The you of today has a one-off opportunity to speak through time to your parents shortly after you were born. What advice would you give them about the future you?
In my case:
His thread titles make no sense
I’d tell my parents:
He’s not going to change
Tighten the handlebar on his bicycle
Try sticking up for him once in a while
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. My parents did the best they could with me, will all the good will in the world, and I’ve been thinking what they could realistically have done differently.
Don’t teach her to obey male authority instantly and without question. It might make her an easy child to deal with, but it won’t serve her well as an adult.
She is allergic to all non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications. Stop giving her aspirin and/or Tylenol for minor illnesses.
I was a child before the Great Allergy Awareness Uprising - I kept getting minor childhood illnesses, which my mother would diligently treat with medications containing NSAIDs, to which I have a quite literally deathly allergy, which resulted in minor illnesses turning into sprint-to-the-closest-ER adventures. My mother developed the superpower of being able to locate the nearest ER to her current location in the days before Google Maps and cell phones. I was in junior high before anyone figured out I might be having an allergic reaction to the medication. Good times.
Stop drinking.
Don’t expect your child to live your dream.
Stop trying to impress the neighbors.
Stop beating his older brothers sooner. That’s really not helping, and those guys are going to be responsible for your long-term care when you’re in your 70’s.
Don’t encourage the music quite so much. Push instead for theater arts and see if you can get him into stage design, lighting, or audio, which he will love doing in High School.
He’s going to become a diabetic just like grampa. It’s not your fault. Encourage exercise.
Don’t look at me sadly my whole childhood and bemoan that I will always only be able to wear my hair 1 way since I had such an awful forehead.
All that sleeping he’s going to do as a teenager - he’s depressed (just like both of you). Give him a break, and maybe look into medication/counseling.
Your daughter is an athlete, not a ballet dancer. Don’t push the ballet lessons. She’ll hate it, but she’ll do it without complaint because she loves you and knows how badly you want it.
When Dad gets so sick when she’s eight years old, don’t presume that she’s adult enough to raise herself. She’ll do the best she can, but she’ll be frightened and feel abandoned.
Mom, don’t make your daughter the man of the family at age 13 when you lose your husband. She will understand how damaged you are, but she will resent you for it terribly.
I wouldn’t ask my parents to change a blessed thing.
And this is despite the fact that they did an absolutely disastrous job of raising me. (Not just my opinion; my sisters are even more emphatic about this than I am.)
But here’s the deal: despite the awfulness of my first 16 years, I’m really quite happy with how my life has worked out since, and I’m happy being the person I am.
Who knows what changes in how they raised me would have sent me down a completely different path, resulting in my being a very different person than the one I’ve become, living a very different sort of life? The advice I’d give would surely have that effect if they took it, so no.
You’re going to do OK. Chill out.
Dad, that quarter mil you almost invested in that start up computer company MicroSoft… DO IT
Don’t let him simply coast on his abilities. The guy’s going to have lifelong issues with motivation. Not your fault, but you might be able to help him establish some good habits.
Tell him to get involved in club activities in college.
Thread title makes perfect sense. What are you talking about?
Anyway it’s a good question, though I doubt anything I would say would have much of an impact on them or their behavior. They were always rather stubborn.
Don’t let him play with your car keys. Typical homes do not actually have ignition systems but that won’t stop him from trying to start the house by inserting the keys in an electrical outlet when he is four years old.
Those are bio parents of course.
This kid is broken. See if you can take him back for a refund.
If that’s not an option, and you’re stuck with the little brat:
Give him a better first name. The one you picked sucks. I have a couple of options for you here.
Don’t stick your heads in the sand and pretend that things are fine when they clearly aren’t. Face that shit. Or, on the other hand, maybe I have that backwards. Getting in his face about things never did much good either. Hell, I don’t know.
If you want to do one good thing for the kid: Move closer to the nearest town. You don’t have to live *in *it, but reasonable bicycling distance would be nice. The kid hates, hates, *hates *living in the boonies.
Do you think they could have done anything, though? I’d say the same thing, but I doubt my parents could had done any better. I was as willful as I was talented.
I would tell them to send me to a different Jr high. Those 3 years were a complete waste of time.