding Asia.
North America. You’re thinking of the US, right? I’ll agree.
Which ones? Give me an example, please. And are all people supposed to be open or receptive or knowledgeable about every single topic?
e.g. they could be cool about normal/common interests like football, mainstream music and heterosexual relationships and uncool when their children instead like punk rock, ballet (for boys) or homosexual relationships. They don’t necessarily need to be knowledgable from the get-go, but they do need to be open-minded. Most children will happily explain their interests to you if you (the parents) didn’t discourage that behavior in the past. If it’s a longterm interest of your child, you should probably look into it yourself to become knowledgable on it.
I’m getting the feeling you’re reporting from a narrow reality.
Which is fine, because your life experience is valid by itself.
Those are not subjects I see as disruptive, personally, and neither in my social surroundings, and I live in a pretty conservative area.
A kid here came out as gay in his 12. His family is very well known for being very religious and upstandimg, yet they took the hit and moved on. The kid is very much gay, in all definitions of the word, and the family is still supporting him. The grandma on the father’s side almost had a cow but that quickly blew over.
Yes, parents could and should make an effort to be available for their kids but most people kind of “decouple” from the role besides conceiving the kids and taking them to school. Most forget how it was to be one. And that is sad. Does that makes them bad? No. Just absent, which is sad.
Risking entering personal grounds, I would not give two seconds for any of the subjects you mention as difficult or problematic. It’s not my life; my role, as a parent, is doing my best to get my kids ready to be proper human beings. It’s not easy, I do have to be the “bad guy” more often than I would like, only I know how much it hurts me do so, but it’s my role to set boundaries. But meddling on interests, likings and sexuality is not my role.
I’ll risk I’d get the stink eye from many people here if I was to tell how I handle educating my kids.
took the hit and moved on.
Take the hit?
Does that makes them bad? No. Just absent, which is sad.
No, that makes them bad.
But meddling on interests, likings and sexuality is not my role.
It’s not a “role.”
I think you are so smug about how great a parent you are, that you might need some self-reflecting. These are some very questionable choices by you. I’d like to ask your kids how it’s going when you’re not around.
Figure of speech. The family took the hit on their pride, being the people they are. But life carried on. The kid is fine and happy.
No. An absent parent is an absent parent. What makes that person absent is what may make them bad parents.
A couple or a single parent that has to work long hours to provide for their house, which forces them to entrust their children to a school and care system are not bad people nor parents: they’re just doing what they can to live and provide for their child or children.
A parent that is not present for their children because they can’t be bothered to do so, when they could is a bad parent. A parent that just checks out to go to work, thinking that material possessions can fill the gap they create by not being around are absent but not bad. Stupid but not bad.
I stand by my words. Meddling in personal likings, interests and sexuality is not a role any parents should take. But feel free to elaborate on this point. I sense there was more to be said. I’m an adult; I can take a critique.
And I appreciate your concern for my children but it wasn’t you that had to search help for feeling inadequate as a parent, because my own father was a sorry excuse of a human being and I didn’t want to go down the same road.
I’m not passing judgement on you; how about you show me the same courtesy?
No. An absent parent is an absent parent. What makes that person absent is what may make them bad parents.
You can be absent physically and not be absent emotionally.
A parent that is not present for their children because they can’t be bothered to do so, when they could is a bad parent. A parent that just checks out to go to work, thinking that material possessions can fill the gap they create by not being around are absent but not bad. Stupid but not bad.
I think I understand where you’re coming from on this. You think that it’s the intentions behind it that makes a parent good or bad. I say that it’s more than that. Does the child feel loved and safe? Then the other stuff is peripheral. If you’re absent working and come hope happy to see your kid, then all the other stuff can be dismissed, imo. If Dad goes off to work for a month away, the kid will be mad and upset, but it’s not life changing if they know they’re loved.
I stand by my words. Meddling in personal likings, interests and sexuality is not a role any parents should take. But feel free to elaborate on this point. I sense there was more to be said. I’m an adult; I can take a critique.
From the “take the hit” comment, I thought you were coming from a different angle. I agree meddling is bad, but being a sounding board and learning from each other about their liking’s, interests and sexuality is great. It sounded like you were completely hands off and not talking about it at all. Accepting the person as they are is the goal. Again, the feeling loved and safe part.
And I appreciate your concern for my children but it wasn’t you that had to search help for feeling inadequate as a parent, because my own father was a sorry excuse of a human being and I didn’t want to go down the same road.
I’m glad you searched for help.
I’m not passing judgement on you; how about you show me the same courtesy?
Again, the “take the hit” part made it sound like you were judging the kid. I apologize. I helped raised kids when I was too young to do so and made a lot of mistakes and have regrets. I wish someone would have been direct with me and I was offering what I would have wanted. Good discussion anyway.
