My parents SCREWED UP my life

So, I woke up early on Saturday morning, and don’t have to work this weekend. I pull out “the” paper (Washington Post), and look at the sports section and notice that my alma mater, the University of Virginia (UVA or the Hoos), is at the top of the Atlantic Coast Conference this year (beat the Hokies! GO Hoos!). It took me back to my freshman year of Uni at BYU (my first Uni), those were the days where Ralph Sampson played at UVA along with a point guard, Othell Wilson who went to my high school. UVA was kicking some ass in the ACC, and went to the final four that year. I also recalled how bewildered, and lost I felt at that time. I felt totally unprepared for life away from my parents, and here I was a half a continent away from home.

About my parents . . . . Okay, not really, they didn’t screw up my life, but they did fail me in one important aspect. They were good people. They showed love and affection, provided me with moral training, provided a home, healthful food . . . paid for piano lessons (I wish I had been interested when I was a kid) . . . encouraged me to be good person and so on. BUT . . . they were kind of absent when it came to teaching me about the importance of applying myself academically, and thinking about/planning for college and a future career. Their response is always, “We didn’t have any help from our parents (my folks are the first in their families to be college educated, both have Master’s Degrees), we figured it out and did it, and thought you kids would too.”

I got to university with very few skills, and very little idea of what to do with myself. I did figure things out, but it took me longer, and it could have been made easier if the adults in my life had given me a little more direction. I realize this in retrospect, particularly as I watch my brothers and their wives (all come from well-to-do families with fathers who are very successful in their various fields of interest: tax attorney, VP/CFO of company, Entrepeneur/Capital Investor, President/CEO of own software company). They pay attention to the homework their kids bring home. They talk about college, and how to finance it, and what are you going to do, etc. They provide varied opportunities for learning, and expect their kids to achieve - without undue pressure - and assist them in doing so, again by being attentive to their academics.

And where the hell were the guidance counselors? Those guys at my highschool were the coaches, a bunch of nimrods themselves. I think I had one meeting with my counselor and that was to arrange taking the standardized entrance exams (SAT and ACT). That was it. No help in college applications or discussions about course of study or my aptitude or taking an aptitude test to determine what direction I might want to consider (what major course of study), etc. WTF?

In the vaccuum that my parents left, the larger culture I was raised in took over and the message was “You don’t have to worry about studying really, your more/most important is to get your M.R.S. degree (find a suitable mate), and become a baby factory.”

Weird mix of messages . . . took me a little while to straighten it all out. I just think the road could have been made a little easier if the adults in my life had clued me in a little better . . . .

I was wondering what kind of experiences you all had in your early adult life, and what forces shaped you, and if you could go back - what would you change if you could.

Bodo

My parents were both very keen on me doing well academically and applying myself. However I believe they failed not in their intention, but their approach. Which was threats and punishments.

“If you don’t do well, you’ll end up working in a supermarket”, and punishing me if I did badly or was lazy in any particular field.

I’ve never really been up there academically, there’ve always been brighter kids or harder working ones. I’ve come to accept that I always tend to scrape through somehow.

I don’t really hold them to blame, as like you, I think they are great parents in so many regards. Perfect role models really…but all parents have faults.

I think with my kids, I won’t use threats and punishments, I’ll try more towards incentives, which is how the real world works. (my parents see that as bribery and somehow corrupt!)

You’re completely right about guidance councellors. They’re a bunch of retards…but really…how much time does one every spend with them? A few hours? How the hell are they supposed to know the answer to one of the most important decisions in your life with a few hours?

I believe its the parents job. Mine pushed me into engineering, which is ok, but I’d rather have done something more creative such as Industrial Design (had never heard of it back then).

My parents pushed me, your parents gave you complete freedom. I think there needs to be something in the middle where they help us work it out based on what they know about us, and the realistic outcome happiness-wise and financially if we choose that career.

[quote]What does being involved in your child’s education mean? There are many simple but amazingly productive techniques that influence your child’s performance and behavior at school and home. How many of the following statements are reflective of your involvement with your child’s academic experience?
I know how much homework my child has each night.
I review homework and check papers daily.
I attend PTA and school board meetings.
I spend one-on-one time with my child.
I provide maps, globes, dictionaries, and other reference material at home.
I attend extra-curricular activities.
I meet with my child’s teacher regularly.
I make sure my child has a nutritious breakfast each day.
I make sure my child gets enough sleep and daily exercise.
I frequently praise my child for effort as well as achievement.
If you answered yes to the majority of the statements above, congratulations! You are helping to give your child the A+ advantage. If you answered no to more than half, reconsider those areas and try to make improvements for your child’s benefit.

Implications of Parental Involvement
The positive impact of parent involvement is well documented. Research indicates children benefit from parental involvement in the following ways:

Better grades and test scores.
Better attendance.
Greater completion rate of homework.
Higher graduation rates.
More involvement in extra-curricular activities.
Improved attitude and better all-round behavior (Popkin, 1995).
A home that supports children as students contributes significantly to their school success. Laying the foundation for a supportive home involves providing the right environment.

The Structure Debate
Some parents worry that too much structure can harm a child’s development while others are concerned about being too lax and not providing adequate guidance. Structuring your children’s every waking minute while you frantically cart them to extra-curricular activities is likely to be counterproductive. These children often feel overloaded, unmotivated, or depressed. On the other hand, households that lack structure and positive encouragement tend to produce disorganized or unmotivated students. [/quote]

Some info from Ohio State University.

Bodo

[quote]While most middle schoolers give little thought to life beyond getting a driver’s license at age 16, they now will have to start considering their futures a little more in depth. In addition to advice from teachers and school administrators, they will need the help of parents to map out personalized Educational Development Plans that will provide guidance in scheduling four years of high school classes.

It will be a scary proposition for most kids, no doubt, and that is why it is vital for parents to take an active interest in their children’s education. Talk about their classes. Attend school open houses and parent/teacher conferences. Ask questions. Insist that school work come before extracurricular activities and other outside interests. Make sure homework assignments are being completed.

Discuss with your children where their interests lie and what types of careers they may want to pursue. Talk about what types of classes will be necessary to work toward those goals. Don’t make your children feel as those they must decide the course of their lives at the age of 14 or 15, but make it clear that it is important to choose a direction that can be changed or modified as they grow and their interests change.[/quote]

Conventional wisdom?

Bodo

My goal for our son is that by the time he is 16, if he wants to drop out of school, he will have the smarts and skills necessary to get by doing something he loves to do.

But I worry we do too much for him now and are becoming a kind of permanent saftey net. That’s why when he says he wants to rollerblade without his elbow pads, I say ok. Go get bruised up! But trying to worm his way out of doing his homework? bwahahahaha. He’s trying to do that right this moment actually. But I am a heartless bastard when it come to doing homework.

(I hope he becomes an investment banker and/or a scuba diving instructor. :smiley:)

((BTW, I think the most important thing on that list is checking your kid’s homework.))

Your soul is as black as the night, you sadistic bastard. :smiling_imp:

Hmm, I read through the rant and honestly didn’t see anything there worth complaining about. I see where you are coming from but I think you might be exaggerating the problem. There are no easy paths in life, to the point where I’d even say there are no “easier” paths in life. Just different paths. To that extent your parents were right. It sounds like they did what they thought was best in not being too pushy, which in some cases is definitely a more effective approach than being overbearing parents.

More guidance might have brought your grades up, and made college more easy, but who is to say anything would be better that way? Maybe you would have had too much time to party, which would have led to you dropping out or worse.

You’re alive now, that’s all any of us can ask for. Who cares what your grades were, or what skills you’ve acquired up until this point. Figure out what you want to do from here on out and make it happen.

[quote=“necroflux”]Hmm, I read through the rant and honestly didn’t see anything there worth complaining about. I see where you are coming from but I think you might be exaggerating the problem. There are no easy paths in life, to the point where I’d even say there are no “easier” paths in life. Just different paths. To that extent your parents were right. It sounds like they did what they thought was best in not being too pushy, which in some cases is definitely a more effective approach than being overbearing parents.

More guidance might have brought your grades up, and made college more easy, but who is to say anything would be better that way? Maybe you would have had too much time to party, which would have led to you dropping out or worse.

You’re alive now, that’s all any of us can ask for. Who cares what your grades were, or what skills you’ve acquired up until this point. Figure out what you want to do from here on out and make it happen.[/quote]

I agree with your post. I think that my parents are great people, and did the best they knew how. A little crazy, perhaps, for having 6 children . . . but, I was just in a contemplative mood this morning, and was playing the what if game. Agreed, thank god I’m alive, and have the opportunity to figure out what I want (tomorrow as well as 10 years from now) and move toward it. I also think that part of figuring things out (such as what do I want and where do I want to go from here?) is understanding who you are, where you came from and how that affects you in the here and now.

And . . . the post was more than just about grades, for me anyway. At that time (when I was 17 yr old) it was about some very fundamental things like can I and then how do I put a roof over my head, food on the table and so on? Lacking confidence in academics, and certain academic skill set or I should say a broader academic skill set really limited me, and sometimes I believed the only option was to attach myself to a man, and have him take care of me. Thank goodness I was able to figure out that I had more options than that - unfortunately, the social structure I was surrounded by at the time was beating it into me that that was my only option. My parents were complicit in this - I guess this is where I need to point out I was raised in the Mormon faith, and my first Uni degree was obtained at Brigham Young University. All very very conservative, anti-intellectual, anti-woman in my opinion.

Necroflux, I appreciate your point of view. Not exactly what I was looking for, but maybe my musings are counterproductive (or uninteresting). What I was hoping to see was others sharing a little more about their early adulthood experiences, points of view, how they have changed or not, how they think their respective social/familial networks influenced their early choices/life and that sort of thing.

Bodo

I agree with Necroflux- figure out what you want to do and make it happen. That goes for any age. Not all paths are open to you, but figure out what to do with the ones that are. I never was pushed to do homework. I never had homework checked. I just needed intellectual stimulation, so I was naturally interested in the work (except math). My mom’s attitude was internal drive decides everything. I don’t agree with that 100%. I also needed more guidance. Schools usually give students an assignment book. Parents need to check when tests, projects are coming up as well as check daily homework assignments. My oldest daughter doesn’t need my involvement that much. She is hyper organized. She wanted a watch at 8 to keep track of time. She is too anxious about being late for school and not having things done on time. I have to try to encourage her to relax. She is 11 now. My younger daughter is 9 and has never been nervous about things. So for her I have to check what assignments and tests she has because she doesn’t get too bent out of shape if she does things at the last minute. Now they both have their dream jobs in mind. Although I know that they will probably change their minds later, I take their dreams as 100% real now and encourage them to think about their dreams as a future reality that they can think about in a real way today. My older daughter wants to have a pet store, so she has mapped it out in a diagram where she will sell various things. And when I was in a big nation-wide pet store the other day, I was asking the guy how they do worker scheduling, what their biggest money-maker is, etc., and then I passed that info on to her- even though I know next year she might change her mind and that info will then be completely useless. I think the attitude of taking dreams as 100% serious in the present and working with passion for that dream (well, maybe the emphasis is more on dreaming and less on working at elementary school), even though we might not be sure of our choice, is really important. It focuses and gives meaning to the present.

I think you’re doing just fine, bodo. Nothing wrong with a mild rant, and sharing some of that stuff. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed your post.

[quote]I was wondering what kind of experiences you all had in your early adult life, and what forces shaped you, and if you could go back - what would you change if you could. [/quote]As far as education goes, my family hasn’t helped me much. I just about never studied for any tests, never did my homework, and not once have my folks inquired about any of this. Not once. Mind me, I always had decent grades, so maybe that’s why they never bothered me, but I doubt it. They were always way too caught up trying to make ends meet to even think about their kids education.

My old man sounded like a broken record when he talked about school. He wanted me to be a lawyer or a notary. He used to say(rough translation) “You better stay in school you little fuck, or you’ll end up being like your father.” ( “T’es t’aussi ben d’rester a l’ecole mon petit tabarnack parcque tu vas t’ramasser comme ton pere.” )

If I could go back, I think I would do the same thing. I don’t have regrets, although I’m suspecting that if I went back now, the old man would get a severe kick in the balls if he tried to lay a hand on me… :wink:

When I applied for university, my mother made me apply for four despite the fact that I knew I could get into my only choice (it helped that it was a public, state-run university) because she wasn’t confident I could get into my first choice. When I told her that I wanted to major in chem. ed. she told me that I was wasting a perfectly good chemistry degree where I could get a job making tons of money at a chemical company just because I wanted to be a teacher. When I finally made dean’s list right before my 4th year of uni while taking 21 hours of classes, working two jobs, and teaching ESL three days a week, she said that it was too late to be worth anything. She constantly chides me for not going into translating for the UN and when I tell her that it’s almost impossible for someone with only a BA in French to get a job like that, she throws her hands up into the air and asks what good is my degree for if I can’t use it to get a job. She was 16 when she had my brother and never had the chance to go to university herself so I can forgive her for not knowing the realities of what a university education entails.

On one side, though, she never pushed me through school, except when I was younger. I got my first C in math in the 3rd grade and I thought that for sure I was going to flunk out of school. I wasn’t allowed to go trick-or-treating that year, but as part of my punishment, I had to walk with my mom and my sister while she got candy. I still have the yearbook where I wrote “bitch” across my 3rd grade teacher’s face (I was still in the 3rd grade when I wrote it too). When I got my first report card F in the 7th grade in health (yay preteen angst!) she expressed her disappointment, but I was not punished. I continued to get F’s and D’s on my report cards, although I maintained a cumulative GPA of 2.99 (B average) and had an assload of extracurricular activities and took every AP class offered at my high school except AP Spanish and calculus and I ranked in the 98th percentile or higher in every area on national proficiency tests, okay, the 89th for math. She also told me that if I was going to skip a class or a whole day, that I let her know ahead of time so she wouldn’t be caught off-guard if the school called her.

I think her taking her emphasis off my grades and letting me make my mistakes and fix them myself helped me a lot more than if she had cared more about them. Except when she refused to let me retake the ACT because I went out the night before and was exhausted when I took the test the next morning. She said that I got a good enough grade to get into college, but thought that retaking it to get two more points for an honor diploma was unnecessary. I may never forgive her for that. :stinkyface:

In many ways, my mother could have been a lot more supportive and it might have made me apply myself more…well, maybe not, but I think the job she did, under the horrible circumstances she was under (especially during the 6-year reign of her ex-husband) gave me an advantage over many other students whose parents didn’t care at all or cared too much. I had friends with parents on both extremes so I know how lucky I was.

Besides, if your parents had really screwed up your life, not saying that I don’t empathize, but if they had, they must have still given you the skills and opportunities to help you live overseas. There are hundreds of millions of people who will never achieve what you have.

A few other things came to mind. My mom never pushed me to do well in school- but she cared that I was a good person and taught me at a young age to try to put myself in other people’s shoes. We also always watched educational science shows like Wild Kingdom when she came home from work and would talk about them together. We also had lots of pets, fish tanks, wild animals, fossils, bottle hunting expeditions (old dumps), etc. All of her four childen love being in and learning about the natural world.

I think a big part of the process of education / maturation is learning to be self-motivated–i.e. figuring out your own goals. And I say this as someone who has been expelled several times. On the other hand, I would have benefited from better information about such things as study in other countries. (No Lonely Planets back then, and high school guidance counselors aren’t worth very much in my experience.) Or a more systematic survey of college opportunities. Back then I was basically left to the mercy of college recruiters. What kid knows how to get into an Ivy League school? You need lawyers and so on for that.

Unless you live at home during college (which kind of defeats the purpose for a 20-year-old), parental involvement will be necessarily reducted to the occasional inquiry / interrogations into one’s career plans/finances/love lives. My mother blames her parents for not encouraging her to study medicine, like her brothers. (Sexism, you see.) Her brother points out that her grades weren’t that great. (B’s) She majored in secretarial science.

In college, when I proposed to take a religion class in Hinduism or Buddhism or something, my mother reacted with disdain. “You’ll never get a job with something like THAT on your transcript,” she warned. “Are you trying to be weird?” Now my transcript looks even weirder than she would have ever thought possible. (It’s got stuff like “Nyaya/Vaisesika/Mimamsa” on it!) To this day she feels there is something wrong with not wanting to live in America. The foreign students that she knows all want to stay there. How can I want to stay here?

I recommend the books “Beer and Circus” (Murray Sperber), which is an analysis of American higher education, and the similarly-themed novel “I am Charlotte Simmons” (Tom Wolfe).

SJ, I got into Yale with no lawyers. All it took was exactly 2 conversations. My English teacher said ‘you should go to Yale’. Then a girl in my AP Science class said- if you get in, they’ll give you a lot of scholarship money. Everything else I did myself. I got 2 college applications through the mail: one to my state university, which i could afford, and one to Yale, which i could afford if they gave me tons of scholarship money. I got into Yale. They forked over the money. My parents played no part in my applying, filling out forms, scheduling interviews, putting together financial aid info. But my mom paid my reduced tuition. Now I pay her back by having her live with me, paying her utilites and taking her for walks to exercise her brain and bowels. But the debt will never be paid in full because what she gave me was priceless.

Well okay. I guess I should blame all those B’s and C’s, then. And the fact that I never actually applied.

I too feel that my parents let me down over my educational choices. They were very supportive, but nowhere near strict or demanding enough. I’m left handed an even though it can sound like an excuse I believe lefties got (way back in the eighties) a raw deal and were allowed to submit projects and essays which were terribly written and often illegible. It is only a few years ago that I sat down and started to mechanically practise hand writing, because I was so embarrassed by my scribble. This is a prime example of self education - knowing what needs to be fixed and fixing it. But as a teenager or early twenty-something do we really have the understanding to be able to self-educate, and follow it through? I wish I’d realised much earlier on that a good education is the key to so many doors.

My parents both worked full time, and they were heavily invloved with the church and amateur dramatics, which left little time for proof reading, checking home work or guidance. Once I was supposed to hand in an essay on Martin Luther. I researched and handed in a piece on Martin Luther King!

I was luck to be granted a place in technical college and then to do a diploma in technical theatre which led me onto my sucessful career. I now look at my pathetic educational background and have promised myself that my kids (if I have any) will have the attention and guidance that they need. I’ll have to learn about maths, sience and technology as my kids do - I know it will be difficult, but I will make it fun and enjoyable - something my education wasn’t.

I guess it is too easy to blame someone else for my mistakes, but addressing the fact and by using the resourses available now (on-line ed./ night school) there is no reason why I, and many others can’t push-on and get a useful education. You often hear of people graduating and getting their first degree in their fifties - that is something that I’d love to have (make) the oportunity to do.

When I think of my greatest teachers they all had an immense passion for their craft - I think students need to be able to aknowledge that passion, absorb it and use it for their own benefit. Parents must be there to guide, nurture and sometimes force students to learn.

Interesting topic, thanks.

L.

I will not write what I actually think about what a lot of you say - that would honestly start a shitfest.

I always made my educational choices, and lived with the consequences. I paced myself, and it took me to a degree of my choice. I could and probably should have chosen another one, however things worked out anyways, and I have had opportunities the guys reading economics and business and staying in DK never had.

My parents mainly stood back, however they mildly tried to nudge me away from my chosen path, and I ignored that advice whenever possible.

My point is that you when you start approaching your 18 year b’day have to start taking responsibility for yourself, and live with the choices you make. Anything else is just whining and pushing the responsibility for ones life away.

And - another one, remember that parents when it comes to education guides more by example than anything else.

Aha…resistance!

My parents did everything possible to beat me own and screw up my life. The only skill I really have is a stalwart desire to not be like them- in ANY way. Taiwan isn’t far enough away from my family, really.

Everybody does the best they can with what they know at the time. That is about it I think. When I look back at all the adults who attempted to “guide me” through life I see a bunch of people who looked at me and thought “There’s a little fuck up who will never amount to anything.” They were right actually.