What I wanted to say was, I agree with what you have to say about parenting. I am not a parent myself, but I of course have friends that have children, and my brother has a couple of kids and from what I have seen, parenting skills have gone down the drain.

My wife has three kids, and unfortunately she didn’t have much of a mother and no father at all, so she has no clue how to be a parent. She had her first when she was 14 and her last by the time she was 21. When we got married 7 years ago I thought I would be able to bring to the marriage the sort of parenting that I was raised by, but my wife hates to see her kids experience anything that might hurt their feelings, or make them feel bad, so I had to stand by and let her handle them.

It was very, VERY hard.

Her daughter was the worst. Into gangs, drinking, smoking dope, and generally challenging authority at every turn, she once spit right in my face as my wife held her down on her bed. It was a scene straight out of the Exorcist. Her daughter became pregnant at 17, and was a mother by 18, but I always thought she was a smart kid, and it turned out I was right. She stopped doing all that bad stuff, and is now working as a dental assistant. (She’s the mother of the little boy you see on my site from time to time that I refer to as my grandson”)

The girl and I are now very close, but the youngest boy is a problem. He isn’t so bright, and I worry for him, but again there isn’t much I can do. The oldest boy has always been a good kid, and is in school trying to make something of his life.

I didn’t mean to leave such a long comment, but I guess what I am saying is that, like you, I believe today’s parents are too concerned about their kids “feeling good about themselves”. There’s nothing wrong with that, but like all things there needs to be a balance. Like I try to tell my wife, some amount of stress in life is good. We grow because of stressful situations, and we learn how to handle certain aspects of life from things that challenge us. You can’t know happiness without being sad, and you cannot feel pride properly if you have never known failure.

I have never been given a chance to be a parent, but I like to think that in some way I have influenced my step kid’s lives for the better. My relationship with my grandson is very good right now. (He’s almost two, he loves everybody.) And I want to keep it that way. I want to help him grow into an intelligent, responsible young man, and try to guide him away from the pitfalls that his mother, and now his uncle fell into.