Middle aged man baby with a lovely wife with aspirations of having a child here reporting in. Not having read any comments… this hits hard and goddamn you OP 😖
… and now I’m kind of sad.
I watched my mom and dad grow old, not sure about up.
Brilliant! I sure was child when I was raising mine but I really didn’t think of my own parents like. I have to mull this over
Good stuff mate 💯🧉
As a dad, I think about this fact so much.
I still feel just like a kid with no clue about everything, but I still have to do stuff, because I’m responsible for my own kids now.
I feel the same way often. And the kids look up to me with the absolute confidence and trust that their dad knows what he’s doing and will know what to do when they have trouble. I know that’s how it should be so they can be children. But at the same time I know it’s just not true and I’m just winging it.
my kids have a pretty good grasp that i’m also just finding my way in the world, and that it’s okay.
i feel like, anyone who comes across as though they have it all figured out are likely just unaware that the catalyst that brings it all crashing down is never really THAT far away.
Yeah, there’s a balance of “I’m not perfect, but I will always be here to look out for you” that has to be struck. Too far one way and the moment you break, the kids are gonna be scared and confused at what’s happening. And too far the other puts the responsibility on the child to take on a parent role (and believe me when I say that fucks you up)
Ngl wing it with confidence and reassurance and when they grow up it’ll be even more impressive
You need to be a little more generous to yourself, friend. Compared to a kid, you do know what you’re doing, and thankfully kid troubles are mostly not a big deal, so you probably will know what to do. From a certain point of view.
Do you think there is value in teaching kids, from a young age, that their parents are not infallible? If not, why? If so, how would you teach that to a kid in a way they would understand and incorporate?
Not the person above, but I think it’s very important to teach that parents aren’t infallible or all-knowing. Everyone makes mistakes, even the people we base ourselves off so much. Admitting mistakes and saying you’re sorry to your kid when you’re actually wrong can help build their humility
Besides, kids tend to repeat and emulate their parents’ styles when they have their own kids
I think kids come to learn this on their own. But at the same time, normalizing being open about emotions is a good thing, to help promote an environment where saying “I’m okay, I’m just having a rough day today” is something that’s just normal.
But there’s a sense of security to parents being infallible that can be dangerous to break. I lost that feeling with my mother when I was five, in a pretty major way to be fair, and for the next few years I had nightmares about everyone I loved dying and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. Kids are powerless to the world around them in a lot of ways, and rely on adults to protect them and teach them how to protect themselves. So by seeing your parents as able to get through anything, you have a sense of safety at home.
So basically, normalize small challenges and openings to not be perfect, but be trying your best. Allow being human. But make sure the kid knows that no matter what, you will make sure both you and them are okay. Normalize the bumps in the road, and always reaching the end alright.
My parents failed me a lot. My childhood sucked, and because of that I go through life numb.
I couldn’t even start to heal until I realized my parents are people. Flawed people. The first time my mom came to me for reassurance, I understood the insecure woman that was doing her best and putting up a strong front.
The time my dad opened up and almost apologized for what was so obviously the wrong thing, I saw a man who isn’t unwilling to acknowledge his failings, he’s fundamentally unable to recognize them.
There are no adults, we’re all just children putting up a front. It makes you feel safe to think the people in control of us are competent… If you like how things are. Otherwise, it’s like living under a cruel god
Understanding they’re people doing the best they can makes you feel a hell of a lot less alone when things aren’t good
Believing your parents are infallible is good for one thing - equating belief in authority with safety. It doesn’t make them happier or better equipped to actually handle the world - it only makes them feel safe under very specific circumstances
Don’t tell your children everything, but don’t lie to them. You’re responsible for teaching them how the world works - lie to them about your own competence, and they’ll be crippled in understanding until they see through your lies
With the still-developing prefrontal, good luck.
Was out with my daughter and her friend, and we found a wallet on the ground. The friend picked it up and immediately handed it to me, and now I’m ‘what am I meant to do with it?’. But only in my head, because I’m the grown up who just can deal with everything.
Try to find an address in the wallet and mail it. Otherwise, hand it to the police.
It felt wrong to put it in my bag, so I held it out in front of me like a dirty nappy, and took it to the nearby shopping centre’s concierge.
Yep: you gotta hold it so that it’s clearly visible as not in your pocket and thus claimed by you.
This, oddly, seems to be The Way.
I’m almost 40 and still feel this way. My kids are 15 and 7.
That’s why I think people shouldn’t have kids until they have at least a couple of hundred years of life experience.
I realize that’s a joke, but we waited until our 30s to have a kid specifically so we could have life experience and more financial stability before taking on that responsibility. I think that’s the best way to do it. Being 46 with a 13-year-old is a lot easier than it would have been for me 13 years ago.
The other side of that is worth considering too. Being 46 with a 23 year old would be great.
People should have 10 years of experience with having a kid before they’re allowed to have a kid
And at least two related certs.
You’ll doom humanity like that.
I’m a mom whose kids are all grown, and I still feel it to this day. 😂
I’m glad to read that!
Lmao I’m a grown kid who’s helping teach my dad a lot and it’s so funny to see the back and forth, to see him excited about his work softball team or messing something up. He’s one of those “always need to look fully in control” types so it’s refreshing to see him actually be human sometimes
This makes me sad. I just realized that I could be part of it but I spent most time away drinking, partying or playing vidya, and not caring
If you really feel like getting sentimental, check out this Wait But Why, specifically the “Relationships” section. There’s also this awesome Kurzgesagt video which was inspired by it.
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Don’t forget about the time wasted on social media or other useless stuff on the internet.
Don’t watch that video if you have to focus on something else in the next hour. That shit fucked me up.
Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans
Imagine that first strand of DNA trying to replicate in the young Earth against all the odds. Successfully changing and growing more complex, gradually improving over billions of years. All that toil and struggle will end with you unless you spaff into a fertile hole.
Such elegant wording
It’s never too late mate. Maybe you could still do something about it.
It was weird for me when I was finally older than my parents when they had me, and I was still a barely functioning human being. Props to you, mom and dad. You did the best you could and I appreciate that you brought me into this world (most days).
Because society and our parents themselves gaslight us into thinking they’re perfect. It kind of annoys me that not seeing one’s parents as flawed human beings is treated as a failure of the child. I knew my parents made some bad decisions. It wasn’t my idea to give them absolute power over every aspect of my life.Yeah, they’re flawed human beings like me, but I’m the one who suffered because they wouldn’t admit to their flaws and reconsider their decisions. It wasn’t me who couldn’t tell they weren’t perfect.
I’m raising a kid right now and he has some really bad takes, but I make it a point to talk through his choices with him. Definitely still feel like I have a lot to learn.
So is this community just going through Reddit and verbatim reposting old threads?
Reddit front page was also a bunch of old Reddit threads/memes getting reposted. Feels just like home.
What do you think the name is? (I have already) red it!
Fine with me. The posts are new.
Yeah
This place needs content, can’t have your cake and eat it too. Just unfollow the reddit sub if you don’t want to see it.
That is honestly such a pathetic content goblin retort.
What do you mean with the cake thing in this context?
I beleive they mean you can’t expect there to be content and also expect it to be fresh and new.
I think “have your cake and eat it too” is a little ill fitting but its the general gist of wanting something and then wanting it in another way which is not compatible with the first way.
Just wait until the bots get here, hoo boy.
Followed by ad companies making shower thoughts about their products.
Followed by Propaganda accounts having shower thoughts not about Tiannamen Square.
I’m hoping bots won’t be too much of a thing, because farming account karma isn’t a thing. There will be some, but hopefully it’s not literally everything like Reddit was by the end.
Followed by Propaganda accounts having shower thoughts not about Tiannamen Square.
Lemmygrad seems to be full of tankies and has been here for a long time…
Let me make it feel like home: “triscuits are just savory shredded wheat” ™
When you are a grown up you don’t realize you are watching your parents die.
Man you didn’t have to say that… :(
Life is short. Time moves quicker and quicker and you always think you have more… It just occurred to me last month that my mom will turn 70 next year and just how little time I have left with my parents.
Yeesh that’s a dark hard truth I’ve begun living. All three parents on their own glide slope and it’s just one mild crisis after another.
I definitely started to see my parents decline in my early 20s. They’re still going, but age is coming for them fast.
Even when my mother was in a hospital bed we’d brought into the house, thin like a toothpick, I was still wondering what her odds of survival were. It’s so easy to be in denial. Then one moment she just stopped breathing and that was it.
My daughter had to experience this at 13.
She and her mom didn’t get along at all, and so she’s got that to deal with. She’s a kid so she probably would have done things differently if she could have managed to actually believe it was the end. It wasn’t her fault, her mom was mean, but she still has to carry on with that thought.
Life would be great if it wasn’t for the end being so unpredictable. It really gets to you when you think about it.
I seen a picture of my mom in her 20s when I was about 25 and it just slammed me for like a month. We rarely talk and there isn’t much I can do about it and time just keeps slipping away. I look at my fiancé’s family and they’re up in the morning calling each other right away. Every morning either she calls her mom or her mom calls her. Our children sit down with her and talk to grandma. Her sister calls not long after that.
I know that we should do our best to stay close with the people we love, but personalities are what they are and my people are extreme introverts. We call each other when we need something and we never say no, but that’s about it.
I’m sorry about your mom.
When my grandfather was dying, there was a moment I will never forget. He was a very religious man and raised very religious children. I was the only atheist in the room. We had been told that it was over, there was no hope, it was the end. He had survived heart attacks and cancers, and he believed that he survived those things because god renewed him.
Any way. He was laying there on that bed, surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
My aunt was drinking a tea. Out of nowhere he sat up in the bed, took off the oxygen mask, smiled from ear to ear, grabbed her tea and took a drink. He got up on his feet, took another drink, started to walk forward and then fell back on the bed looking like he’d just been completely defeated.
Being religious, my family interpreted this as something divine.
I seen a man who believed that god would save him jump up with a rush of faith only to be knocked down by reality. He believed with all of his heart in that moment that god had “delivered” him. All he had to do was get up and make it so.
He didn’t put the mask back on and took his last breaths shortly after that.
He was a great man, and he died surrounded by almost all of the life he created. I’m glad he got that. I hope I get something like that.
The last thing he ever said to me I couldn’t understand through the mask and I pretended to hear him because of how hard he was struggling to say it. I’ll probably be wishing I knew what that was at the end of my own life if I have time to think about it.
I hope you’re doing well. Take care bud.
Thank you for telling me. That was beautiful. I’m crying at McDonalds.
I had a Peruvian GF for a while and she spoke with her mother back in Peru every single day.
That inspired me to contact my father a little more. I live in the same city as him. I should reach out so much more. His wife tells me he loves when I’m there.
I did get him an xbox for christmas a few years ago, and we play world of tanks together. He’s nearing 80, and knows the specs and history of like every tank. Like which battles it was deployed it, what engineering challenges they had to design it, etc. He was a mechanic in the army and he’s a geek.
He’s rather inhibited in many ways. Same template as me, but less lucky with the psychedelics, yoga, parties, ceremony, festivals that helped draw me out and teach me to be social.
He’s got social skills of course. He’s wise. He overcomes that introversion, and his wife helps push him out and connect him. He loves to tell stories of technical problems he solved in the forest service. Seems to have an eidetic memory for all things mechanical.
But if he’s not exercising, he starts to fade. Luckily he does exercise. I also have to hold back my own desire to push him on health stuff. What I keep running into is that it’s not really my right to extend his life if he doesn’t want to. I’m conflicted about how selfish I’m being when I’m encouraging him to take care of himself.
He keeps mentioning that his father died around his age. Finally I was like “Dad, Grandpa died in an industrial accident. It wasn’t his natural death”.
I dunno. It’s a weird thing, but he seems a little too resigned to death. Or I’m in denial again. I don’t want to lose him, but I will.
At his age you definitely have came to terms with loss.
One of my closest friends was in a horrible relationship for 24 years. All she wanted was for him to marry her and give her the life he promised over and over again. She was so scared to lose him. He’d cheat, she’d forgive him. He’d do it again, she’d forgive him.
He was the only man she had ever slept with. She never even thought about being with anyone else. She just sat there and suffered. He was 15 years older than her and a very prominent member of the community. He started preaching and he stopped having sex with her to “be right with the lord”.
In less than two years her whole world collapsed. First her baby brother died, then her mother, then her father, then her older brother. Her only other sibling tried to rob her older brother’s daughter of her inheritance. She helped the daughter win in court.
So in less than two years she lost her ENTIRE family.
One day she called me, like she had done a hundred times before, “I’m leaving him.”
I said to her, “You ain’t gonna break it off with him. You’re just upset with him because he’s the same jerk he’s always been.”
She replied, “angryseal, I have lost. I have lost and lost and lost, and you know what? Life goes on. It’ll keep going on until I die too. I have learned that I can survive loss, that I will always be facing loss. It’s just around the corner. I’m not scared to lose him. I’m not scared to die, and you know what? This won’t kill me. I’m going to forget the whole relationship and find someone and just have sex. No strings. I swear to god.”
She’s had a friend with benefits for over a year now. She’s totally flipped into this person who is 100% in control of what she can be in control of.
She’s 51 years old, looks 35, and she’s having the time of her life.
I thought this related somehow but my toddler is crying in my lap and I can’t remember my point. I can’t focus enough to go back and try. Sorry if this don’t connect and sorry for any mistakes. I can’t proofread at the moment. :p
My mother has complained for years how her adopted parents didn’t do a good job raising her. At the time they had three kids of their own and then adopted my mother and her sibling who are their nieces. One day I did the math and pointed out to my mother that her adopted parents were only 25 when they took on 5 kids and did she think their age had something to do with it? It blew her mind and gave her a whole new perspective … for a few minutes. Then she jumped back on the whinge wagon. Sometimes what we want to see is more important than objective observations.
I always thought the universe did a nasty by making the ideal breeding age for humans to be when it really is one of the worst times mentally/emotionally. 20 or so yrs later when more experience (and hopefully wisdom) has been gained, the eggs are shrivelling and the bullets are misfiring.
when we had our first child, we are borderline bankrupt , our bank account has only two digit numbers, we are out of work, relying on family to provide us food. Eleven years later with lots of hard work we have bought our first home. I am forever thankful to the people who helped us get us through
