Quote from: Alistair on December 14, 2009, 04:31:51 AM
True, what I mean by "how to speak" is how to speak properly. A friend of mine has a niece that is six years old, and due to the fact that she doesn't have a proper parent figure she doesn't speak well. It's always things like "Me want" or "I no do it" when you ask her to do something.
It's not so much the basic skills that I wouldn't want to teach, it's refining those skills and teaching them to have near flawless manners in mixed company...etc.
The hard part of parenting (from my perspective at least) is not the skills you teach, the manners you instill, or even the rules you make and how you follow through on them. For me, the hard part has been making choices when the only options all end in your child going through pain/disappointment/struggle/sadness. Or even worse, knowing that there has to be an option that won't emotionally scar your child, and yet not knowing for the life of you WHICH option that is... Or the hardest of all (for me), feeling like you've made the right choice, you're doing everything as best as you can for your child, and finding out that despite your efforts, despite thinking long and hard and weighing all options and searching your heart and sleepless nights, you STILL ended up somehow picking the option that caused your child conflict or further baggage.
People can say "we all go through pain in our life, it's the challenges that strengthen us and make us who we are", and I know that it's true, but watching your child go through those hurdles and ESPECIALLY being the cause of some of them, is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, and it makes me feel like I'm actively destroying my children one. little. incident. at a time.
I love my children with all of my heart and soul, I love having them in my life and reaping the joy and wonder that is being a parent, but "parenting" itself, I absolutely hate. It makes me feel like a horrible person, and I wish I could protect my children from every hurt out there, but I know that doing so would be even worse for them and only spare me my misery at their expense, and so I'm stuck watching them suffer through a broken family, a queer parent (they don't even know I'm trans yet, and I'm terrified to drop that on their lives), conflict between their two families, and overall "human error" in day to day decisions and even the big "life choices" made by the people who are supposed to protect them above all else.
I wish there was an "easy" button, or at the very least a "less guilt" button...
