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User	Acid | 2006-06-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Family you say?.......................um............. You need family, they’re like pillars to a temple, without them the temple can and surely will crumble in upon itself, but while they support you, you’re going to breathe easier. I mean I don’t have kids or anything, I’m practactlly a kid myself, but the family thing is easy. Just love them, and they should love you back. But if they don’t then you should look for other love sources, if you feel a taint in what my psych teacher refers to as the "love bucket" (all wierdness aside, by love bucket he means: since most of your nerves pass through the guteral area, you feel some emotions there i.e. guilt, ect.) then search for a healthy source of real love, not a cheap love substitute, (i.e. for sex, for money, ect.) and bond to it. So take it how you like, thats fine, but that’s kinda my opinion. Acid

User	onetruesmartass | 2006-06-01 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Hm, interesting topic. Well, the purpose of my family is to drive me out of my ever lovin’ mind. As for the parenting side of the topic, I would say a good parent would be one that meters out dicipline and affection equally, that accepts their children for who they are regardless of religious or sexual beliefs, and that gives their children the freedom to discover themselves while maintaining that safety net. Now, a bad parent is one that not only shoves their own beliefs down their childrens throats, loads them down with unrealistic expectations and tries to live vicariously. I believe that people who teach their children hatred towards others, be it religious, racial or sexual, should be charged with abuse. But hey, that’s just me. *onetruesmartass*

User	joeyalphabet | 2006-06-01 |
Subject	untitled
Message	I don’t think there is a single parent who doesn’t have something they did (or didn’t do) that they regret. There are no road maps or experts to turn to. It’s just you (and perhaps your significant other) and the kid. And we make mistakes. I know I have and will continue to. All I can do as a parent is try to teach my sons what I believe is right, try to give them a good example to follow and hope and pray for the best. That’s all any parent can really do…

User	kanu | 2006-06-01 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Sometimes, amongst opulences a civilisation might have, there is mention of the rites of family - in otherwords the next generation (for better or worse) is going to determine things - the young ones become the old ones and the old ones become the dead ones Generally most people view their elder generation as too stiff, theri generation as properly balanced and the younger generation as too loose and whimsical - so the function of family is meant to sort of combat the inevitable decline ifluenced by time

User	angelfyre | 2006-04-09 |
Subject	untitled
Message	i wouldnt know....but I am reading a novel right now called Brave New World and in this novel there is no such thing as parents...or family...and their society is crumbling. So parents must have some use

User	Fizzlethorpe | 2006-04-09 |
Subject	Parenting is about
Message	Parenting is about doing the "right" thing, insofar as one has the capacity to do so.

User	stefhy | 2006-04-09 |
Subject	Answer
Message	Well, life in general has made me who I am. I’ve learned from things alot faster than alot of my friends have, I often feel like I should be walking among older people just so they can understand me a little bit more. My blood parents aren’t together. My dad has made me a patient, understanding person. My mother has reminded me that strength and courage can be exactly the same thing - or atleast they work so close together that you need both to use one. However, it is my family with no blood line that has taught me to use the strength, courage and patience I have in such a way that I can make better choices and walk down a slightly smoother past than that of my older sister. She went through almost the same thing I am, but because she was with the certain people (friends) she was with, she made many mistakes that I thankgod I won’t have to. I’ve come very close to following in her steps, but I was guided in another direction my the people that love me most. I don’t know if this answers your question... But it sure made me think again, because maybe the mistakes my parents had made and my sister had made, was a way of teaching me more (and much faster) about life. Perhaps they’re bad parenting, wasn’t so bad after all? haha, I’m gonna go before I confuse myself. Nice topic tho.

User	mae | 2006-04-08 |
Subject	untitled
Message	how would you (your children’s mother) decide you did well as a parent? what kind of "success" do your children need to achieve for you to understand that if any? That’s a valid question, SD - especially if you like at the wildly different lives of my children. First, let me say that two of my children were adopted as ’older, at risk’ adoptees - they were 3 and 5 when we adopted them and ours was the 8th home they’d been in. Now, I will not tell you which kids they were. I think it makes a difference, simply because of their interaction with our family, but you may not. I consider it successful parenting if, as I stated before, your child grows into an adult who contributes in some way to society, is self-sufficient (meaning not living off the state or mom and dad!), has good morals, feels compassion for those less fortunate than they and has empathy for others. My older daughter and eldest child was always the champion of the underdog - I don’t think the existence of that characteristic has anything necessarily to do with the way she was raised, but I do think I nurtured it in her. She is now a guidance counselor in a high school in Oregon, a loving mother of two, and she’s not really sure she likes me very much. My eldest son is a mortgage broker in California, making tons of money. He is not married, is extremely generous, but I’m not always sure about his motivation or his ethics. However, he and I are very close and we can talk about anything. My middle son is - well, I’m not sure where he is. We have very little contact with him. He is a difficult person to be around and he pretty much rejects our life style and values. My younger daughter is married and is a stay-at-home mom of two little boys. She and her husband teach Sunday School and work in children’s programs. She is an ebullient, delightful person to be around, a fact which I did not always appreciate, but certainly do now. My youngest son and youngest child is a contractor sales rep for a lumber company. He is married and has two incredibly gorgeous children (the best-looking of all our grandchildren!). He has risen steadily in his organization and has been told that he’s being groomed by the owner to take over the business. He is learning to balance work and being dad and a husband - sometimes with difficulty. He is slow-talking and slow-moving but is probably the smartest of all my children. Now, I only have one college graduate among them, but they are all contributing; I only have one who is making a lot of money, but they are all self-sufficient; I do have questions about the morals and ethics of two of them, but not about the other three; they all feel compassion for others and all (possibly except for the middle one) feel empathy toward others. They’ve all made their share of poor choices - and they’ve all turned themselves around. The eldest and the youngest have made the least number of poor choices. I am pleased with all of them and disappointed in all of them, which is the state of most parents of adult children. They all heard me tell them that I love them, frequently. They’ve all been my guinea pigs in the process of parenting, for each child’s position is unique. They’ve all survived my mistakes - and I made a ton of them - and they’ve all thrived under the things I did right. I think I did okay with them. I do know that it’s a whole lot more fun being grandmother to their children than it was being mother to them! Things are easier - I’m easier. mae

User	Solomon Disease | 2006-04-07 |
Subject	untitled
Message	that was all good stuff. i’m trying to understand this stuff right now. so stef do you think that the people around you are responsible for making you who you are rather than your blood parents? and david how is your family important? i mean as a lot of psychologists suggest -- we are all injured growing up. if your family isn’t responsible for injuring you then who is? and why do we feel the need to appreciate those who have injured us? that is if you don’t come from a stable family life type thing. and mae -- i see that you probably are a good mother. congrats. now for the question -- how would you (your children’s mother) decide you did well as a parent? what kind of "success" do your children need to achieve for you to understand that if any?

User	DavidHirt | 2006-04-07 |
Subject	untitled
Message	I’m the oldest of eight children. I know about families not getting along. I also know that now that half of us are adults and mostly moved out... family means a lot more. We enjoy coming together... being together. Birthdays and holidays aren’t a chore. They’re pleasant. You’l realize just how important your family is to you when they aren’t there all the time.

User	stefhy | 2006-04-07 |
Subject	Brain Fart...
Message	"more than ordinary" ... I meant ’’less than ordinary’’ lol... I won’t get into that, I just needed to make sure it made sense... And me with my tired eyes, and lack of brain power - I’m still not sure if it does... Oh well, that wasn’t the reason for my post anyway :P

User	stefhy | 2006-04-07 |
Subject	My thoughts...
Message	Well, it’s weird that someone should start asking ’what is family’, and the fact that someone already brought up the over-used definition: "extended group of relations sharing blood ties’’. Truthfully, for the past few months I’ve been...Well, figuring things out I guess. And in this time, there’s things that my friends and my boyfriend have said to me that opened my eyes just a little more. It’s always been known around here that the family I live with at home isn’t the traditional family, and our problems are little more than ordinary... Well, I’m a very secretive person, and my friends were getting worried about me one day. They ended up pulling me aside and saying ’’ If there’s anything that needs to be said, don’t you think it should be said to us? You can’t escape your true family, we love you too much to let you down’’. I never really took it upon myself to think of them as family, or to think of myself as family to them -but they had, have and do. They’re the ones I count on. I haven’t quite opened up to them like they want me to, but they’re allowing me space to come out in my own time... They are more family than I could’ve hoped for. Not only them, but I was also talking to my boyfriend, not about me feeling down or upset( I try not to tell him that all the time because he’s just as emotionally weak as I am, if not more.) We were just speaking and joking around a little bit, and out of nowhere he tells me of his plans to move in together - now I’m only 16, almost 17, so I did take this as a little bit of a shock that he loved me so much to invision a future together and inthe same home...etc - and a quote from him was, " Once we move in together, whether we have children or not, you are my family... And I’m yours." --and then he goes on to say how much he loves me *tickly heart* lol. Anyway, in all that talking about family I realized, all this time I’ve been worried about my blood ’family’, how I dont fit in, how different I am and how much I wish I could just get away from it... I don’t need to worry about it at all. Even though I’m living in a house with people I’m not sure I know who call themselves family and don’t mean it , I go to school with people that have made my life so much more meaningful, and they mean every word. It’s amazing what you miss when you’re not looking in the right direction...

User	mae | 2006-04-06 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Underprotective would be considered negligence or even abuse. As we all know, the young of the human species is, at first, essentially helpless and must be cared for and protected just to survive. That, in a nutshell, is parenting. Now good parenting is something else. The ultimate goal is to rear children who are self-sufficient, contributing members of society, with good morals, compassion for those less fortunate for themselves and empathy for others. How to do that is the subject of a vast array of how-to books and varies with the opinions of whomever is the most exalted pediatrician of the day. Basically, children need to be fed, sheltered, protected from physical harm, loved and taught - any number of things. The first three are pretty straightforward. It’s the loving and the teaching that cause most of the debate. I raised five children and from the time they were each 3 or 4 or so, they had to do chores. It started with just picking up their toys; when they could handle sheets, they had to make their beds; about 3rd grade (when they could comfortably reach the kitchen sink), they did dishes. They all knew what it was to have to work. We tried not to overburden them, though at the time, they all thought they were going to die from overwork. Now, I used to have a colleague at work who had one son. She had to practically beg him (never threatened him - with anything, not even loss of privileges) to unload the dishwasher. When he was in the 6th grade, she bought him a $70 pair of sunglass - for skiing, except that she let him wear them all the time. Well, 6th graders like to impress their friends, so he took them to school and lent them to a friend of his. Bye-bye $70 sunglasses. No consequences. I don’t know how that young man is doing now, but I’d bet self-sufficiency isn’t one of his strong points. The point is, I felt that I was loving my children by teaching them to take care of themselves and their surroundings. She felt she was loving her child by giving him everything he wanted. And there is just as big a difference on every aspect of child-rearing. The problem is, we never know how well we did until the kid is all grown up. By then, of course, it’s too late. mae

User	Solomon Disease | 2006-04-06 |
Subject	untitled
Message	anyonw else?

User	Solomon Disease | 2006-04-06 |
Subject	untitled
Message	but that was a lot of good thoughts and info. good stuff.

User	Solomon Disease | 2006-04-06 |
Subject	untitled
Message	that’s because underprotective isn’t a real word

User	DavidHirt | 2006-04-06 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Family is a rather broad term. Traditionally it’s an extended group of relations sharing blood ties. But others define a family as any group that comes together for mutual support and friendship. Parents? Once again... traditionally your parents are those who gave birth to you. But in our society today it has become those who raised you. So I guess the PURPOSE of parents is to raise children... but that purpose is defined by them having had the children in the first place. The deffinitions are changing all the time. I imagine good parenting means making sure your children are raised to be able to make good choices and survive in the world. I would say a good parent teaches their children to make god choices to help society or other people in general. Bad parenting would entail not providing those things for thier children. Over protectiveness prevents a child from understanding how to make those good choices. Being under protective means a dead child or one that is cynical and prone to make bad choices. I’ve never actually heard any one use the word under-protective.

User	Solomon Disease | 2006-04-06 |
Subject	untitled
Message	noone has any ideas on what parenting is about?