Parents Just Don't Understand

I am not talking about the Fresh Prince song from 1988, but it was a big hit!

I have been surrounded lately by parents who want to blame themselves for the choices their children make. It is easy to do. You look at a family where several kids can be working hard, going to college, and making generally good choices. Then there can be in this family the one kid who gets into all sorts of trouble. The first question asked will often be, what did they do wrong?!

These parents will rack their brains daily as to what they did wrong with this child. They will blame themselves for every little mistake and torture themselves over what they should have done. It doesn't help that some people around them will blame them too. Advice provided often leads to criticism of the parents, na let's face it, they are just criticized. Society as a whole seems to want to blame the parents.

I bring this up because of an experience we have had with Tyler lately over the years. It was recently discovered that something that caused Tyler to misbehave was an actual medical issue. Now being properly treated by a new doctor, the problem has significantly improved, almost disappeared. For years, we racked our brains, tried thing after thing, got advice from so many of other things to try, therapy, and basically turned ourselves inside out trying to deal.

Sadly during our battle with these issue we have been accused by some of being bad parents, gossiped about, and had this poor kid's reputation and ours dragged through the mud by other "loved ones". Now don't get me wrong, most supported and tried to help us. However because of the societal belief that it is the parents, we got slaughtered emotionally by a few. Even worse, Tyler got slaughtered.

Jason and I didn't need the criticism from others because we were doing an even bigger number on ourselves. See we also blamed everything on the parents, or least we did till a few weeks ago. I can't tell you about all the tears and sleepless nights. The wondering if we were even fit to be parents. It is easy to feel that way when a "loved one" even questions it to your face.

Lately my heart has gone out to a loved one who is feeling the same parental guilt. A grown child of his/hers made choices in his/her life that cost him/her their life. He/she even with time won't let go of the thought, "what more could I have done for my child". I am here to tell him/her that they did everything. For years they helped and loved their child. Sadly this child had free agency to make his/her own choices.

Then something more occurred to me. Years ago Tyler's medical problem wasn't viewed as one. We have just come far enough along in medical research to learn that it medical. 30 years ago Tyler would have just been a boy who got into trouble at school, now he's doing great in school. So it makes me wonder about this loved one who died, if he/she had this issue in the future, can we discover a cure for the problems? Think about how things have progressed over the years with medicine!

So to this loved one of mine who is dealing with the hugest cases of parental guilt you can have. Please know that I will do my best to support you and have no negative judgments towards you as a parent. I saw that you did all you could.

My life lesson in this blog is that I will do my best to not judge other parents because:
1) I am not with their child and can't possibly know everything going on.
2) I am not expert parent myself
3) I am not a medical expert

I have a feeling no one on this earth can say they fit all three. So if any of my readers catch me being judgmental on parental choices (outside of obvious things like abuse!) remind me of this blog.

I also figure it is good to write these feelings down. It isn't much longer until Tyler is a teenager making choices that will turn more of my hair gray. Choices that obviously none of us will raise him to make, however he will have his free agency and will need to learn lessons from his own life. One day he might even learn about these lessons on not being judgmental towards others.

This concludes my personal guilt trip of the day. Thank you for listening.

Luv ya my bug a boo, you are a good kid!