Ack...didn't mean it the way it sounded, that's for sure.
I think that if you knew me in real life and we talked in real life and not on an internet message board, you'd probably have a much different opinion of my actions as a parent, especially if you watched me with my kids. And I think if you saw more responsible parents with their kids, you might not feel as though all parents abuse their kids at some point in time or another. Or maybe you would and you'd hate me as a parent, I guess I just don't know.
I'm a good egg. And I owe most of that to my parents and the way they raised me. So to hear that I was abused as a kid, well...you can see why that would bother me. I know kids who WERE abused - and there's really no comparison.
Well see, that's sort of what I'm saying. We were all abused to some degree, just because nobody's perfect. It's not because I've only seen horrible examples of parents...it's because I know enough people to know that we all have flaws, and that most people's flaws end up hurting somebody, at some point. My mother, especially, is a perfectly responsible, loving woman and I was lucky to have her as a mother. But she was't a perfect person--while I was growing up, she had very poor eating habits, and I picked up from her that candy is a medice used to treat anxiety. She has little understanding of ADHD, and didn't do a particularly good job of handling mine. I am a less functional person today, than I had the potential to be, because my parents weren't absolutely perfect. I don't think it's insulting to say that--nobody is absolutely perfect, and *everybody* is a less functional person than they might have been if they'd been raised in ideal circumstances.
Still, when I think about what that actually means...cutting a person down, stunting them so that they cannot be what they might have been...it still seems like, even though it's universally true, of absolutely everybody on the planet...it still strikes me as being a horrifying offense against that person. A violation of their very personhood.
If you run a machine too fast, or in a bad environment, we use the word 'abuse,' to describe it. You abuse your car by driving it over deep pits, because afterwards, the car doesn't work as well. It's partially broken, even though it still sort of works. If you use a statuette as a hammer, you've abused it, because that's not what statuettes are for, and it will be worse off for the experience.
And that's exactly what almost everybody does with their kids--place expectations on them based on what the parents wants them to be, flubb something that seems incredibly minor at the time, without realizing that it would end up having a profound effect on the kid down the line.
My friend with the dad who always has to be right described a scene from her childhood once...a completely normal, everyday situation. Her dad loves mango. She hates it. He has to be right. So he made her sit and eat slice after slice of mango, insisting that it simply *is* good, and she *should* like it, because it is good. Who would ever imagine that giving your kid fruit would be traumatizing?
But that's the scene she remembers when she thinks of how horribly self-centered he can be--that he could not accept a person being different than him, even down to the tastebuds. And that deeply influenced her view of who he is as a person.
She also respects him in many other ways, and describes herself as being her father's daughter.
Like every other person in the world, she is a less functional person than she might have been, because her father is a less functional person than *he* might have been.
And even while I realize that that's true of every single person in the world, I can't help but be struck by ....this deep sense of sadness, that as loving and confident and kind and anything else a person might be, people are still flawed deeply enough that we cannot recover from it--one person's flaw is the weapon that hurts another, and causes theirs. And that it's inevitable that I will do something that will leave somebody worse for having known me...likely, I already have, though I think that person's own immaturity is a big part of the harm that came out of that situation. Best friends for 18 years--destroyed because neither of us could be good enough to give the other what they needed.
Want to know where my family's bad eating habits came from? Back in the 1930's, the stock market crashed. My grandfather was raised dirt poor until he was 15, and then his father died (his father, incidently, died of a heart attack while trying to murder his brother in law, who, out of simple carelessness, destroyed the one piece of machinery that my great-grandfather was relying on to pull him out of poverty). My grandfather joined the army at 15, yadda yadda....married, had kids. As food was so limitted during his childhood, it was a point of pride for him to be able to put food on his family's table. Enormous amounts of it, which his kids were required to finish.
My mother and her sister are both diabetic now, my aunt's near death because of it. One of my uncles has straigtened himself out now, learned better habits. The other has embraced food as a source of joy and learned gourmet cooking. I try to combine both tacts--good cooking with healthy foods. Like my mom, it comes in waves.
Now, my grandfather was an incredibly good person--but that was a major mistake on his part, using his children's ability to eat as his medal of honor. It's screwed up the whole family for a few generations, and may very well continue to.
It was a worse mistake on the part of the people who crashed the stock market, though.
It terrifies me to think that if, say, I end up with a daughter who's best suited to being a pink-skirted ballet dancer, I don't know if I could do right by her.
But I know I never will if I set my categories as "either I'm beating them, or I'm a good parent and I'm all set." None of this will ever improve, if something has to be horrific to need improvement. Nobody will ever better themselves if they have to be evil to need to be better.
Christians, more than anybody, should understand the idea of trying to work, one step at a time, towards an unachievable goal.
My EMT professor used to say, "If you're comfortable with the status quo, you scare me. Examine everything. Question everything. If something doesn't need improving, great, you hit the gold standard."
Something I didn't realize I was arguing, until I already was, is that improving the way kids are raised requires us to stop categorizing kids as "abused" and "raised well," as if they're too different universes.
I've worked for social services, and seen some horrendous examples of abuse...but not committed by monsters. One day, I found myself trying to entertain 4 kids, because an agent walked into their house, looked around, took them and walked out. No foster home lined up--it didn't matter. They needed to be *out.* They were starving and eating garbage off the feces-strewn floor.
The mother...was not a bad woman. She wasn't an *
ABU-U-U-U-U-USIVE PA-A-A-A-A-ARRRRR-E-E-E-ENT!!!* She was a single mom with no money and no understanding of kids, who was completely overwhelmed with this parenting thing and sank deeper and deeper into ...being overwhelmed, until the situation was so out of control, she had no idea what to do.
My point is that, if a person who is no more evil than being immature and ignorant can inflict *that* level of horror on her kids, then it seems just...a given that a mostly good parent can still inadvertently do harm.
I really *don't* think my opinion of you would change all that much, in this regard, because I don't think you're a monster who's viciously torturing her kids, now. I don't need the actor to be evil to think that the action is wrong.
And, if it's not completely obvious...I'm writing at 2:00 in the morning, and need sleep.
Later.
