Parental decisions

The recent Circumcision thread prompted me to consider the question of decisions made on my behalf during my child hood. Certainly we have all had regrets or curiosities of how our lives may have been altered if our parents made different decisions on some subjects. What decisions were made in your childhood that you regretted, or wished you could have better articulated your desires in argument for your point?

As a child I was approached in the 2nd grade with an opportunity for some advanced courses. My mother responded in such a way to suggest I was incapable of keeping up. I later realized that the issue was not so much that she did not want me to attend but that she was concerned about the cost and if she could afford it. I was really disappointed about missing out, it was a real boost for a quiet and shy student as I was to be brought into a special club. If I had known then what the issue was I would have tried to persuade her to allow me to pay for it with my own savings. I wonder at times if being held back it hampered my own desires to excel. It may seem like such a minor thing but it certainly made enough of an impact for me to regret it to this day.

On a more serious note, I learned only within the last two years that at one point in my life my absentee father had suggested a desire to try to enter the lives of myself and my brother. My parents were married and he came back from deployment a different man and abandoned us all. When he told his mother this, she told him to stay away and that my mother was doing a fine job of raising us. She was a good woman and I am sure was only attempting to give us a decent (possibly less confusing life) with our stepfather. It really would have helped me at the very least in my childhood to know that he had considered me once as I felt completely abandoned. I had never met him. I really wish someone would have had the consideration to at least ask my opinion on the matter. Perhaps it was for the best but I will never know.

 

Well, for me the decision to transition to the opposite sex was put off largely because of my parents. I told them the truth about gender identity when I was fourteen; it wasn't until four years later, after several therapists and time in a mental hospital, that they finally let me start to live my life the way I needed to. And the biggest problem that transsexuals have is time. As we get older, secondary sex characteristics continue to advance, so I lost a lot of time that could have been spent counteracting those characteristics of my body.

That said, my mother has apologized profusely for that, and other decisions she's made at my expense, so I don't hold it against her (my dad hasn't apologized, but I won't hold it against him either). I love both my parents and always will.

 

I'm a dad now.
You can try to do it all but ultimately you do the best you can.
There's some luck involved too.

 

Yeah, my mom always said "Parenting doesn't come with an instruction manual." And I see now that my parents just wanted to keep me safe and wanted what they thought was best for me. But one thing I'd like to point out (if my opinion is worth anything) is that parents will never know everything that goes on in a child's life, and it's what they don't know that can make it more difficult to handle situations. Sometimes, it comes down to trusting that the child has their own plan, and just being there in the wings for when they need guidance.

 

I can't imagine how I would proceed in this situation to be honest. I would probably lean towards a therapist myself, not as a "cure" but I think teens can sometimes be somewhat irrational and it is important to make sure that is what they want before proceeding further. I believe that this at least was a part of the recommended procedure but finding a therapist that had expertise in this area would be highly important. I would also lean on one of the physicians I work with who had some extensive experience in his internship with a urologist who worked with a lot of transgender patients in the transformation process. Honestly, as a parent I think I would be as confused as the child on what to do. I would probably need a lot of advice and support on how to handle it. I am glad to see that you have been able forgive your parents for their dealings with such a confusing subject.

I went through something similar but my mother finally gave in. I think she feared that it was going to wind up being a huge expense to her in the future, I can't blame her there. She had a way of saying things that was unique. She would say, "you really don't want to do that, do you?" When that was said, I just knew that there was something in the back of her head that meant no. Not being one to argue with my parents I would respond, "I guess not... " and wander away not wanting to displease my parents.

 

My mom and I talked about it a few weeks ago, and one thing she told me was that overall, she wanted me to be 100% sure that this was something I wanted for myself. But as I said in my reply to fflowley, it's the things that the parent does not know that cause the most problems. My mother had no way of knowing what was going through my mind, or how long it had been. Considering that I knew I wanted this way before I told my parents, I feel that my mom could have been less of a skeptic, but again, I don't hold it against her. Plus, she has helped me since I entered college (she's helped me replace my wardrobe with female attire and will help me with my transition where possible).

 

There was a string of child kidnappings around the time I was a small child. So to "protect me" my mother incessantly repeated one thing: "If I can't see you, somebody can steal you". Which is alright if you expand on it as the kid ages to include rational situations and reactions, build up a good ruleset. What's not alright however is leaving it JUST at that and then deliberately dissappearing to terrify the kid whenever you go somewhere.

 

Yikes! She was probably trying to make you more aware of your surroundings but how scary for a little kid.

 

She also constantly told me in gory anatomical detail exactly how and where I would be raped, mutilated, tortured, murdered, and my body cut into little pieces and spread around town. And that if I was lucky it would be in that order. Usually right after she stopped deliberately hiding from me and showed up to act as though it was my fault.

 

So um.. damn Shadow. My only response is that I'm seriously sorry that you had to go through that. My father would say some crazy shit like that too - it's still wih me and I'm 32.

My childhood was difinitely not ideal, but you learn to adapt because you really have no choice. Having to adapt is a by-product of bad decisions. I get that parents make mistakes. I get that raising children is hard. I have a daughter. I know. But I cannot tolerate consistent bad decisions under the guise of doing what is best. A perfect example of this is my father beating me multiple times to teach me a lesson. Not a wack on the behind but beatings that nearly got him dishonorably discharged. Another example is my mother selling drugs to supplement our income because my father wasnt paying child support. This was total bs because we didn't need the money. She had a gambling problem and needed the extra cash to fund her habit.

Now I love my parents. I am the biggest mamas boy and everyone says im just like my father (he found Jehovah several years ago and is now the dad I wish I had growing up). But at several points in my life I wanted my father to drop dead. His excuse for getting beat by grandpa as a kid doesn't work with me. You have to improve on what you received as a child. You cannot blame your parents for your shortcomings. So I do my best to remember the positive traits they instilled in me and build upon that for my little girl.

 

Yeah to this day she and I are incapable of having a civil conversation anywhere near that topic, she's too arrogantly convinced that the only thing she needs to be "sorry" for is that I took it so wrong and she did the best she could with what she had and I'm still trying to make up for upwards of a decade of literally not leaving my apartment except to go to school or shopping. I mean I just graduated college with my bachelors and I've done so little that it's reasonably possible for me to list the majority of times I've been out or done something in total.As much as I'm all for the optimism thing I'm running into more and more situations where I'm just utterly incapable of even relating to someone for sheer lack of any kind of comparable life experience.

Out of all the parental decisions I think are horrible imho depriving kids of life itself is the worst. You can learn to control a temper, beat an addiction, break cycles of abuse... but you can't fix nothing, once life's gone that's it, you're stuck with the daily wage grind and whatever you can eke out of it because there aren't any do-overs.

 

You are right. I would take beatings over what your mom imposed upon you any day. At least I was given the freedom to go out and get into trouble to "earn" those beatings.

As for the time lost - fuck it. The more time spent being angry about the past the less time you have to get out there. Not that you're doing that but you get my meaning. If you haven't been making serious goals to experience life since getting your bachelors (congratulations by the way) then now is the time. Start small by catching a game or picking up a hobby you always wanted to try. I picked up snowboarding and I'm terrible. Go to a local bar (if you drink) and become a regular. Bartenders for me have been part friend, part pyschologist, part life coach all in one. Plus they are the best source for what's going on in your city.

I wish you the best Shadow. And remember that your life now will be what you make it.

 

No, my life now will be taking care of her probably for the next year while she recovers from having a chunk of her lung cut out along with the tumor inside it and then trying to get into the MA program at my university so I can be done with school just barely before I'm 30 and start paying her back that 20,000+ for tuition and books. I know this seems borderline threadjacking, but imho there is nothing more productive to add to a discussion of parental decisions than a living in-progress example of the of the consequences of just taking it for granted that your kids will "be there" for you, or "pay you back".

I'd love to buy into the whole "first day of the rest of your life" thing but that already exists, it's called going off to college.