Did You Turn Out OK?
A common fallback for bad parenting is the “I turned out OK” argument.
- “I did that when I grew up and I turned out OK” or
- “My parents did this to me and I turned out OK”
In my humble opinion, this type of thinking from parents is unhealthy and down right irresponsible. Obviously, this is me on a soapbox so bear with me.
First of all, how do you know that you turned out OK? Are you even close to the best version of yourself? How can you know for sure that your potential wasn’t limited? These are all questions that can’t legitimately be answered by you without bias. Furthermore, even if you are OK, is the goal only to have your kids turn out OK?
This is just like arguing that it’s OK to do something because that’s the way it has always been done. We can all agree that doing something a certain way because it’s always been done that way is like building a bridge to nowhere. It’s thoughtless. So let’s just bury this line of thinking.
The bottom line is that we should parent our kids so they turn out better than OK. So let’s all agree to stop asking what’s wrong with our parenting, and instead find out what’s right about it.