Hello Karpenter....


Thankyou for your post, and for sharing your thoughts.


To remain in arrogance, and ego, and attempt to parent future adults, who will contribute to their community, is to perpetuate a warped view of the world.

Something I hear often, in my day to day world, and is prevalent here in the forums is this expression, ' Each to their own.'

However, how many REALLY apply that to every aspect of their lives...

we compartmentalise.... and use that expression with strangers.... but when it comes to partners, children, siblings, or anyone we have an emotional investment in.... that mindset flies out the window.

The differences I guess are that I have removed the compartments... if it is acceptable to me, to use that statement, that mindset, 'Each to their own', it HAS to be across the board in my life.

I am flawed, I am human, I am contradictory, I am complex....I do make mistakes, I am capable of getting it wrong, often.....

and those whose very survival depend on me, need to know that.

To Love is to be honest, responsible and accountable to Self, first.

I know with my children I struggled with the balance between allowing them to form their own opinions and guiding them to what you know is safer for them.

It is your job as a parent to keep them safe but if you take this too far you create fearful, closeminded, etc... adults.


The balance here is soooo very important.

I agree....

to teach by example...perhaps?

To show compassion, to show empathy, to show your children a different way to what is constantly bombarding them through tv, and school?

I ask them when they do something inappropriate.... did it feel right to do that, at the time? Does it still feel right?

I have asked this question of them, since they were tiny...I ask them to 'check in ' with themselves.... to utilise the internal barometer, of rightness and wrong ness... of them...

I think example is the most missing element for parents. I watch parents act like unruly children and chastise their children for the same thing. The hypocrisy is not healthy.

Drinkin, cussin, being disrespectful to others, selfishness, telling the kids religion is the way to be and then not being a good religious person as example, etc...

Not in anyway implying I am perfect because I am far from it but I did try to teach by example. It did not show that they learned from it so much when they were little but now that they are grown I do see the same actions being done. I do have to groan on seeing the repeat of my mistakes that they witnessed and are reinacting.

Dragoness, it is why I parent as I do....


I lived this hipocrasy... as a child.... a very damaged household, with very damaged parents...

behind closed doors was horrendous... and yet the 'Public Face' was one of the 'Brady Bunch'.....that was more painful for me than the abuse.


I never forgot the hipocrasies that surrounded me in my formative years, (they were very deep scars)....and once motherhood arrived (at 21)... I knew how I would be as a parent......REAL....FLAWED.... and HONEST.

There are some very special people here .....Awesome constructs and thinkings. Thank you.

I used to think that would be enough. But sadly our children live in the world and when the people who actively get access to our children stand there and tell our children we are lazy because we are stay at home full time mothers, or selfish if we take a job, or bad dad's because we tolerate being forced to work long hours because that is what good jobs often require, or sing smack because that is what producers allow, or sell over sexed clothes because that happens to be what is on the runway for adults, buy minors alcohol or give them cigarettes because it is legal for minors to smoke just illegal to sell them cigarettes, and illegals, even though they are not, and tolerate being treated like sub-humans because in their countries slave wages and child labor for products we buy are made by slave labor and working here keep families alive.

So true

You are absolutely right it's personal accountability. To say that we use the devil as our excuse for our faults is a blind assumption. Most Christians don't say "the devil made me do it" sheesh. We don't blame other's for our actions. Because I was abused as a child did I become an abuser and blame my past? NO! I took the initiative, turned things around for the better. Because of my past, I have no tolerance for people that blame for their situations. Also, talk about hypocrisy in our court systems when it comes to this.

Let's take a look at Andrea Yates, murdered her kids in cold blood. What did she get, a damn slap on the wrist. Had that been a man that did that, he would be considered a monster and given the death penalty. No difference in my eyes.

Accountability is just that accountability, when one cannot hold themselves accountable then as a society who needs to make them accountable when they do wrong? We do as it should be. This entitlement society we have today is flat out sickening.

I make a lot of people angry when they hear my views about accountability. But I feel like if you do the crime you should do the time. I don't care if you had a crappy childhood, or you are poor, our your dumb as a rock generally, addicted, or crazy as a loon in the USA, at least, you can get medical care to get you back to sobriety, and education, get a job, and get help if you ask for it. You don't want your kids there are plenty of people who will take them either temporarily or permenently and raise them.

The problem with Andrea Yates was a husband and the medical system in this country that were not accountable to be sure that a Mother had the help she needed to be healthy. However even if Andrea Yates might have been suffering from post partum depression she took the lives of her children and should have to pay with the rest of her life in prison too. Medical treatment is a treatment you earn in this country, unless of course you are a child, truely disabled, or a prisoner and then it is the states responsibility. Unfortuneately we see prisoners as dependent on the state and allow them not to work for any of their basic needs which I see is flawed.

Are our support systems perfect? No. Some of them really suck to be quite honest. What we offer children for the Foster care system, some of our pitiful public schools, subsistence assistance allowances, uncollected child support, and criminals that scoff the system. I know people get pinched in the cracks in the system all the time. Been there myself. But you have to keep going.

It seems to me when people people hit our streets with out much more than the clothes on their back; can learn the language, work, save money, and make a way I don't have a lot of sympathy with people who even being given help time and time again just can't get their act together.

This site is full of single parents who work, raise their kids to be good productive people, and do it sober without whineing and with out making excuses. I just imagine that is typical for society in general.

you are so right

I seem to make some angry or upset as well, but oh well, that's life. Not everyone likes what we have to say and vice versa.