Do you have a close relationship with your parents?

[Incongruous]

I came to accept the fact that kids who don't like their parents (me about three years ago at 17) are *****, truly. The amount of time for each other my parents had to forgoe for my sake is legend, I really wish now, that I had been nicer to them.

In the end, you will miss 'em.

[HoreTore]

Well.

Some people are cursed with parents who are absolute bastards... I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Fritzl disagrees with you, Bopa

[Shaka_Khan]

I came to accept the fact that kids who don't like their parents (me about three years ago at 17) are asses, truly. The amount of time for each other my parents had to forgoe for my sake is legend, I really wish now, that I had been nicer to them.

In the end, you will miss 'em.

You might change your mind if you meet them again. Or maybe you have great parents. I know some other parents whose temper gets worse due to the imbalance of their hormones.

From what my dad has said to me, I get the feeling that my dad doesn't want me near him. He is still the yeller of the family. My mom, my sister and my friends are afraid of him. One thing he improved on is that he stopped coming home drunk everyday. Fortunately, I get along very well with my mother.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Family; you don't have to like them, you just have to love them

Hey, that's really good. Wiser than it looked like at first sight.


I get along great with my parents. I've got a close contact with my mother. Less so with my father. Do love 'em both.

[Hosakawa Tito]

You can't choose your family, but you can choose your friends, choose wisely. Growing up I didn't really realize how fortunate I was to have the parents that I did. I guess I just assumed most everyone else's relationships with their parents were pretty much the same as mine. Once I got out on my own I discovered how wrong that assumption was. My parents weren't perfect, but then who is. My father was an impatient, suffer no fools, workaholic, but his heart was in the right place. And if he was hard on me sometimes it was because he loved me and wanted me to grow into a productive & happy adult. He wasn't always right, but most of the time he was. He grew up during the Great Depression, worked hard all his life shucking steel at the steel plant sometimes working two jobs to provide for 5 kids & a wife. Yet somehow he found time for us on the weekends to play baseball, go camping, fishing, hiking, picnics, etc... I still don't know where he got the energy to do all that.

He never finished highschool, but he was a highly skilled mechanic and could fix just about anything. He died at the age of 51 of a stomach cancer, and never got to retire and enjoy the fruits of his labor or get to know his grandkids. Such is life sometimes, and I'm thankful to have had him as my guide on.

[TinCow]

Well, I thought my relationship with my parents was about average until I read the thread, and now I think I've got it pretty good.

I would have agreed up until I went to law school. It seems like I've met a lot of people since then that have serious difficulties with one or more of their parents. My wife doesn't like her mother at all, and many of my friends and coworkers have similarly dysfunctional relationships with one or both parents. It's not a lawyer-only thing either, because this includes numerous people I know from other walks of life.

That said, most of the people I know tend to be pretty intelligent and well-educated (institutionally or self-educated). That trend tends to be similar to my notions about the average Org member: namely that they're smarter (or at least more intellectually curios) than the average person. That's probably even more so for Backroom regulars. It occurs to me that perhaps the reason for this unexpected trend is that higher levels of intelligence result in an increasing likelihood of parental conflicts. I can see some basis for that, simply because it seem reasonable that the more intellectually oriented a person is, the more likely they are to either break from the family 'mold' or otherwise deviate from the type of behavior that their parents expect of them.

If we have any psychologists back here, I'd be interested to hear their take on this.

[Fragony]

He never finished highschool, but he was a highly skilled mechanic and could fix just about anything. He died at the age of 51 of a stomach cancer, and never got to retire and enjoy the fruits of his labor or get to know his grandkids. Such is life sometimes, and I'm thankful to have had him as my guide on.

That is pretty much exactly the same for me, 55 years old BAM cancer and 3 months later dead. Also never finished any school, but knew just about everything.

[Dutch_guy]

Have a great relation with both, always been the case.

[KukriKhan]

I adored them as a child, reviled them as a teen. I hated our poverty, and blamed them for it.

Once I left home (at 18) they seemingly suddenly got a lot smarter. Somewhere in my late 20's, I realized they were the finest people I knew, sacrificing everything for the sake of their kids.

I try to live up to their standards of love, duty, sacrifice, hard work, independence, and liberty. The only thing I've done differently is try to introduce more laughter in my own family.

[InsaneApache]

You know, I never hit my kids. I took that from my experiences as a child. I'd remembered that the worse thing about the punishment was waiting for it!

So I used to give, what my eldest son called, 'the look'.

The implied violence was a more more effective method of policing than actually giving them a clout.

Now I'm unsure of whether I've damaged them psychologically. You just can't win as a parent.

[Hax]

I think it's difficult to state at my age exactly how much you owe your parents, but I do think I have some of the best parents in the world. I know that they care for me and love me and I'm very grateful for that.

[Strike For The South]

You know, I never hit my kids. I took that from my experiences as a child. I'd remembered that the worse thing about the punishment was waiting for it!
:

See thats the problem with you Gen Xs. You got to soft on your kids. I got hit with everything and as each successive sibling came they hit them less and less

Of course I am the only sibling who has been arrested and but I can't blame myself now can I?

[ajaxfetish]

I'm not the best at staying in close touch, but I'm close to both my parents. I love visiting them when I get the opportunity and seeing them when they come to visit me.

What's really weird, though, is that I'm almost as close to my in-laws!

Ajax

[Hooahguy]

closer ti my dad then i am my mom. my dad, while very strict and demands a lot, he is much more understanding than my mother, mainly because my mother is almost constantly occupied with caring for my 2.5 year old brother.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I love my parents. I like my dad more and more everyday and he is an easy going guy. My mom is very difficult to get along with if you disagree, but she is a genuinely good person, albeit a bit extreme. She is the "manager" and my dad is the "worker". That means my dad makes the money and does the house work while my mom criticizes every little mistake he makes in those endeavors. I call her on it often, but she adopts kids and looks out for children everywhere so I feel guilty about ripping her apart afterwards.

I was a real jerk kid to them, but now I think I am the one they look towards as a role model for the rest of the kids.

Kukri's "love, duty, sacrifice, hard work, independence, and liberty'" hit the nail on the head with my parents. They are the finest people I know. Self-less to the core

[Samurai Waki]

My dad passed away a few years ago, and he was probably the best friend/mentor a guy could have. Real easy going character, but someone who worked hard, and wasn't afraid to use his hands and do the job himself if he had to. Its unfortunate my daughters will never be able to know him, he would've made a great grandfather.

My mom, is touch and go. I'll always be her child, and she'll always be my mom. I love her unconditionally, and I think so does she we just rub each other the wrong way. I'm like my dad, right down to the image, and they divorced early on.

[HoreTore]

What's really weird, though, is that I'm almost as close to my in-laws!

THAT, my friend, is a bloody miracle.

[Andres]

My mother is just too good to be true. She's a saint, really. She deserves a statue.

As for my father, I had a difficult relationship with him when I was younger, but nowadays, I think I can safely say that he's my best friend and, looking back, he did an outstanding job dealing with the difficult personality I was as a child and teenager. He deserves a statue as well, next to the one of my mom.

THAT, my friend, is a bloody miracle.

Well, here's miracle n° 2: I have an excellent relationship with my father in law, his second wife, and the children of both my father in law and his second wife (my wife's mother died of cancer at the age of 47, I never got to know here, sadly; 12 years later, my wife still misses her).

[Strike For The South]

Were a bunch of mommas boys.

[Caius]

My mother is just too good to be true. She's a saint, really. She deserves a statue.

So does my mum. She needs one also. My father also.

Both are examples to me. My mum taught me how to live, you know, do this and do not do this. My father was what everyone would call the stereotype of "middle class worker". He wakes up very early, he doesn't go to work, he doesn't have an office, his office were the cellphones and his car. Every morning I wake up and he is using the cellphone. I missed him when I was very younger, he traveled a lot and sometimes he didn't appear in a whole week. Now, I live in my parents home (it is mine also, but I prefer to say my home to my flat where I study) and they care about me and my problem. They are married at the day, and I wouldn't tolerate if they were going to divorce. I hope they won't divorce. Our family did not had good times (see the crisis of 2001, we had some cheques that were worth 0), and still they are toghether.

Were a bunch of mommas boys.

[Megas Methuselah]

Were a bunch of mommas boys.

Mummy loves to go shopping with me.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I have a difficult relationship with both my parents. Both are emotionally closed off, pessimistic and somewhat judgemental. Of the two my father has by far the worse temper, something I have inherrited, though I'm not quite as bad. I see many of my worst qualities reflected in one parent or the other.

My father is a man with a violent and explosive temper, intollerent, threatening and emotionally intense as well as closed off and non-comunicative. He is completely useless if you need advice or any kind of emotional support.

He is also intelligent, honourable, loyal, charming and well read despite a very poor education. Looking back at my childhood I can see that he struggled to conect with his own children after being brought up by a heartless and manipulative mother and a Victorian father. Overall, our relationship did not realy improve until I was 16 or so.

My mother, on the other hand, is the one I now have a difficult relationship with. Although I do love her I find her almost intollerable for any length of time. She is obsessive, overbearing and even manipulative. All because she tries to do the best for her son and her daughter.

Overall, I would say neither of us turned out as our parents would have liked. Proud as my father is of my academic achievements I know he is dissapointed by my physical weakness. my mother would like me to be more emotionally independant.

[Samurai Waki]

Man, after reading all of these posts as a parent I've decided that the only quality I want to pass off to my children is for them to have a good sense of humor, oh, and to be... responsible.

[pevergreen]

I think my problem lies with my parents being out of touch.

Not with the current generation, Dad works in telecommunications, so hes tech savy and mum works with kids, but they expect me to want to go out and get drunk all the time, like my brother, yet I stay home and play games, and if i do meet friends, I dont drink. Getting my license isnt important to me, which they can't understand, it was such a big thing for them.

[Ja'chyra]

Were a bunch of mommas boys.

This to be honest

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I think my problem lies with my parents being out of touch.

Not with the current generation, Dad works in telecommunications, so hes tech savy and mum works with kids, but they expect me to want to go out and get drunk all the time, like my brother, yet I stay home and play games, and if i do meet friends, I dont drink. Getting my license isnt important to me, which they can't understand, it was such a big thing for them.

You have a world quite literally at your fingertips -- no car needed. Nobody in my generation has absorbed that at the sinew-deep level that all of your generation accepts as a norm, even though we use the internet well and accept it as a commonplace. You have the freedom you need to establish your own sense of self -- your folks desperately needed to get out of the house to accomplish the same thing -- hence the licensure's import.

If you have also already discovered that an occasional drunk is fun but that as a regular activity it's pretty shallow, then so much the better for you.