Do you find it strange? Food for thought.

warriormomerin

I often see posts on here (and FB) about how we all struggle with being good moms, yet so many of us (myself included) have issues with our own parents. Are we really doing anything different than our own parents did? Will our kids still have "issues" with us even though we all strive to be good parents? Do you think our relationships with our parents would be any different if they'd had access to all the parenting information that we do via the web?

Heavy thoughts for a Wednesday, I know, but Melissa's post really got me thinking.

sistrkate

Even though I strive to be a good parent, and I read lots of articles, magazines, books, etc., I still find that I am very much like my parents were growing up than I would care to be.

I think I am lucky in the respect that I never had an awful, terrible relationship with my parents.  I think we really had just the typical growing-up nonsense and head-butting as a result of my need for independence and just plain being a teenager.  However, there were some things my parents did/said that I would care not to repeat and yet I find myself doing some of those very things despite my best effort not to.

Having gone through therapy myself for personal issues about 10 years ago, I learned the impact that your childhood and relationship with your parents has on you, even as a seasoned adult.  That's not to say it's not possible to change things if you want to and really focus on effecting it, but I think it's difficult.  It's not just physical traits and characteristics that run in families, everything else does to some extent also.

So my bottom line answer to your question is, yes, I think a lot of our children will have "issues" with us.  I think it's just part of growing up.  The issues may vary in topic and severity, but to a certain degree it's inevitable.

kyfirewife

I've pretty much found that everyone has issues of one sort or another with their parents. Some more serious than others, but everyone has them.

So yes, our kids will have issues with us.

But I've also learned that, for those parents who really do make being a good parent a priority, they tend to do at least a little bit better than their parents. I've seen it over and over again.

So I try to look at it as that my parents did a better job than their parents did (true!), and I will learn from how they raised me, and hopefully DH & I will do better than our parents did, and then DD will hopefully one day do better than we did.

No one will ever be the perfect parent, nobody's perfect. But we all do our best and trust that our kids will one day grow to see that, and to learn from what mistakes we did make. And they will.

Superchicy

I have been having the same thoughts lately, especially now that discipline to some degree is starting to become a daily thing with DD.  I don't have a terrible relationship with my parents, but I also wish I had a better relationship with them and a lot of that stems to their decisions on parenting as a child and even now that I am an adult. 

I do find myself in many ways parenting like my mom does, but I also do some things very differently because of how I was raised.  One big thing I want for my DD to have with us is to be able to come to us with things that are personal and know we will be there for her, something I didn't have with either of my parents.  I don't think though that my parents did a "bad" job of raising me, I just would like to do some things differently and hope for a different relationship with DD than I had with my parents.

teacherjess

I don't know. I have a wonderful relationship with my parents. We definitely got into it in high school during my "rebel" phase, but they handled it really well and I hope to have the same control during Leah's rebel phase (knock on wood that it NEVER happens). Sure, there are some things that my parents could have done differently, but on the whole, I feel they did a great job given what they had, and I wouldn't mind being the type of parents they are.

I feel my difficulties with parenting stem from my own issues that have nothing to do with my parents. For instance, I absolutely HATE criticism and failure, and I fear that if I am not parenting right, this will come to me. I also see, on a minute-to-minute basis, in my students, how deeply poor or incorrect parenting affects kids. I am terrified of making a wrong decision or treating Leah the wrong way and then having to deal with the consequences later.

I also deal with a lot of regret and find that when I don't deal with Leah correctly, like if I snap at her or get upset and find myself ticked off at something she's done, I feel immense guilt later. This eats and me and causes other problems in my life/marriage. I feel very insecure as a parent a lot of the time, but I wouldn't blame any of it on my own parents, you know?

anotapotamus

I don't have kids, but I'll say that my sister - as a parent - seems to have gone the exact opposite direction that my parents did. She has an AWESOME relationship with her children. I'm sure there are issues - and yes, I've heard a 'mommism' or two come out of her mouth towards them - but they aren't really things that were specific to my mom. The commonalities are on things that I think are common to all parents - like teaching manners and consideration.

If my sister didn't give me a lot of hope that I'm not doomed to being my own version of my mother, there's no way I'd breed.

Ttimes3

I could go ON and ON and ON about this one. To keep it short, I'll let Maya Angelou answer this one for me:

"I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach."

(NOTE: the bolded and underlined part of this quote is, essentially, my mantra on life. Sometimes, you might also see it as: "I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.")

rottie06

Don't get me started....but I can tell you that I still have custody of my DD.  My mom choose to do different.