I think people really forget the “it takes a village” lesson andremebrer that no kid is raised only by their mom and dad.
The modern way of raising kids where it’s just the two parents and nobody else is so destructive. Groups do it so much better!
There was a video about this posted a bit ago. The speaker said basicly this same thing. After the age of 7, the environment that your kid is placed into, and the other people they are around, has for more influence on them that the parents have.
You do your best for the first 7 years, and then you do your best to find the right environment for them for the rest of their lives.
Ha yes.
I may or may not have kids, but this video will stick in my mind forever. If I do, my focus will be on creating that community to surround my kids with people that they can look up to for good role models and hope for the best :D
The old nature vs nurture debate. I fall more on the nature side, where the kid would have turned out shitty no matter how you raised them.
Nature is undeniable as an influence on everyone, but I think nurture is generally wildly underrated.
I’d like to go one step further and propose that the amount people are affected by nurture is part of their nature. Person A may be born with murder tendencies and grow up into a murderer no matter what, even while being raised watching Mr Rogers. While Person B may be born with murder tendencies but may only grow into a murderer if growing up in a murder enabling environment like Detroit or being filthy rich.
It’s that because most of us are wildly under-nurtured?
My parents wanted to nurture me, they just didn’t know how. Same applies to how I raised my kids. I really tried, I was just not good at it.
I feel this! Couldn’t have said it better.
Yeah I think that’s a lot of it.
I have 2 young adult children (20’s), and in retrospect I can see a few things we could have done better, but otherwise kept them safe, healthy, and I personally always pushed for them to be independent. I’m of the belief that there is no perfect way to raise a child. You can follow every line of wisdom, and still not get the results that were supposed to be the outcome of said wisdom.
I also firmly believe that our environment is extremely toxic. Both socially and literally. Short of raising children 1000 miles from a city, perhaps a farm in the middle of no where, there is very few options for a healthier environment. Unless you are inherently wealthy, or grew up in a place similar, and are able to pass that lifestyle down…
Plenty of farm raised are also bad people.
My opinion is that every child is different - there is no one size fits all formula that will work for every kid. You can only imagine that things MIGHT have turned out differently if you did something differently, but you have no way of knowing that. As a parent all you can do is ask if you did the best you could.
This is a super good question. My kids aren’t old enough to answer but I’m curious on reading responses
I’ve often wondered this. I have struggled at times in wether I made all of the right choices as a parent. I have a tendency to be hard on myself and this is one time where I am doing so again, but giving myself some leeway. I have two daughters that grew up in the exact same environment and situations and turned out to be completely different from one another. One is caring, thoughtful, witty, and very empathetic. The other daughter is pretty much the exact opposite in every aspect. Now did I make all of the correct decisions? Probably not, parenting isn’t easy nor black and white all of time. Did I try the best I knew how? Yes I did.
