All of us kids have suffered from one addiction or another. We’ve all been either divorced or in terribly unhappy marriages. We’ve all had problems finding careers in which we felt competent, appreciated and understood. And we’ve all had unimaginable emotional problems and estrangements from each other and/or our own kids.

And yet, in spite of all this, I do not blame my parents for any of it. Not one thing. It has nothing to do with my not wanting to accept that my parents didn’t love me, because my parents DID love me. Maybe they didn’t love me like YOU, John, think they should have loved me, but they loved and parented me the best way they knew how.

You see, my father was one of 13 kids who were the children of a moonshine still-operating alcoholic who abused their mother on a regular basis. They were poverty-stricken before there were such things as food stamps and welfare. My mother was a sweet, life-loving woman who truly believed her principle calling in life was to be her husband’s helpmate in carrying out his ministry. An outdated way of thinking, perhaps, but in those days women were taught to believe those kinds of things about themselves.

I haven’t always refused to blame my parents; in fact, I went through several years of placing the blame for my unhappiness on them, although it did me no good. But as the parents of grown children, I know now that my parents did the best they knew how to do, just like I did. My husband and I love our children dearly, and we tried our damndest not to make the same mistakes in raising them that our parents had made. But guess what? We made DIFFERENT mistakes, and they’ve all been angry as HELL at us at one time or the other. But they, too, will make mistakes in raising THEIR children, no matter how hard they try to be perfect parents.

In spite of its being the most important thing we’ll ever do, parents are not given any kind of formal education in raising children. The only training we get is on-the-job training and, of course, we often DO raise our children like we ourselves were raised, no matter how hard we try not to. How can we be expected not to make some really big mistakes raising our kids?

So, John, it is absolutely WRONG for you to encourage people to rid themselves of their parents, because as Christians, we are to forgive. There is no forgiveness whatsoever in casting people out of our lives because they are human and make mistakes. Thank GOD the people in my life still love me in spite of my not being perfect.

I am successfully self-employed (I still laugh when my brother said “I forbid it…”) aviation entrepreneur AND software designer. I married someone like me and was able to tell him quickly (after counting my fingers between the wedding and the birth) that NO his father did not love him and it was only when the old guy was dying did he realize he screwed the pooch and how special his son really is.

Ok so it’s an old article, but you should dust it off every so often and maybe even so a seminar on it.

i know this is an old one. but a number of times in my life i have said “you know, i’m not a christian, but i read this one christian writer/blogger, and he wrote this article and you really gotta read it” and i have sent them the url to this article.

The ones John (Shore) is talking about are the ones who believe it is only their kid who is messed up.