A parent focused on the wrong things while missing entire elements of parenting.

This is a contributor’s response on a forum I follow:


“I remember growing up in my very Mormon household. I had two parents, two sisters, and one brother. We all loved one another so much and spent all, and I mean all, free time together. Now, looking at it as an ex-Mormon a cluster of memories stick out: my older brother hitting me and my sisters.

He shouldn't be hitting girls, especially his sisters, we all know. But what sticks out to this thirtysomething-year-old was my parents' response to him hitting us.

My parents, especially my dad, were perplexed and flummoxed as to why he balled his fists and hit us when he became mad. They didn't raise us in a violent household nor did they condone violence. We always used our words.

My dad reached out to his father for advice even. His bishop. He searched high and low for answers to this urgent problem. My happy-go-lucky father was no longer-happy-go-lucky. (My mom, on the other hand, was still her miserable, half-parenting self: just yelling.)

Fortunately, my brother grew out of this. But my father's extreme worry is all the more puzzling, and now anger-causing, given that he didn't push my sisters or me towards getting a career, doing good in school, and making something out of ourselves once we were out of the household.

His daughters' futures were a blindspot. But us getting hit by our brother... my parents were having none of it.

Ugh."

Welcome to my childhood.

However, this was just one of many experiences growing up in a Mormon dysfunctional family environment ruled by religion rather than independent thought.

Silences is Golden Wrote:
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> Welcome to my childhood.
>
> However, this was just one of many experiences
> growing up in a Mormon dysfunctional family
> environment ruled by religion rather than
> independent thought.

Independent thought would help a lot of people in and ourt of the church and on this board. Some people will accept anything someone in a uniform or position of authority tells them. Even if it bankrupts them or makes them sick.

"Sometimes a person who boasts of engaging in 'independent thought' is just a garden variety schizophrenic."

--Sigmund's cleverer brother, Lucian

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> "Sometimes a person who boasts of engaging in
> 'independent thought' is just a garden variety
> schizophrenic."
>
> --Sigmund's cleverer brother, Lucian


Froedric Freud was the most clever brother...or, in your vernacular, the cleverestest brother.

I'm told Froedric Freud spoke Spanish as well as anyone in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Meanwhile Lucian was commissioned to paint the Queen of England but his portrait was subsequently rejected for looking too much like a Lucian Freud.

This lady's story continues. She ended up graduating from Brown University in her early 30s. However she laments being educated next to students ten years younger than her, who were raised being told that they were going to an Ivy League school, whose parents paid for tutors in high school and college, and, most importantly, instilled in her that the sky was the limit.

The most her very, very educated father was ever passionate about towards this contributor was finding ways to get her brother to stop pummeling her and her sisters.

The contributor also anguishes over being exposed to so many Mormon mothers, with lots of kids and little education. There has to be more to life.

"The soft bigotry of low expectations."

I dunno, man. It sounds like someone is trying to shift the blame for their life status onto their parents, as if the vast majority of us couldn't do the same thing...

As elderolddog often mentions, the bell shaped curve is involved. Imperfect parents pretty muuch dominate the middle of the rise. We don't choose our parents. But if we're fortunate enough to grow up, and can be at least a little bit brave, we can choose to take responsibility for our lives.

In some cases, yes. In others, No.

Although my family was dysfunctional, I have no ill will against either parent. I moved on from that over 40 years ago. I visit my father often, and my mother has since past. To me it does not matter what they did or did not do.

Its the religion that really screwed things, and set me back for decades knowing all the time something was amiss until I took back my life. That thought\situation does annoy me on occassion.

But I will concede that I have a brother that just cannot let go of the parents not being perfect, so it does occur.

Yeah... look, I get it, we all point to our parents as the cause of our shortcomings sometimes, but this person's complaints seem rather banal to me. My parents too tried to stop us from whacking each other, but simultaneously broke hard objects against our backsides...we joke about how angry my mother would get when she had to buy another wooden spoon.

The major complaint was that lack of encouragement for future success is somehow an egregious parenting flaw...whatever...there are those whose luck placed them on the left hand side of the curve, who have endured abuse beyond what I want to imagine, and have much more reason to complain.

I could have written this, but I only had brothers--no sisters.

Society used to be willing to overlook sibling abuse as a normal thing---which it wasn't. My older brother needed therapy and to be removed from our home. Neither happened. I learned to hide from him when he was on the move--a closet or leaving quietly out a back door was the only way I had to deal with the situation. He was 4 years older than me and much stronger.
I have never had a good relationship with him but he was the blue eyed blonde child that everyone wanted to meet and fawn over. We are full siblings but he got a recessive gene that each of my parents apparently had.

I'm pleased to tell you that I did not have a similar experience with a parent.

By the time most of us reach adulthood we've been abused in one form or another. Parents,brothers or sisters , grandparents aunts,school bullies coaches teachers etc. Some of us survive with a few scars and some don't and have to drag it throughout their lives. Unfortunately it will always be a part of most of our lives.
The trick is how to survive it. Do we constantly whine about it? Do we just
suck it up and go on (rots a ruck on that one)..

I've never understood parents who don't try to give their kids a leg up in life, whether it's providing college, community college, trying to get them into a skilled trade, a first responder training, bring them into the family trade or business, etc. My own parents sent me to college because they wanted me to be able to provide for myself no matter what. If you are going to the trouble of having a child, why not provide for that child?

Some friends of my parents had a country club membership, but did not provide for their children beyond high school. The wife took endless advantage of my mom and other "friends," getting free rides from all of them without any reciprocity. Years later, when my mom was struggling financially, they enjoyed a nice retirement in Florida. They enjoyed it at my mom's expense. Some people are grifters and users. They don't care who they take down if it benefits themselves (Joseph Smith Jr. and Brigham Young being cases in point.) They don't help others, even their own children. They only care about themselves.

but my dad went to college while 3 of us were small. I remember my dad's graduation day at USU. What my dad did is WORK HARD and we were expected to work hard. He paid us for most of the stuff we did on the farm.

We all work really hard and have done well with our choice of jobs and what we have achieved. My sisters one is a teacher and the other one with no education at all worked for SS for who knows how many years and retired at 60 as she had a pension. She works for IRS 2 days a week so she has government insurance and if she sticks it out for 5 years, she'll have government insurance for the remainder of her life.

I became a secretary and loved it. My mom was one before she had her first baby. I wanted to be like my mom. When I had twins, I got into medical transcription and I have earned well so that I could hold onto the house after my husband left and raised my kids without the child support. I now have half his pension and he and I share the house. He lives downstairs and I live upstairs.

My youngest brother didn't graduate. Got his GED. He has built up two companies starting as a forklift driver at the first one to plant manager and he has done it again (they sold the first company and started a new one and hired him to manage). He was earning almost $200,000 when they sold the first company and he is back up in the six figures now.

I have two disabled brothers, one at birth, one at age 42 had a brain bleed.

Our parents as far as earning money and supporting ourselves set an example. My dad was a teacher and a farmer. He never seemed to stop working.

My parents weren't perfect, but my dad taught us INDEPENDENT THINKING.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2023 09:24PM by cl2.