I wouldn’t call my parents “perfect,” by any stretch, but as I’ve gotten older, and heard so many stories from friends (as well as from my wife) about how dysfunctional their own parents and families were, I realize just how blessed I’ve been by having good parents.
My mom and dad always made time for my sister and me, treated us with kindness and guided us well, and were never abusive (either verbally or physically). They always presented a united front in front of us, and if they ever disagreed with each other, or argued with each other, they didn’t do so in sight of us.
They also shielded us from some uncomfortable things. For example, when I was growing up, my parents, along with my aunt and uncle, were co-owners of a hardware store. When I was 14, they sold the original store that they owned, and invested in building a larger, brand-new store. That was in the 1979/1980 time range, when the U.S. economy went into the toilet, and interest rates were stupendously high; what I didn’t know back then is that they had taken out a big loan to build the new store, at the worst possible time. We were losing money, and the household budget was, as it turns out, very tight, but my parents made sure that we kids never felt the worst of it, or felt like we couldn’t do things that our friends and schoolmates were able to do.
Much later, as an adult, I came to realize that neither of my parents had great role models for parenting when they were growing up: my dad’s parents were indifferent about parenting, at best, while my mom was #7 of 11 kids in her family, and simply never got a lot of parental support. The fact that they have been as good at being parents as they have been is even more amazing, given this.
As far as being “easy kids,” my parents have long said that I, the firstborn, was an “easy kid.” I was an excellent student, motivated to learn, and rarely disobeyed my parents – they have told me that they never needed to worry about me, in that regard. But, what made me “difficult” was being socially ostracized when we moved from suburban Chicago to Green Bay, on my 10th birthday: I was never accepted by my new classmates (being little, un-athletic, and nerdy), and was picked on mercilessly from 4th grade through 8th grade. There was little that my parents could do to shield me from that, and they felt powerless to help me; they have since told me that they were broken-hearted for me over those years, and were so relieved that I was later able to “find my tribe,” and happiness, as an older teen, and as an adult.
By contrast, my sister (three years younger than me) was a handful, behaviorally, and suffered from what was not diagnosed, at that time, with several learning disabilities, which made school very difficult for her. After having the “easy kid” the first time out, they felt unprepared for my sister.
But I believe I was his biggest problem.
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