AMA: I am a high achiever raised by awful parents

[Anonymous]

Hey OP, no question, I just wanted to wish you well. Thanks for sharing some of your story, it was an interesting read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From reading this board and the parenting forum in particular, it is clear that people are terrified that the kids will turn out badly if they make mistakes. I was raised by a borderline personality mother and a bipolar narcissistic father (all confirmed diagnoses). I witnessed and was subject to extreme violence and verbal abuse throughout my childhood and we moved constantly. My parents never went to a single PTA meeting, they did not enroll any of us in preschool, and they never so much as checked my report card. They stopped cooking for me for the most part once I hit about six years old and I usually went to school without breakfast until I was old enough to make it myself without being late for school. At age 5, they used to leave me alone at home with my then-two younger siblings who were 3 years old and 9 months old. My older siblings would be roaming the streets unattended.

Basically, my parents committed every parenting sin you can think of. I had a really deprived, unsafe childhood. In the end, me and my five siblings are all attorneys and doctors, except for the black sheep who is a successful entrepreneur. We count three national merit scholars, four MENSA members, and one Rhodes scholar among us. We all went to top schools on scholarship. My HHI is 650k, of which I contribute 400k.

So, AMA.

My upbringing was similarly bad - dad died young & was the force of reason and calm in the house. Mom was super angry at being left with 5 young kids and was horrible. Beating, screaming,
nothing nurturing about any of it until I was old enough to defend myself and make it stop. Siblings were horrible to some of the other siblings - because they could (no supervision).
Had no $$. Heat off in the winter. There was NEVER any kind of supervision of homework ever and in fact my mother used to tell me that she would never study any of the hard stuff
I was studying - that it was a waste of time.

We also all have advanced degrees and are very high achieving.

Moral of the story as I take it - you don't have any kind of life that you like to fall back on so you have to make something of yourself to escape and provide a better life for yourself.
Also - you are tired of people just looking down on you (not a soul stepped up to help our family -despite the fact that we lived in a nice area).

My take on it is that this life where we give our kids 'everything' and a cushy life that they don't want to leave seems to be self defeating to me - why would they leave the nest and make something
of themselves? Because you tell them to? That's not working in out house. Our kids lives are comfortable - we aren't recreating my childhood or anything - but we make sure not to give them
everything they want. It doesn't seem to be helping though I must say. My kids want everything and are constantly asking for it and are kind of applying themselves, but kind of not.
They kind of take stuff for granted.