Parenting and hypocrisy

My kids are daughters are 28 and 25, and currently living at home. The oldest spends every time she earns, and she works full time. The youngest is as frugal as it gets. She has over $10k in the bank from her last job and drives a 2004 Tacoma we bought used.

Kids have their own minds.

As for the drug talk, my kids know I smoked weed constantly for about 6 years, they also know I had a DUI. Again, one took something from that and the other didn’t.

When my son was younger (he’s now 11) I was better able to hide my two main vices - too much gaming and eating too many sweets. Now he is well aware of my bad habits. I’m honest with him in that I shouldn’t do as much of either as I do. I compare it to my Dad smoking but he didn’t want me to smoke.

We set limits for him based on what we think is right for him. He sometimes complains that it isn’t fair, but for the most part understands I think. I admit I’m a hypocrite.

Your job as a parent is essentially to spit out a kid that is less screwed-up than you are.

So attempting to prevent your kids from acquiring your worst habits and/or vices is not hypocrisy, it’s iterative improvement.

“I was lousy at budgeting in my early life and it cost me in the following ways… I’m telling you this so that you won’t have to suffer through the same hardships that I did.”

I guess this is where we quote from Philip Larkin:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

I think one of my problems is that I’m not sure I can say that my mistakes cost me all that much. I’m very happy with where my life is now.

To tie it into the Star Trek discussion going on in the other sub-forum (regarding the ST:NG episode “Tapestry”), who’s to say that it isn’t the balance of my life, good and bad, that led me to where I’m at? I’ve always fancied myself very similar to Captain Picard!

When do you let your kids make their own mistakes? I know, for a fact, that I wasn’t the greatest listener when I was younger—I needed to experience something to truly learn.

Oh, I think this is absolutely the case. Growing up I loved dinking around with computers and doing my own simple programming tasks but I had convinced myself by the time I got to college that I wasn’t smart enough to work in that field, and let advisors talk me into studying business. I managed to kind of work my way around to working with computers anyway, but who’s to say I would have ended up with the life I have now if I had just plowed straight on with it? I may feel a little bit like I made a mistake but I can’t say I would do things differently if I could.

Sure, but presumably you believe that you might have been more successful and/or happier if you had more self-discipline, right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be advising your kids to cultivate those traits.

I too am fairly comfortable and not too displeased with where I ended up. But I think I would have gone further and been even more comfortable and happy if I could have, say, watched five fewer hours of TV per week in college and spent that time studying… or worked up my nerve asked that one pretty girl out… or balanced my check-book regularly in my 20s. And so I pass on the stories of my (perceived) failings to my kids so that they can learn from my mistakes.

I think that varies by parent, but I’ll give you my answer: You let them fail if (a) failing won’t be hugely disastrous; (b) you’ve warned them about the consequences; and ( c) they are old enough to know better

Parents can only do what they know how to do. And often parents that produce great adults also produce bad adults. There is so much more going on that just what a parent does.

Well, that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it. :)

All I gotta say is if you are one of those upper middle class parents like us, don’t make the mistake of talking to them like they were your equal, giving them choices when you actually want them to just do something, fill their time with activities and (overly)play with them. I mean, I know these sound healthy and not harsh like your parents but all these things do is teach your kid that if you are on the same level with them, ie you’re just as lost as they are.

With our 5.5 yr old we’ve converted to our parents’ methods of yore… we give her commands, calm but direct, she gets choice over little things that don’t matter, she gets bored and needs to figure her own time out, and she isn’t yanked all over town to do swimming, ballet, etc etc every day… and lo and behold she went from an anxiety ridden terror back to a decent kid.

ps. we still don’t know what we’re doing, but now a little less. Our 1.5 yr old son seems happier though, I think we’re getting better… or he’s just more happy…

I think I erred on giving my son too much choice and wish I didn’t. There are times now where he thinks he should get more say then he actually does. It’s hard to roll that back. When he was younger we did play with him a lot as he has no siblings and didn’t like the neighborhood kids much. Luckily he has now adapted to being able to keep himself occupied.

I find this book incredibly useful to help my wife and I talk to the girls and handle their emotions. It works really well and kept us sane.

I think one of the greatest challenges with parenting is how fast they change, compared to you, their parents. What works when they’re X age can be an unmitigated failure when they’re Y age.

I’ve seen so many of my nieces and nephews (who are older than my kids) run into “failure to launch” types issues, since they really didn’t learn any executive function. So, while it might be great to be very direct with a 5 year old, it can be very important, only a few years later, to get that 10-12 year old to start learning to make choices, to make mistakes, and to learn how to deal with the consequences of mistakes.

On top of that, add all the variance that comes with individual children. Parenting is damn hard.

I get the whole limiting choices thing, especially with younger kids, but what does it mean to overly play with your kids? And how is it bad?

I think you want to make sure that there are times when they aren’t depending on you to come up with what they should play, and there should be times when they are dong their own thing. What that limit is…not sure.