More Parenting Rants
I have no sympathy for people who claim to be traumatized by perfectly normal childhoods.
I'm not saying that I have no sympathy for abuse victims--far from it. I know people whose lives have been irreparably damaged by physical and sexual abuse; I know even more people who are emotionally stunted because of verbally cruel, cold, demanding parents. What I'm talking about are the people who had childhoods like mine, pretty normal and decent with maybe a couple of snags, but are so bored with their own pathetic little lives that they drag up every childhood mishap in therapy and turn it into a trauma.
My father is a big guy, and he's got a nasty temper--one that I have, unfortunately, inherited. He's mellowed out a little bit with age, but when we were little, he was always stomping and yelling--I don't think he ever really knew how to deal with kids. Between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, I managed to have maybe five or six conversations with him that didn't turn into screaming matches.
My mother slapped me across the face once, when I was twelve. I think I called her a bitch. She was pretty disgusted with herself, but I still kind of think I deserved it.
When my brother Seamus was two, he got a concussion from falling off of a stool onto the concrete kitchen floor. When our younger brother Aidan was five, he crawled into the car, knocked it into neutral, and coasted down the hill of our driveway straight into a tree. He also crawled across the road when he was a baby, fell out of the rafters of the barn when he was eight or nine, and wandered off countless times as a toddler and small child. He's seventeen now, and seems to have suffered no ill-effects.
I guess what I'm saying is that if I went into therapy and chose my words carefully, it would be very easy to make it look like my brothers and I were abused and neglected. We weren't. My parents are good people, and maybe they made some mistakes bringing us up but--hey, nobody's perfect, right? All three of us turned into sane, stable, intelligent adults, so I'm thinking they probably did more right than wrong. No parents will do exactly the right thing all the time; no parents can prevent everything bad from happening to their child, no matter how much they might want to. If your benchmark for good parenting is perfection, well, everyone will come up lacking in some way. Everyone.
I'm not saying that I have no sympathy for abuse victims--far from it. I know people whose lives have been irreparably damaged by physical and sexual abuse; I know even more people who are emotionally stunted because of verbally cruel, cold, demanding parents. What I'm talking about are the people who had childhoods like mine, pretty normal and decent with maybe a couple of snags, but are so bored with their own pathetic little lives that they drag up every childhood mishap in therapy and turn it into a trauma.
My father is a big guy, and he's got a nasty temper--one that I have, unfortunately, inherited. He's mellowed out a little bit with age, but when we were little, he was always stomping and yelling--I don't think he ever really knew how to deal with kids. Between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, I managed to have maybe five or six conversations with him that didn't turn into screaming matches.
My mother slapped me across the face once, when I was twelve. I think I called her a bitch. She was pretty disgusted with herself, but I still kind of think I deserved it.
When my brother Seamus was two, he got a concussion from falling off of a stool onto the concrete kitchen floor. When our younger brother Aidan was five, he crawled into the car, knocked it into neutral, and coasted down the hill of our driveway straight into a tree. He also crawled across the road when he was a baby, fell out of the rafters of the barn when he was eight or nine, and wandered off countless times as a toddler and small child. He's seventeen now, and seems to have suffered no ill-effects.
I guess what I'm saying is that if I went into therapy and chose my words carefully, it would be very easy to make it look like my brothers and I were abused and neglected. We weren't. My parents are good people, and maybe they made some mistakes bringing us up but--hey, nobody's perfect, right? All three of us turned into sane, stable, intelligent adults, so I'm thinking they probably did more right than wrong. No parents will do exactly the right thing all the time; no parents can prevent everything bad from happening to their child, no matter how much they might want to. If your benchmark for good parenting is perfection, well, everyone will come up lacking in some way. Everyone.