S/o major parenting decisions that tend to get questioned?

[Pen]

What are they?

Coming to my mind:

choice of school - homeschool or particular b&m

religion / church / or none

where to live

extracurrulars/ exact ones or lack thereof

pets or not

objects / gifts given or not

family traditions/ or not

being made to do chores / exactly what / or not

being expected to work or not

level of pushing / pressure 

[Pen]

Please feel free to add to my list.

which tend to be contentious or lead to accusations of doing wrong thing / having made bad decisions? 

 

[hjffkj]

Punishing style

Amount of dependence given to child at different ages

[klmama]

technology allowed

clothing and hair styles

 

 

[Farrar]

Which ones tend to be contentious? I mean, any of them can be. Probably religion, education, and strictness tend to get the most pushback and resentment later in life, but from different directions!

I always say... you can't choose if your kids will resent you, just what they'll resent you for.

[Melissa in Australia]

Here the major issue/question by older ones is over the vastly different parenting style used on older 5 and twins. We have explained over and over to ds15, dd19 and ds21 that the twins have suffered significant trauma etc and both have Id's, that we are working on brain rewiring and following advice from a specialist psychologist ... But the older ones just see it as the "twins allowed to get away with anything and get so much attention" ( their words) 

[Arctic Bunny]

Around here at the moment (DS14)? Strictness.... “You are the only mom who _____”

-puts time restrictions on phone use

-enforces bedtime

-has parent restrictions on Netflix 

And you all can laugh and laugh when I tell you how strict I am.

-11:00 all but the essentials of phone use become disabled 

-10:00 bedtime on school nights, with the phone plugged in beside my bed (you will note that if I was soooo strict about bedtime, DS would never even realize about the first one)

- I think PG13 is the highest rating on Netflix without a pin.

But oh, the injustice!

[moonflower]

She's spinning off of a thread about things kids blame their parents for.

For us, it's been anything that makes them feel different from peers (in a "deprived" way of course, no mention of the many things they have that peers don't).

Not having pets

access to technology

having more kids (and thus having to share resources, for the olders - younger kids of course don't complain about this)

moving

school decisions

 

[Carrie12345]

All of my kids’ “issues” have been mentioned.  There’s often talk about the younger kids not doing as much as the older kids did at their ages. It’s mostly untrue. My older kids perceive that they did much more... sometimes even more than they actually do now! They also think they were punished more and more harshly. I will admit that I yell less!

[May]

All of these have come up at different times with our oldest daughter. Honestly, I don’t have much tolerance for it.😢It has impacted my relationship with her in that I just don’t enjoy spending time with her. She has an inability to see someone else’s point of view, or maybe it’s just mine.🙁

[moonflower]

Things I've blamed my parents for (in general terms) at one time or another:

moving

treatment of younger sister as compared to me

my health care as a kid

their environmental choices, the way they lived their own lives that impacted mine

things I felt like they neglected to teach me

[RootAnn]

57 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

There’s often talk about the younger kids not doing as much as the older kids did at their ages. It’s mostly untrue. My older kids perceive that they did much more... sometimes even more than they actually do now!

Humorously, the opposite often happens in our house. We asked the older two to each plan & cook one night a week when the oldest was about 16 & younger was 14. I'm thinking of adding dd#3 now that dd#1 Is off to college and she's not yet 14. And the next kid might add in before he's 13.

We did this with chores - adding them when oldest were older & folding in the youngers younger & younger.

Edited September 9, 2019 by RootAnn

[RootAnn]

Favoritism.

Resource allocation - mostly mom's time.

Homeschool curriculum - picking "fun" stuff for youngers.

[Bambam]

I don't think it has to be major. 

I was blamed for "sucking the joy out of one child's life" because I made them put a hot pad/trivet/wooden cutting board under any pot/pan/dish hot from the stove top even though we had granite countertops. You don't have to, but I made them do it anyway so they would have that habit before they moved out and probably didn't have granite and set a hot pan on a non-granite counter and ruined it.  (BTW, her sister and I just laughed and laughed at her when she said this. Guilty one has apologized now, but sometimes when she is home, and I'm taking something hot out of the oven and preparing to put it on something, I do warn everyone to take a deep breath 'cause, "I'm fixin' to suck all the joy out of the room!")

So, how does using trivets count as a "major" parenting decision? 

You can't fight against it. They will find something. You can't prepare. You can just shake your head. They may even bring up something they agreed to and blame you for that. Or something you don't even remember. Or something that doesn't make any sense at all. You do the best you can now, and don't worry about the future. 

[73349]

• Divorce/remarriage
• Financial decisions
• Academic expectations
• Exposure to health risks

[Cecropia]

Privacy or lack thereof.  I used to get so angry at my mom, because she would randomly clean my room while I was gone during the school day.  Family members would burst into bedrooms without knocking.  I felt like I couldn't keep any secrets.

Social restrictions.  I have a no-sleepover rule because of all the trouble I got into or witnessed at sleepovers when I was growing up.  The kids resented me for it when they were younger.  I once thought that sleepovers would be ok at a close relative's house which was supposedly well-supervised, but in time, bits and pieces of what went down have come out, and I kick myself for letting them go.  In my childhood, my mom used to be very reluctant to let neighborhood kids into our house because it wasn't clean enough for company, which made me feel limited socially.

[sassenach]

Clothing/hairstyles allowed or not allowed. 

[DawnM]

7 hours ago, Cecropia said:

Privacy or lack thereof.  I used to get so angry at my mom, because she would randomly clean my room while I was gone during the school day.  Family members would burst into bedrooms without knocking.  I felt like I couldn't keep any secrets.

Social restrictions.  I have a no-sleepover rule because of all the trouble I got into or witnessed at sleepovers when I was growing up.  The kids resented me for it when they were younger.  I once thought that sleepovers would be ok at a close relative's house which was supposedly well-supervised, but in time, bits and pieces of what went down have come out, and I kick myself for letting them go.  In my childhood, my mom used to be very reluctant to let neighborhood kids into our house because it wasn't clean enough for company, which made me feel limited socially.

 

Now you have me questioning what in the world you are referring to.....I had tons of sleepovers as a kid and even went to boarding school, which was really just one giant sleepover, but I don't know of anything I was involved with that was inappropriate, other than just silly stuff.  And I let my kids have sleepovers and they go to sleepovers.  

 

[Farrar]

It's funny looking at it from the other end - not what will my kids resent, but what do I resent.

I feel like resent is way too strong a word. But I do think that the fact that my parents forced me to get braces and then did not force me to go to appointments to keep them up is BAT**** crazy parenting. There are a few things like that where I'm like, that was completely bizarre, but that one tops the list. But in the end, my teeth got straightened enough and I'm not self-conscious about them and they don't cause me problems so, whatever.

Probably my biggest issue with my mother is that she favored me over my brother. It was even difficult for me to deal with as a kid sometimes. She did not give him a fair shake growing up and she firmly believes she did nothing wrong. I totally understand why it went down that way. And a lot of it is just economic. I grew up in a two parent family with a mom who only worked part time. Brother grew up in a single mom household where we were always (not just sometimes like before) broke with a mother who was in school and working. But outside those parameters, she was still never as loving or understanding of him. He has massive resentment of her. Massive. And while sometimes it leads to really unhealthy behaviors on his part, I don't really blame him.

[DawnM]

My parents were super strict, almost Duggar-ish.  They didn't make me wear dresses all the time, and I was allowed to do some things they aren't, but dancing and drinking were taboo always.  

As soon as I left home I started going to dances.  I love dancing.  They still think it is sinful. 

[Momto6inIN]

The things my parents did that I question the wisdom of are probably completely different than the things my kids will question my wisdom about. My mom and dad taught me that buying stuff you can't afford on credit is normal and it really affected me in college and early adult life until I was married and DH insisted we pay off the credit card each month. Now I'm sooooo glad he did and I wonder what the heck they were thinking. Also some religious/philosophy stuff that really confused me. My mom and dad have since said that they wished they'd done that part differently too.

So we've worked really hard to try to address finances and matters of faith in a different way than our parents did. But I have no idea what big things our kids are going to take issue with.

My thinking is that every parent, no matter how diligent and well intentioned, is going to leave holes. Their kids in turn are going to work really hard to fill the holes they perceived in their childhood, and in doing so are going to leave different holes for their kids to fill.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

I remember when I went to a religious overnight weekend trip some of my bunkmates were playing light as a feather, stiff as a board. I thought what the heck, I just want to sleep and you guys are doing that?! I didn’t want to snitch. I tried to ignore them and not comment. 

 

Is there a particular problem with that, or did you just want them to knock it off so you could sleep?

[Carrie12345]

8 hours ago, Momto6inIN said:

My thinking is that every parent, no matter how diligent and well intentioned, is going to leave holes. Their kids in turn are going to work really hard to fill the holes they perceived in their childhood, and in doing so are going to leave different holes for their kids to fill.

Yes!!!

My parents split up when I was a teenager, and I really wasn’t spared much detail. There are lots of things I shouldn’t have had to carry at that age.
My kids have a lot of serious drama in their extended family and I’ve tried to keep things as need-to-know and basic as possible. As they’ve gotten older and, in some cases, *needed to know more, they’ve been appalled that we didn’t share from the beginning. 

I still think I did the right thing trying to protect them from stuff that could only hurt and confuse them, but it did hurt and confuse them.

[DawnM]

8 hours ago, heartlikealion said:

Well I can’t speak for her but I’ve read a lot about using caution regarding sleepovers. Often the issue is a male at the home. It may not be the father. It may be the older brother, a cousin, someone else in the home during the sleepover that takes advantage of a minor sexually or makes them uncomfortable in some way. Most advice I’ve read is don’t send kids to random peers’ sleepovers (which is hard for kids to accept sometimes because it’s a birthday party invite and everyone they know is going). Relatives can also groom etc. so that’s not necessarily safe. 

I remember when I went to a religious overnight weekend trip some of my bunkmates were playing light as a feather, stiff as a board. I thought what the heck, I just want to sleep and you guys are doing that?! I didn’t want to snitch. I tried to ignore them and not comment. 

All kinds of weird things can happen. One time I went to a slumber party and they watched Ghost. I was not ready for that movie. I was in elementary school. 

 

I wasn't thinking she was talking about molestation, but more kids doing things.  I mean, freezing a bra or sticking a hand in warm water just isn't that big of a deal to me.  

 

[Cecropia]

4 hours ago, Æthelthryth the Texan said:

I think it depends on what age. I know by the time my friends and I were in jr high, and then high school, yeah, a lot of trouble went down at sleep overs as far as alcohol, drugs, sneaking out, and boys- seeing very risque movies and even porn sometimes. And this was before the internet. But maybe we were just wild, LOL. Not everyone partook on the illicit activities, but it was still all there so the exposure was present. We were kids of the 80's/early 90's though so I think parents were pretty checked out at that point. No one cared what we watched on cable, or what we rented at the video store. Or monitored the liquor cabinet. It's like it didn't even occur to them that girls might watch things/do things that were less than appropriate......

Yes, this, although drugs/alcohol were not prevalent in my experiences. Some HS sleepovers were sold to my parents as girls-only when they were co-ed with sex involved.

Some of the truth-or-dare dares at the younger sleepovers were actually pretty dangerous.  It's a wonder that no one was hurt.  No adults anywhere...

Starting about 4th grade, sleepovers had much more heavily occult games than "light-as-a-feather."  After being taught by others, I learned to lead the games myself.  I don't want to get into specifics because it's going to be treated with skepticism, but enough very bad experiences have led me to believe that such games are physically, mentally, and spiritually dangerous.

My oldest watched/played very graphic rated-M video games at 8 or 9 years old, at the aforementioned relative's house.  He'd be the first to admit that it made a negative impact on him.

All of these things could happen in any unsupervised environment.  Sleepovers seem/seemed to be the best opportunity for my kids (or young me) to have many hours of completely unsupervised time with peers.