Not a failure: “My daughter is pregnant.”
Failure: “My daughter had an abortion because she knew damn well what would happen to her if she turned up pregnant in this house.”
Not a failure: “My child is severely depressed.” “My child has debilitating anxiety.” “My child is suicidal.” “My child has learning disability.” “My child is non-neurotypical.”
Failure: “I have no idea what to do, but there’s no way I’m letting stranger into our personal lives. Professional help is for people who can’t hack it, and I don’t belong in a waiting room with that trash.”
Not a failure: “We are totally crashing and burning in the home school/private school/religious school/public school we thought would be so perfect for our kind of family.”
Failure: “We are totally crashing and burning, but if we quit, we’ll be failures as parents/let down the community/have to admit we’re wrong/change our lives around. We better keep going, so everyone will know we care about our kids.”
Not a failure: “I don’t understand my kid very well, and it’s hard to talk.”
Failure: “My kid has a great relationship with my spouse, or with her teacher, or with her friend’s mom. I undermine this relationship every chance I get, because they’re usurping me. I’m the parent.”
Not a failure: “My kid is screwing up in exactly the same ways I did or do.”
Failure: “Boy, does this look familiar, and boy does it make me feel bad. I’ll punish him double, once for each of us.”
Not a failure: “Despite our best efforts to raise him right, my kid exercised his free will and is now a druggie, an alcoholic, a criminal.”
Failure: “His name is forbidden in my home.”
Not a failure: “We are too broke to give our kids everything their friends have.”
Failure: “I must do everything possible to get more money, so we can be happy.”
Not a failure: “My child is gay.”
Failure: “I refuse to have gay children, so either the kid or the gayness has got to go.”
Not a failure: “My child has left the Church.”
Failure: “I raise Catholic children, so I guess this is no longer my child. How could he betray Me this way?”
Not a failure: “I just said or did exactly the wrong thing to my kid.”
Failure: “We must never speak of this again.”
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A version of this post was originally published in 2014.
Photo by Alon via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Link to original article:
https://www.simchafisher.com/2014/05/09/parents-who-fail-and-parents-who-dont/
My kids are still babies (2 year old and an almost 8 month old), and pretty much everyday there is something new to feel guilty about and I know things will only get harder and more complicated as they age.
I feel like this is a stereotype (almost like a script for an anti-faith movie). I know many, many parents (myself included) who are not “successes” nor have perfect children or family lives. I’ve rarely run across a loving parent who has the failure attitude you’ve depicted. Have you actually heard parents say these things? They are certainly “lines” that could be put in the mouth of a “bad” parent, but how many parents have you actually heard express these ideas?
Sure, I have heard parents saying the things that would categorize them as failures. But I think you’re mistaking the goal of this piece. It wasn’t to call out bad parental behavior; it was to reassure parents who *feel* like failures that they almost certainly *aren’t,* even if they and their kids are going through some hard and awful things.
These attitudes don’t have to be expressed verbally to affect a child.
Thanks for doing this. I often feel like a failure as a parent and there isn’t much out there that is valuable, last time I googled the topic.
Parents need encouragement today. Especially parents of large families. I feel like it’s hard to meet society’s expectations for kids if you don’t have the endless (
Time & resourced
God bless you for this, Simcha. Many of the ‘not a failure’ scenes apply to our family. I strive to ensure none of the failures do (and don’t always succeed).
jj