| | Looking back on the way my parents raised me, I would have made a lot of changes. The two biggest things I would have changed were 1. I wish they had kept a tighter leash on me and 2. I wish they had made more mistakes when they were younger.
For those of you who don't really know a lot about me, I was raised in a rather large atypical family. I had 4 brothers and a sister with several large age gaps and some with almost no gap. Me and my identical twin brother pretty much raised hell from day 1. Our parents laid out rules when we were little but looking back I don't think they paid enough attention to what we were getting into as teenagers... really even as preteens too. I'll be the first to admit here that yes, I was a bad kid. I made my own rules, snuck around behind my parents' backs, got into things kids shouldn't and never thought twice until I had a child of my own. I made bad connections with older teenagers, started going to parties, drinking, smoking, having wild sex, and even got my first couple tattoos by the time I was 14.
All of this brings me to the first thing I would have changed about my parents: I wish they would have even asked me where I was going or what I was doing. So parents, talk to your kids, ask them where they're going, who they're hanging out with, and do so in a friendly, non-hover-parent way. Tell them it's not worth the price they'll pay later. I'm lucky, I got out with only a few small regrets... but not everyone is so lucky. Many of the people I used to hang out with are in prison now after moving onto harder drugs, and a few, like my twin brother, didn't make it out alive.
Even though I made so many mistakes as a teenager, I learned a lot from it all. I have 5 great kids that came out of my stupidity and I think they'll benefit greatly. They can learn from my mistakes without having to make them on their own. My parents were raised both in good, middle-class families, went to college, worked hard and never made a mistake in their lives. That was their biggest flaws. I wasn't able to relate to them so I did my own thing and found out for myself.
I am fully aware I did all of this to myself and I don't want to come off as blaming all the mistakes I made as my parents' fault. With a little more supervision I might not have made as many of them but I think I turned out alright with a few exceptions. Even with just enough supervision I might not have been able to hide my tattoos from my parents for 7 or 8 years, my smoking habits from them for 5 or 6 years, or the fact I had a son until he was 6 months old. Right now I'm on bad terms with them. Bad terms as in they haven't spoken to me in several years. But I've turned myself around and I have my oldest son to thank for that. Maybe one day they'll figure me out and talk to me again.
So parents, what you can learn from me is that you should talk to your kids. They're listening.
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| | Posted 7/18/2008 10:52 AM - 36 views - 3 comments
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