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Dysfunctional vs imperfect parenting



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mommish613




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Dec 20 2019, 10:41 am
I’ve wondered this for a while.

We all want to be better parents- do what’s best for our children’s overall mental and physical being. I grew up in a healthy, functional home. My parents made mistakes but we all felt loved and cared for. As an adult, I only have fond childhood memories although I do remember some things that my parents did which would be considered “bad parenting” today. They had no negative impact on me or my siblings and I look back and think that they were just regular, normal, imperfect parents.

There are many children that have emotional handicaps because of their childhood and I am wondering. If you are such an adult child, would you consider your parent(s) dysfunctional or did they just make some small mistakes.

I feel like I am a pretty normal parent but I def sometimes mess up. Can these small mess-ups severely impact my children without me realizing?
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amother
Wine


 

Post Fri, Dec 20 2019, 11:18 am
I started a similar thread about messing up our kids.
My parents are also very functional and I bh had a very healthy and happy functional childhood. However as an adult I have come to understand that my mother is extremely emotionally handicapped and it has literally impacted all my relationships including the most important ones now - with my young kids.
Learning and studying attachment theory has helped me understand this and I think the answer is to establish as secure an attachment as possible and everything else in the world you can't really be responsible for.
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amother
White


 

Post Fri, Dec 20 2019, 11:25 am
I can't stop thinking all the time of all the things my parents did wrong and wondering how in the world they were able to bring themselves to act that way.
ie. hitting, shaming, ridiculing, threatening, sarcasm, emotional disconnect, loving the job and everyone else more than own children, having patience for others but not children.
I'll never understand and try not to dwell on too much and just on the positive and guess have to be dan l'kaf zechus they had their own nisyonons but as I parent my own children and am super careful not to make those same mistakes, I can't help but wonder, how could they???
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zaq




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Dec 20 2019, 12:10 pm
There are fashions in parenting just as there are fashions in clothing. Every generation feels it knows better than previous ones and “proves” it by demanding or enacting change whether change is needed or not. The pendulum swings back and forth.

One generation believed that praising a child to his face or in his hearing would result in...something bad, exactly what was never made clear. A generation and a half later, lavish praise for everything was deemed necessary to building healthy self-esteem. (What a good boy you are!) Still later, the wisdom of the day was to praise but very specifically: You didn’t murder your partner, just beat him up. Good job of self-control! I fully expect the next generation to revert to stingier praise. And this is just one example.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of parenting fashions and theories or lack thereof, most people grow up to be reasonably decent folks. Not perfect, but human perfection is an impossibility.
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amother
Natural


 

Post Fri, Dec 20 2019, 12:14 pm
zaq wrote:
There are fashions in parenting just as there are fashions in clothing. Every generation feels it knows better than previous ones and “proves” it by demanding or enacting change whether change is needed or not. The pendulum swings back and forth.

One generation believed that praising a child to his face or in his hearing would result in...something bad, exactly what was never made clear. A generation and a half later, lavish praise for everything was deemed necessary to building healthy self-esteem. (What a good boy you are!) Still later, the wisdom of the day was to praise but very specifically: You didn’t murder your partner, just beat him up. Good job of self-control! I fully expect the next generation to revert to stingier praise. And this is just one example.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of parenting fashions and theories or lack thereof, most people grow up to be reasonably decent folks. Not perfect, but human perfection is an impossibility.


That’s a very interesting observation, I never thought of that, thank you
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amother
Taupe


 

Post Fri, Dec 20 2019, 1:39 pm
My parents had a lot of baggage they weren't dealing with (although they functioned out in the world and we didn't look like neglected children) and it effected me, my marriage and children tremendously. If you are dealing with your issues, your little parenting mistakes won't matter in the long term.
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amother
Denim


 

Post Fri, Dec 20 2019, 2:09 pm
Your kids will always have an idea of why you aren't a great parent. BH I have great kids. They think we are too strick, but it doesn't seem to have harmed them. My parents were too permissive. This hurt me in that anything I did was ok. There were no boundaries.
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amother
Forestgreen


 

Post Fri, Dec 20 2019, 2:20 pm
I have noticed that people who were raised by holocaust survivors often have emotional baggage from their parents that affected their own parenting style. Holocaust survivors had very different priorities and attitudes than this generation, due to their experiences and trauma. That might be one reason for the differences between generations in parenting. Our generation can't relate to that at all.
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