Tag: parenting

Hi, I’m a 17-year-old Asian girl with abusive family. I just want to say that your post about children not owing their parents almost made me cry. It gave me hope and comfort. My Mum berates me nearly each day and makes it seem like wanting to have fun even after I’ve overexerted myself all day is a huge offence. I’m doing crazy well in school; my teachers praise me; she makes me feel worthless and like her supporting me is something I should earn/spend my life repaying. Thank you (from a child)

Oh, hon. You remind me so much of myself at your age. To this day I feel guilty about taking breaks because I was told resting is for people who lack focus and drive. It gives me a lot of hope, though, that you’re able to name your family’s treatment of you as abuse at your age. I couldn’t even bring myself to identify as an abuse victim until late into my 20s, after doing a lot of reading and soul-searching. It makes me happy that young people these days are much quicker about identifying mistreatment for what it is, and that they find help and moral support online. Hopefully you can unfold faster from under your family’s thumb than I did, and that you’ll be left with fewer long-lasting effects. I’m sorry your family situation is so hard, and I wish you all the help, rest, and recovery once you are in a better place.

“You owe your parents” in the best interpretation is “you should be grateful to your parents”. But the thing about gratitude is that you give it freely. It’s not something your parents are entitled to. That said, I’m grateful for my parents. They absolutely deserve my gratitude, and I wish everyone could say the same for their parents. Abusive parents do not deserve anything from their children, least of all their gratitude.

The problem with the language of “oweing” one’s parents is that it’s the language of obligation, not gratitude. You’re very right, in most cases kids are going to be naturally affectionate and grateful to parents who were dutiful, loving and caring. In my experience it takes a lot of mistreatment and alienation over many years to sever kids from the natural love and gratitude they feel for parents who loved them, in their own way, and sacrified for them.

Parental alienation is a terribly sad and wasteful process–I didn’t want to reduce contact with my dad, I didn’t want to look back in regret at everything we had shared, I wanted him to be in my son’s life far more than he is. I had to do it, very painfully and regretfully, after at least two decades of the whole family telling him how badly his controlling behavior and explosive temper were affecting the family, to little effect. I decided to draw firmer boundaries for my well-being and that of my child’s.

I remember how I carried my son out of his own 100th-day celebration because my dad had thrown a spoon and was shouting at us over politics. (It was a tense time politically what with the impeachment and all, but WTF?! Who even brings up current politics over their grandchildren’s milestone celebration meal, never mind throws a tantrum when he doesn’t like the answers?) That’s when I realized that being a grandfather had not changed him and he was not a healthy person to be around, not for me and certainly not for my child. I don’t want my son to think that being terrorized by someone he loves is normal or right. I’m breaking that cycle with me.

So no, I don’t accept the language of “oweing” and obligation because it is not the same thing as gratitude, spontaneously and warmly felt. “Oweing” is the dry dreg left behind after gratitude has been boiled away by unjust treatment. Sure, they can be used interchangeably–people say “I owe you one” as an expression of gratitude, and people who don’t accept a moral obligation are called ungrateful. (My dad @ me, like, uncountable times.) It’s all in who’s saying it, though: “You owe me” is a very different statement from “I owe you.” People can take on a sense of obligation from a sense of gratitude, but trying to impose obligation and gratitude on children never works.

I don’t understand how anyone can think that children owe something to their parents. I had my child for my own selfish reasons. We were settling down in our marriage, happy and comfortable but no longer buzzed. The house was too quiet, and we wanted laughter and joy and a bit of commotion. I was on my way to getting my degree, and I thought it was time. I was approaching a fertility dropoff, and I didn’t want to miss my chance and be left wondering about the what-ifs.

I brought a helpless tiny being into this terrifying world because I wanted it. He had no say in the matter. He brings me joy every day just by existing, and yeah, for being a happy healthy goofy kid that bubbles over with laughter and odd and wonderful mannerisms. My life has been made immeasurably better because of him, even if it’s hard sometimes. I made the choice that he was worth the sacrifices, from laboring for three days before an emergency C-section to the nightly feedings to the daily care he requires. I am grateful every day that he came to me.

So how can my child owe anything to me? I had him because I wanted him, not because he wanted to be or was even capable of wanting to be born. He has given me so much more than I have given him or could ever give him, since everything I do is just my basic obligation even if I do it with joy.

He doesn’t owe me. I owe him.

I know that it doesn’t work out for everyone. My heart goes out to people who were not ready to be parents or never wanted to be, who were pressured, who had no choice. It’s why I am pro-choice, pro-contraception and pro-sex ed, why I staunchly support child-free people. My dream would be a nightmare for people who did not want it, or got too much more than they bargained for.

That doesn’t mean a child who had no choice in the matter owes their parents anything. At worst the child was a victim trapped in a bad situation along with the parent or parents. It was not their fault.

If you are told you owe this or that to your parents, please don’t believe it. Your parents made the choice to have you, or, if they unfortunately did not, you did not cause their unhappiness. You owe it to yourself to be as healthy and whole as you can be, to have integrity, to get what joy you can in the world. If that requires going against your parents’ wishes or cutting them out of your life, so be it. It’s your life to live, and your life is not a debt to be repaid.

Why You Should Stop Yelling at Your Kids

Households with regular shouting incidents tend to have children with lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression. A 2014 study in The Journal of Child Development demonstrated that yelling produces results similar to physical punishment in children: increased levels of anxiety, stress and depression along with an increase in behavioral problems.

Why You Should Stop Yelling at Your Kids

Bao is one of Pixar’s best shorts

porqueuepine:

Let’s talk about it. So before we even saw the short, we knew the story featured an Asian woman whose children had left the nest. And as you watch the short, you pick up that this woman is likely to be a first generation immigrant.
When we meet Bao, we hear baby gurgles and giggles, so the audience knows that we basically just witnessed a birth. And as we see Bao grow more and more, we witness the immense care and affection the woman puts into caring for Bao, establishing that it is her “child”. However, with the care and affection, also comes an extreme protection, in which she attempts to keep it by her side at all times, away from soccer – and most importantly– away from non-Asians. As an Asian-American who was brought over at a young age, this is incredibly familiar behavior. Our first generation parents love us AND their home, and they try to instill that same dedication to our native culture, despite what our individual interests may be. This can cause a rift between the two figures, the Asian parent and the Asian-American child. One wants to keep the other close and safe, away from the unfamiliar, while the other, unaware of the dangers of unfamiliarity, wants to learn and explore. This rift grows as the two continue to pursue their goals.
Eventually, it comes to the climax. Bao comes home with a non-Asian fiancé and it’s leaving home. Unequipped to cope, the woman eats Bao. This scene hit me the hardest. Instantly after eating Bao, the woman regrets it. My interpretation? She realizes that in trying to protect Bao by keeping him home against his will, she destroys it. Kills it, really. But wait!
A new character appears: Bao, but human and grown. We can connect the dots that THIS is the child who left the nest, and what we witnessed was this man’s youth leading up to his departure from home. So we can start piecing things together. Bao from the start, has always represented this guy. And the woman had wondered “how could I have kept him with me?” And through reliving her motherhood with Bao, she realizes she couldn’t. Her child wasn’t going to live life the same way she does, in her ethnic enclave, and she forcing him to do so would have destroyed him. She realizes she has to meet him halfway, thanks to him taking the first step of coming home. So the sharing of the bao making process with her son and his wife is the Asian parent reconciling her son’s Asian-American identity with her own Asian identity.

TL;DR As an Asian-American, seeing the struggles of cultural reproduction vs. cultural assimilation and its relationship with immigrant parenthood on the big screen induced tears, and I’m not ashamed.

hitting children is never ok. i dont give a shit what the situation is.

lj-writes:

your-naked-magic-oh-dear-lord:

I respect your opinion. I just disagree about extreme cases.

There can be extreme cases, like the defense of self and others. In those cases it’s really outside the usual spanking/discipline discourse, other than the fact that kids who are spanked are likelier to have behaviorial problems and be violent.

@missisjoker Or maybe just telling him “countless times” to cut something out is a fucking useless way to get a child to behave and he could have been given better discipline, not just in that instance but over time, so that he could appropriately have his frustrations heard and addressed, and learn how to deal with these situations. Maybe he could have been carried around so he wasn’t stuck in one place, maybe he could have been distracted with more interesting activities. Hitting a kid is a lazy and terrible parenting method that is proven to exacerbate rather than help behavioral problems, and it’s ignorant and harmful to advocate violence against children.