A couple of DJ's on a local radio station were asking a question this morning that is bound to light up the switchboard: Do you do anything differently than your parents did? The underlying question is probably: Do you make your kids eat peas if they don't want to? But I'm sure it could be expanded to topics like work ethic, finances, and the way one treats his or her neighbor.
Something bugs me about the original question though. It seems to assume that our parents operated autonomously--as if they were parenting in a void free from their own upbringing "issues" and free from difficult circumstances. The idea that our parents weren't influenced by their parents or that their circumstances didn't have anything to do with the way they lived and parented is no more true than it is in our own lives. To varying degrees, we're all products of the way we were raised and the situations we had to face.
So, maybe the question should be: Do you ever do things differently than the way things have always been done in your family? If so, why? I'd be interested in hearing those answers.
Wouldn't it be nice if one generation could spot the flaws of previous generations and then make the necessary corrections? Sure it would, but we're talking in the abstract. I think all of us have thought, "I'll never do that when I get older," only to find ourselves doing that very thing. So I tend to go pretty easy on my parents when it comes to my own upbringing.
How about you?
