Take note of their good sides, but take closer look on the bad sides.
Photo from Brian Turner’s flickr
When it’s our turn to be kids, we loved our parents so much. You show your dad that you can throw a baseball or show your mom the beautiful flower you just picked. You’re always by their side; you hug them and cry if you can’t see them.
Then, we enter the teenage years. We may despised because they’re intruding. They’d want to teach us life lessons but we wanted to live our own life differently and not be told what to do.
They say we’ll go back to loving them more once we grew out of the teenage years. When we started having our own families, they say we’ll be exactly like our parents. I hope not.
Criticize your parents. Don’t hate them so much that you don’t recognize their good side; and don’t love them too much that you don’t recognize their bad side. Try not to repeat the mistakes and the displeasing side of your parents.
They gave birth to you and that commands respect; but they don’t always do the right thing. Not because they’re your parents you just accept all they say and do as if they created everything right. I’m not denouncing the roles of parents, but I’ve seen parents who will assert that they’re always right in their families.
Parents can say and do right or wrong. You don’t have to brag it to them, love and respect, and just filter what’s coming in to you.
Moment Matters 
Wow.
There is a lot of truth in what your’e saying. Parents are people, too, afterall… and completely flawed, just like us. I love my folks, but they sure did a number on me. I’ve vowed to try to break my children in new and different way, as opposed to repeating the mistakes of my own parents. I mean, why not be original? 🙂
My folks rock!
My greatest wish as a mother was to be exactly like my own. Her and my father were the kindest, most loving people on earth. They gave everything they had to my brothers and I we were blessed. Were they perfect people? Probably not, none of us are, but we’re they perfect parents? You bet your ass they were.
why not, your kids will judge you soon enough….
thort provoking.
My mother was a widow at a young age, did she make mistakes raising us? You bet, but she did the best she could. That is all you can do. Emulate the things you think they did well and try not to repeat the mistakes they made.
I learned a lot from watching my mother try to raise three children alone. I chose not to have children.
Somebody has said … be kind to your kids, because they will chose your care home one day. Never judged my mum – never known my dad … she has done a fantastic job with me and I have turned out very good. We had our battles when I was a teenager, but she always let me think for myself and take responsibly for went things went wrong.
I think it is funny how we compare our parents to a checklist of good and bad. My checklist was learned from my parents and while I tried as hard as I could not to grow up and be like my mom….I did anyway. I’ve made similar mistakes raising my daugher, paying my bills, and building a career. The good news, is that my daughter will come to the same realization in about 20 years.
I’ve always belived that you love your parents but you don’t have to like them. Afterall, they are just people.
Reblogged this on Life Textures.
Excellent post!
I don’t think we can consider ourselves really grown up until we can accept our parents as people full of hopes and fears and good judgement and bad, just like everyone else.
Note that I said “accept.” 😉 Recognizing that parents are people is one thing, accepting the people that we (hopefully) love as human beings is another.
@viveka It’s really true about the nursing home. It’s best to never forget that YOU will need one someday, too. 😉
As we grow up and begin dealing with our own personality and life-choice issues, we realize that parents are people too. Once we face up to pour own imperfections, it’s easy to face up to theirs an love them and ourselves in spite of.
My parents are too perfect. That is a problem since it is difficult to leave their protection and live my own life.