<p>Is there anyone who has parents who act like children? Do they give you the cold shoulder when you give your opinion? Do you try to clarify their thoughts with something succinct and clear and get told your just not understanding them? My mother has this thing where she never apologizes, she'd rather buy me something or completely ignore the fact that she did something wrong. She also will be perfectly reasonable, but then just burst out in anger about something small that I didn't think was that big of an issue. This is kind of a rant, but I do want to know if anyone else has immature parents/ petty parents.</p>
<p>Parents are humans, just like you and me. My parents are mostly good, but my mom always raises her voice when it’s unnecessary (as if it’s ever necessary). I accept it now because I expect it to happen.</p>
<p>she might be sensitive to perceiving you to be treating her like a child…</p>
<p>some parents get it in their heads that their children are not on their level in some fundamental sense and will never be (it’s convenient to do this because it settles questions of fairness and accusations of hypocrisy, and makes their life as a parent much easier). they can be the unchecked authoritarian then. part of what this means a lot of times is not apologizing to the child for mistakes i think, because that’s something that the child does, not the parent (in their minds).</p>
<p>Yeah lol unchecked authoritarian.</p>
<p>Look at how that turned out in world history…
Even current-ish history…ie north korea…</p>
<p>so that’s how our children are being raised.
Now it allllll makes sense …</p>
<p>ah but i guess parents are checked - by their maternal/paternal instincts. that keeps things from typically going too far south.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>TOO? far south? haha it goes pretty far if you ask me ;)</p>
<p>and just noticed the North/South Korea pun</p>
<p>Does anyone else think that the idea of parenting’s kind of flawed? Obviously parents aren’t perfect; the bad qualities they have are either inherited or picked up by their kids. Then you’ve got all these children running amok with all these fatal flaws who have kids who also have these fatal flaws. This cycle never ends. People may never learn how to think independently, treat everyone fairly, etc. (insert whatever other skill you consider important), simply because their parent never acted in that way. It’s rather optimistic to think that a person’s parents will teach them how to behave and survive properly in this world. As you guys have mentioned, parents can be rather immature because, of course, they’re people, just like us. And yet, we’re taught to “respect” and “look up to” these flawed people (we’re grateful for them, of course, but you’ve got to admit they’re mostly flawed). Why?
Some people are incredibly lucky to be blessed with wonderful parents. But what about everyone else? </p>
<p>That being said, I’ve been trying to come up with feasible alternatives to parenting. (that doesn’t result in a bunch of robots everywhere) Anyone want to contribute any ideas? I was thinking about a massive boarding school, but that’s definitely not the best idea.</p>
<p>@caught- could you just, I don’t know, marry me? Because what you just said, it’s just perfection.</p>
<p>Hahaha thank you- I’m flattered. The description you gave of your mom sounds like it could fit my dad exactly.
This is why I’m not sure if I’d even ever want kids. I know I’ve got a lot of issues (huge misanthrope, for one) and I wouldn’t want to pass that on or have my issues affect my kids. This is why I’ve begun questioning societies that base everything off of age/“elders.” Of course, I respect everything they’ve done for me, but I don’t think I should do something/act a certain way just because my parents expect me to. They’re not perfect, after all. Shouldn’t we all be allowed to think things through for ourselves? Especially since I think we’re at an age in which we have a better understanding of our surroundings (of course, we’re all probably a little naive).</p>
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<p>you can be a petty parent and still have quite a decent relationship with your petty son/daughter i think (where decent is relative to the parent and child). The problem is mostly when parent and child are incompatible emotionally, intellectually, etc, i think. But thanks to the fact that parents pass on their genes to their children, that doesn’t happen all to often. </p>
<p>i would cautiously say that the influence that one can find on the web is easing a lot of the trouble of being incompatible with a parent.</p>
<p>one alternative to parenting in the way it works now is parenting in more communal settings, where you have lots of adults looking after lots of kids, where child * and * adult behavior is monitored.</p>
<p>^ this.</p>
<p>My mother and I are complete opposites. Values, morals, leisure preferences (ex. I hate watching TV, and she thinks it’s the best thing in the world), ways of thinking (I’m logical and she’s … not), personalities (she’s a large extrovert, I’m a large introvert), etc. Honestly, we often can’t stand each other, but we’d probably have a better relationship if it weren’t for her fianc</p>
<p>@caught- the proposal still stands. If I ever met you in person I would probably hug you. You seriously just stated what I always think. It’s a constant irritation to hear that one deserves respect at old age when they haven’t done anything to earn it. I especially hate hearing an elder person say they deserve respect when they have always shown that they have no respect for their elders or themselves. These people sicken me.</p>
<p>well there is a reason why there is a tradition of respect for elders… if you don’t give decrepit dying people the respect they don’t deserve then i think things might fall apart to a certain extent. </p>
<p>In tribal societies (at least in the masai tribes in kenya) the elders were often left out for the hyenas when they became to weak. of course, that can’t happen now, so we keep them content with respect (not power), rather than fight with them.</p>
<p>but i agree that this whole expecting respect entitlement that some old people feel is perhaps a downside to this established tradition of respect, and is quite a problem. Because that causes fights, which is exactly what the scheme of respecting elders perhaps sought to avoid.</p>
<p>In some sense I think a lot of rules we make - about parenting, about how we should treat older people, etc. - have sort of backfired on us. Because now people aren’t thinking or trusting their intuitions and sorting things out for themselves to the extent that is probably best for them - instead they are taking the simpler, tempting way out and following authoritative directions (and taking advantage of them), which ends up doing more harm than good.</p>
<p>Caught, you’re not the first person to think to get rid of parenting. Rousseau pretty much wrote the same thing in “Emile”: Take kids away from friends, parents, peers, and put him alone with his preceptor for years and years. Only at the age of 14 (or around there, idr remember) will the child be reintegrated into society. </p>
<p>But, how would you ever justify taking parenting away?</p>
<p>It takes a village to raise a child, does it not? :)</p>
<p>That’s still parenting lol.</p>
<p>but it’s not the way of raising kids that caught was criticizing.</p>
<p>My parents do that it so annoying! My mom if she doesn’t agree with me or if I don’t support her idea she either kicks me out of the room and yells at me saying “I am never going to do anything nice for you ever again!” Never happens. She also brings it up again because she NEVER drops anything!</p>
<p>Well, my dad has his own little bitty faults. The biggest one is his stubbornness. He keeps on ranting over and over again on how the smart nerds get all the girls in high school. He says no girl wants to be with a guy who gets Cs, which is not true. Another one that he rants about is how African Americans are bad people. He thinks that they are all thugs, but in fact they are not. He always tells me, get bad grades and you will be with those chocolates. But, everyone has to have their own itty bitty faults here and there. We all can’t just be perfect. Those are just my dad’s blind spots.</p>
<p>“He always tells me, get bad grades and you will be with those chocolates”</p>
<p>I laughed at this, sorry.</p>