Homework #57, Parenting, Is There A "Right" Way?

My first thought is that I'm eighteen, and obviously not a parent so I can't speak as one to say the right way to do it. There are also many, many different kinds of of parenting, and ways to be parental. I don't really believe that we will all turn into our parents and parent the way they do when we're older. There are many, many exceptions to the rule.

There are times where parents believe that violence is the way to treat a kid, and that in order to make the kid behave, they really do have to make them behave. My mom's mom treated my mom really badly, both verbally and physically. She believed that when my mom was "bad" that she could take it out on her. She also believed in the 'if you don't eat everything on your plate you have to stay there until you do' method.

Having a mom like that, my mom promised that she'd never treat her kids like her mom had treated her. I know that not all parents are exactly the same, and that how my parents are shifts how I understand or don't understand other parents. My mom is the very nurturing, caring, understanding kind of mom, so I don't understand the parents who treat their kids terribly. I consider her one of my closet best friends, and can talk to her about anything. She gets up in the morning to make sure my brother and I eat, and that we go to school. My brother and I can be who we are, and accepted and loved for that.

Of course, kids think that their parents are embarrassing, and that they're supposed to be embarrassed by them. This happens from a young age, until they are much older. Yet I'm not embarrassed by my mom. So many kids call her mom, and she acts as the mom to all of the kids. If one of Kyle's or my friends are sick, or hurt, my mom will be a mom to them as well. She works with children all the time with her Non-Profit organization, as well as being the mom of two teenagers.

There are definitely kids that rebel against their parents just for the hell of it. If they are told one thing, they may purposely do the other. I don't think using violence as a parent is the way to go. Either the kid goes on to be an abusive parent, they rebel, they're messed up from it, or, like my mom, they promise not to be like their parents were. In Five People You Meet In Heaven, there is a part that says how parents harm their children and affect them negatively: "all parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair" (page 104). I do think that parents affect their kids, either negatively or positively, but I don't think that every parent damages their children. I'm unable to say how a parent should be, but I know that for me, my relationship with my mom has helped me to be who I am today.