Are You Trying to Replay or Correct Your Own Childhood?
Are you replaying or correcting your own childhood in the way you parent your kids?
Psychology expert Jim Taylor explains the way he attempts to correct the emotional culture in which he was raised by the way he parents his children. His parents were very nice, but he thinks they coddled him emotionally so he tends to parent in a way that will teach his daughters to be more emotionally tough than he was.
Fascinating stuff. And I think we all do it.
Isn’t that what parenting is about? Recreating, if we can, the best parts of growing up and sparing our children experiences that hurt us?
I think about this a lot. I want my kids to experience all the idyllic parts of my childhood: Trees to climb and a yard to explore, free time, a mother who never criticized my appearance, incredible Christmas mornings, friendly neighbors. There are all kinds of things I want to recreate.
I wouldn’t say I had a “perfect” childhood though. My parents divorced and my mom worked really hard all the time. Still—I can’t complain. I hope not to get divorced. But I don’t really feel like my mom made any huge mistakes in raising me that I need to correct as a mom.
She was a single working mom, and I am happy I get to stay home with my kids right now. I think she would have chosen to do that if it had been an option. The funny thing is, sometimes I actually feel resentful that my kids don’t appreciate having a stay-at-home mom, an in-tact family, and a hands-on dad. I actually feel a little jealous of them! They don’t know enough to appreciate it. But I guess that’s what I want for the—to take these things for granted. I’m not sure how it will play out in their lives.
What do you think? What are you replaying with your kids and what are you trying to correct? Do we even know we are doing it? How is this going to turn out for our kids?
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My mother always used to say, “You’ll never know how well you did raising your kids until you see how they raise your grandkids.” She’s right. Some of my parenting mistakes are just now coming home to roost. I don’t expect a ton of fallout (after all I was raised by that wise mother quoted above) but I do wonder what corrections my kids will make based on their evaluation of my mistakes. I guess the trick is to live such that your old age will be a reward rather than a bright recollection of all your guilt.
Well, you knew I’d have something to say about this, didn’t you, since I’m your Glass castle friend and all.
Actually, my sentiments are much like yours in that I do get a little jealous fo my kids because I imagine what an incredible person I would have grown up to be with the advantages they have–especially the present, committed, loving hands-on dad. And I work really hard to keep a lid on The Crazy I inherited. I WAS criticized relentlessly on my appearance (and other things) by THREE GENERATIONS of keeping-up-appearances-women on my maternal line (that was fun), so I’m a bit of a pitbull to anyone who tries to make my kids, esp my girls, self-conscious about their appearance. “Deal with THINGS AS THEY REALLY ARE” is kind of my mantra after growing up under that pressure, and the “realer”, more down-to-earth something or someone is, the more we love it in our family. I am kind of proud of that. But yeah, I can see the danger in over correcting, too, because then you end up with ungrateful, unchallenged children, so I try not to make it too easy on them, and once in a while a little bit of The Crazy gets out, but hopefully not enough to scar anyone. I think we’re doing okay, knocking on wood…
Yes, I worry that if my kids don’t watch the exact same T.V. shows that I did, they’ll never be as cool and interesting as I am.
I worry about this too, because I forbid some of them.
My mother is not a planner. She is a “whatever, whenever” kind of person and it drives me crazy. (I hope she doesn’t read Babble!) And she is that way because my grandma was meticulous and schedules and start times. And it drove my mom crazy. So now I plan because my mom doesn’t. And I am sure my kids will resent my planning.
My motto is that everyone just tries to do a better job than their parents did. That covers pretty much everything. (Although I have noticed a kind of pendulum of extremes: we were always late everywhere, so I’m very punctual. Kids will probably take it for granted and be late all the time, so the grandkids will react with punctuality…not a huge deal, but an interesting phenomenon.)
I think about this a lot anyway, and even more now that we just moved back in with my parents (for 2 years while my husband finishes law school). They have two caboose kids still at home, so it’s fascinating to me to watch their parenting so closely as a sort of insider/outsider. I had a really great childhood and would replicate lots but not all of the things they did/do. As a parent of two little kids myself now, I’m trying not to judge them unfairly – I’m afraid I’ll curse myself with the same situation someday.