I’ve given parenting a lot of thought and want to speak up about parenting even if I am not supposed to have an opinion about it. My excuse is that I, like most of you, once was a child and, based on my memories, I feel qualified to have opinions about parenting.

What I remember is that I (I won’t try to speak for my siblings here) deeply and totally loved and respected my parents up to about the age of 6, when, they, not I set about to completely destroy any love or respect I ever had for them. It’s very sad when I think of how wonderful and happy all of us would have been IF ONLY my parents had made it possible but they didn’t.

It’s taken a long time and a lot of remembering to understand when, where and how my parents pushed me away and lost my love and respect for them with their stupidity, carelessness, brutality and indifferent neglect. I would have been and still could be their closest and most loving son BUT THEY, not I, did not let that happen.

My parents were very kind, loving, gentle and giving adults up to about the time I was 5-6 and then, as if over night, they suddenly became menacing, brutal, FRIGHTENING MONSTERS who I deathly feared from that time on right up to my 40s! I could itemize all of the terrible stuff and brutal events that led to this sudden change of attitude and behavior in me but it would take a whole book so I’ll just mention what I believe were the main points. I imagine that some other parents will find my “child’s” perspective extremely flawed or meaningless but here it is anyway.

I believe our parents greatest error was when they decided that us boys needed to be disciplined and brought under control after several years of being allowed to run wild and have NO controls placed on us. It may have seemed like a necessary thing at the time to take control of us but their brutal methods just made everything worse for me and I went from loving and respect to lying, hiding, disrespecting and going behind their backs to do my thing and avoid more brutal punishments. Our parents, not us kids, broke the bonds of love and respect that we had for them and it was never repaired again. I suppose that they thought they had real well behaved and under control kids BUT we just went underground to pull our stunts behind their ignorant, menacing backs.

I often go to Yahoo Answers where I see the same, exact pattern with ignorant parents and their misbehaving kids. It’s always the same pattern: complaining parents with misbehaving kids and NONE of them get it that the parents started the whole rotten mess by alienating their kids early on.

Once my parents, not me, broke the respect bond between us, I just went further and further down hill while they stupidly went further and further into contempt and disconnection. I had no idea how to reconnect with them and they had NO NEED to reconnect with me. All they wanted was humble OBEDIENCE from their kids while we all were starving for love, safety and acceptance by them. They had totally forgotten that they ever were children and saw us as both pests and mysterious aliens that they sure could do without!

I believe that if a parent could or would HONESTLY remember their own childhood and what did and did not work for them as a child, they would have a good idea how to adequately raise their own kids. It would be the “Do unto others” attitude instead of the “Do as I say” attitude but, once the parent decides to be a Prison Warden instead of a respectful helper to their kids, everything will fall apart even if the stupid parent thinks they have their kids UNDER CONTROL.

Once our parents alienated us with fear and contempt, our family became a nasty mess of two sneaky, dishonest, thieving and ANGRY boys plus a frightened but decent little girl. Bad and inadequate parenting sent my older brother to prison for armed robbery but that’s a very long and complicated story, which I might write in here some day. As far as I am currently concerned, bad and negligent parenting is and was the cause of just about every problem that our family and many of the families before us down many generations going back 1000s of years dealt with. It may seem simplistic but, to me, bad parenting is the master curse of humanity unless the basic issues of fear are at the top of the list. Now I see how my parents were badly affected by their own parents and that fear was actually at the bottom of it all – like the McCoy vs. Hatfield story where the families hated each other and nobody could remember why.

I believe my parents BLEW it because they were afraid and just didn’t know any better plus, they were TOO PROUD to see that they were messing up and needed to go find help. They foolishly took the attitude that, just because they were over 18, they knew all there was to know about parenting.

But I am glad to see that more and more positive and beneficial methods of parenting are beginning to creep into our culture so, maybe there is hope after all.
Jim