Reply #32: exception

[LeighAnn]

With all due respect, I have to take exception to your statement,

"But then again, parenting is not something that anyone gets training for. This may be most of the problem."

First of all, for centuries mankind received "parenting training" by watching their own parents, and by helping their parents care for their younger siblings (back in the day, most families had lots of kids so you learned to take care of babies by growing up taking care of babies).

Secondly, you find me a high school in America that doesn't have mandatory "Family Life" classes.

It wasn't until my own "family life" class in 11th grade that I found out how horrible my parents were. To think, they spanked me a few times and sometimes they teased me! According to the textbook, I was physically and emotionally abused as a child. At that moment I became a "victim" (even though I hadn't been spanked in 10 years, suddenly I realized how victimized I had been by my child-abuser parents).

No, my parents didn't live up to the Family Living textbook at all. It turned out, they were doing almost everthing wrong. I spent a lot of time in my 20s resenting my shoddy upbringing, which as a thirty-something I now realize was appropriate, and wonderful.

No, there are plenty of ways to learn parenting, it's just that in our modern society most of them are wrong.