Can you say your parents did a darn good job?

Sure, I think my mom did a great job showing me what I DID NOT want to be, and for several years she was a good example. My grandparents normal life was a very good example for me.

Not exactly, I’ll have to think on that one.

Unfortunately I wouldn’t say that.
My parents divorced when I was 6. In the few years we all lived together, they would physically fight, and I was so scared, I developed a speech impediment (that later went). My mum never likes me having friends stay, come round, she didn’t like the noise and mess. My dad never really wanted anything to do with me until I got to 21. It made all my relationships ( but the one I’m in now) really bad. I thought that if I were loved, then they should hit me to show it. Those that said they wouldn’t, did in the end. They never encouraged me to do anything. I love them both very much, but they shouldn’t have had me.
My Grandparents however, were amazing. If it weren’t for them, I think I would have turned out totally mental.

I would say more that I became a good person in spite of my upbringing.

@Seek_Kolinahr good answer, wish I’d thought to put that

I am ok. They did ok. I have a few problems but probably couldn’t find a way to directly blame them without therapy.

They did alright. But I am who I am in spite of them, not because of them. My goal in life is to never have a marriage like theirs.

@livelaughlove21 May I ask why? I know you and your hubs are like best friends from your previous posts, so does that mean it was War of the Roses at your house or something?

They taught me responsibility for sure.

Yeah, she was a single mother and worked her butt off. I have the manners of a true gentleman as well. :)

While I have much to attribute to my parents’ positive contributions (my mother in particular), I learned a fair amount from their dysfunction, some of which I’ve nurtured in my own time. But they gave me opportunities for something better than they had, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.

@KNOWITALL Well, there are a lot of issues with my family that I don’t mind discussing, but I wouldn’t want to bore anyone here. My mom and step-father were good parents to me when I was a child, but physical and mental health issues have made their relationship miserable and unhealthy, but neither will leave. The constant negativity I encounter when I visit only motivates me to not let my life become what theirs is. I’m noting like anyone in my family, and my husband is very grateful for that. They’re quite dysfunctional.

@livelaughlove21 Ah, I see what you mean. We have a lot of people here that stay married no matter what because of our religion, so I’ve had the same example to a degree. And since I have a mom with bi-polar, I kind of understand how dysfunctional it can get at home if untreated. Sorry doll, and thanks for sharing.

”...a darn good job?” HA! That’s a good one!

They did the best they could, under the circumstances. I am very satisfied with their efforts.

There was love in the house but they screwed up in some very major ways that had a large negative impact on my life.

I was mainly raised by a single mother, and I did get some good traits from her. She was a voracious reader, and so am I. She was very affectionate, and so am I. But in many significant ways, she was not a good parent. The bad things, unfortunately, far outweigh the good. Like @Seek_Kolinahr, I am who I am in spite of my mother, not because of her. My goal in life was/is to give my children a far better childhood than the one I had. So far, so good.

My step-dad was only married to my mother from the time I was 4 years old to the time I was 8, and I still consider him my father, today. He’s a good guy.

One certainly, they were divorced when I was 6 & my dad really wasn’t worthy of the title.
I’m surrounded by love/affection & cool vibes & my kids worship the ground I walk on, pretty fantastic testament to the upbringing my mum gave me…that’s good enough for me.

Yes! But not always because they knew what they were doing.

Take my mother. Here’s a funny example of how smart she was without knowing it.

As a young kid, I was horribly alergic to poison ivy. Got it every summer. One year, a bout was so agonizing that I grew practically hysterical one night (I remember this well).

Mother didn’t have the faintest idea how to help me other than to dab on calamine lotion, which wasn’t helping at all. Then she got the idea to fib me into believing that a new medicine had just out that would stop the itching right away. What she gave me was a spoonful of cough syrup, thinking it might have a positive psychological affect.

Sure enough the itching stopped very quickly, but not for the reason she thought. She didn’t realize that the medicine, which was one of her prescriptions, derived its efficacy from the tiny amount of codine in it (we figured that out years later).

My sister used to get poison ivy something horrible. So sad. So helpless to do anything. :( Wish I’d known that codeine would work. I’d have found a way to get her some, even if I went to kid jail.

I’m very thankful for the environment they placed me in, and the things they protected me from. I’m also thankful for the fact that they brought me to church every week, and that they gave me an education to defend my faith. So yes, I would say they did a good job.

At the same time, though, I also learned from my mom what kind of a person I don’t want to be. I’ve learned a lot about “what not to do” as a parent. I hope I never make those mistakes.

In the sense of providing, yes. They did a great job.

In other ways… meh. Ok I guess. Could have been worse.

My parents did a very good job, specially when you consider that I was their first child, they were still learning as they went, and to be honest I never made things easy for them.

My father was almost a master artist when it came to role of provider. He made a deposit for a house and paid it off single hand in 7 years. When I was a kid, I had every toy you can imagine, I was even spoiled a fair bit. Not only did I have a Nintendo with almost all of the games, but I had a Sega and an Atari too.

My mother who was mostly a housewife or running a business, did a good job at both. When I was a child I always had the best healthy fresh food, and clean clothes and all that. Before I even went to school she made sure I knew how to read and write and do basic maths and knew some facts, history and what not.

They did fuck up on a few things. The older I got, the less they parented really. By the time I was 12 I was more or less allowed to do what I liked, and they would not really care anymore.

When I was a baby, I had all the regular baby things, and was well looked after, and my years as a toddler and little kid, were also very well managed. However, by the time I was about 6 years old, I had a very well established personality.

I am today at the age of 30, more or less the same as when I was 6 years old, the only real difference, is now I have a larger vocabulary to express myself with, and I have had more experiences, but my core me, is more or less the same.

By the time I was 6, I was a bit too much for my parents to deal with, and over the years, I only got smarter and harder to handle, as my range of tricking, manipulating and fibbing skills improved with practice.

By the time I was 9, I had decided that I was not going to allow my parents to punish me anymore, because I did not like it.

No matter what they did, I would just fight back. If I was being shouted at to “Come here right now” I would jump out of a window and vanish in to the woods and you would not see me again for hours. If my parents were still pissed at me when I came back, I would just run off again, until I made them worried about me and it was safe to go back.

By the time I was 15 years old, I had moved out with a girl called Bea, who I had met in a night club 1 day before moving in together with her, basically cause I thought I would get to fuck her if I did. She was a 19 year old run away, who had lots of stories and issues.

My parents did a very good job, they had obviously studied up and planned to have a child, they were very good at all the things you hear in books. I was safe, changed regular, had regular medical check ups, and all that.

They were very good at all the early on stuff, but the longer time went on, the more I developed, and there are not books specifically for dealing with me.

I made things very hard for them really. I have a million stories I can tell about tricks I pulled, but over all they coped well with it all, and did a good job.

Now days, I have some issues with them, because we are fundamentally very different, but over all we get on quite well if I just don’t see them too much.

I can’t complain. They did fine. I turned out okay. And for every terrible memory (my mother wishing I wasn’t born), there’s plenty of good ones.

It wasn’t bad, just uneven.

Yes. I could not have had better parents. As strange and colorful as they were, they were the best.

No, I really can’t say that.

My father did a great job. Given he was a shiftworker who, because my mother died, was left on his own with five children aged 16–1 when there was no child care and really no welfare system, I think he did very well. He did marry again after about two years, and I didn’t get on too well with my stepmother, but despite that we’ve all become productive members of society. None of us are criminals. We all have good jobs and have advanced from the position my father reached. We’ve all supported our own families. We all loved and respected him. Not a bad outcome.

I would say that my parents did the best they could at the time. My mom was a teenage wife 19 years old and I was the third kid before the divorce.

I’m not sure I know what that even means.

They did the best they could given the circumstances (which were shit). My mum was very ill and didn’t always make the best decisions when it came to my brother and I. I often felt like I was the parent in the household and there were times when I resented her for this. However, I know she loved my brother and I know she wanted to be a good parent she just didn’t have the mental ability to be able to get it right all the time.

My parents were also going through a nasty divorce at the time which nearly broke both of them financially. We saw my dad every other weekend and and he would do everything in his power to make sure that these times were amazing for my brother and I. He would make sure that we went out and had a bloody good time even though he couldn’t afford it. The divorce was not his decision so he was dealt a pretty shit hand but he did everything he could to make sure that his kids didn’t suffer too much.