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Originally Posted by DanaC
I agree wit MTP on this one. As adults we are responsible for ourselves; our parents also share some responsibility for the person we are and the journey we're on. Maybe not legally, but morally.
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I agree completely. Morally responsible, not materially responsible. The Lord knows there is a world filled with screwed up parents.
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And the idea that parents know what's best for their children is so bloody dependent upon the individual parents and the individual children it's almost not worth making the point in the first place. MTP had a right, as a struggling youngster, to have her needs taken into account.
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Agreed. But that is the way the world is set up. Parents are responsible for children and there is no way around that. You can only do the best you can as you know how within the constructs of your own experiences. It is never perfect. I am not sure how you can say that the majority of parents do not believe that they don't know what is best for their children. Don't we see examples of that all the time, someone telling someone else that they don't know how to parent or that they are doing it wrong? Based on what? Other than obvious physical or emotional abuse you would have a hard time telling a parent they were wrong in the way they chose to raise their kids.
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Parents make mistakes and so do children. Parents can often offer insight and wisdom by dint of their extended time on the planet. But they can also offer bad advice, damaging counsel and assist in trapping you into an unhappy life. having done so there is a moral weight on them. Having set you onto a destructive path and equipped you with the wrong tools for the world you're in, it is then a bit of a cheek to wash their hands of you when you've reached your majority and are trying to mend things.
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True to some extent, but "trying to mend things" is quite different from saying, screw off, I know what is best for me, but you have to bail me out anyway becasue you are my parents. That is not going to fly.
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If I were her, I would not tell them about my life. There are aspects of my life I have never told my father, because I know he wouldn't get it. Mum knows, because she does get it. Why tell Dad stuff that would give him a negative view of his daughter and possibly make him unhappy?
One of the very few things I regret in life, was telling Gran, in a flurry of teenage arrogance, that I was an atheist. All defiance and nihilistic zeal, I was determined to tear down the edifice of faith. All I actually did was hurt her. Her beliefs seemed (and still do) ludicrous and psychologically damaging to me. But for her, all she heard was that her adored grandchild was going to hell for eternity.
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And now we come full circle to the point of this discussion and thread title. If you know that things that you do will really hurt your parents in the long run why not just go on about what you do and not tell them? But as Classic pointed out that if they do find out you always run the risk that you may lose support from them and hurt them, forever changing the way they view you. How about every single one of you go and make a list of all the things that you know that you would never want your parents to know about you. Write it down. We could all easily come up with at least 10 things and the older we are possibly more. Now take that list and call your parents and tell them all those things on the list. How many would do it? Or would you just rather they did not know
because if they found out you know it would hurt them?
We have another thread here where people are discussing their relationships with their parents.
http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=18863
It is a two way street. As adults all parties involved have responsibilities to each other. If one party feels that they must do something that the other disagrees with then there are many choices that can be made in how you agree to deal with those choices. It matters not that they are your parent/child.