Appreciation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is being grateful and then there is the fact that kids don’t ask to be born. You chose to bring the child into the world, so the flip side of your argument is that as a result of your choice, you were the one responsible for providing her a stable home. That’s how I look at it. Are you looking for validation? How strange.

I'm a CFBC adult and love this PP. Thank you for being a voice of reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is being grateful and then there is the fact that kids don’t ask to be born. You chose to bring the child into the world, so the flip side of your argument is that as a result of your choice, you were the one responsible for providing her a stable home. That’s how I look at it. Are you looking for validation? How strange.

I'm a CFBC adult and love this PP. Thank you for being a voice of reason.

what is CFBC?

I don't think this is the voice of reason. It's a very twisted way of looking at life. Most people are at least grateful to have been born. At least. If you don't enjoy life and only think you were born because of someone else's choices in life, there is something wrong.

[Anonymous]

One of my adult children has mentioned a few things that she was grateful for that she discovered after she was grown. One is when she bought a new car from a dealer when she was in her twenties and her similar aged cousin asked her how she knew how to do such a thing. My daughter was grateful that we had taught her how to do things like that and it made her realize other grown up things she felt confident doing that many of her friends and cousins did not know how to do.

She has also realized as an adult how grateful she was to have been raised in an intact family with her two birth parents all the way until she was grown. And that her parents got along fine and did not fight or argue. Apparently she looked around and realized that was rare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Um, she didn't have a say when you chose to bring her into this world. The sacrifices that you made were on you. When you made your choice to have her, it was an expectation that you would give her a decent quality of life.

Sure, not everyone lives up to this expectation, but really, you want to receive accolades for doing what was expected of you?

Guess what - I also was given food, clothing and shelter growing up, and got an education. I was raised in what I believed to be a normal family. It wasn't until later that I learned just how much I was actually abused and set back by ingrained misogyny. Turns out my parents provided me with more than I bargained for. I'm 38 and not about to "appreciate" those extras any time soon.

Curb your narcissism and take any appreciation you may receive for your parenting as a very generous gift - not something you deserve.

I concur that something happened to you along the way, and hope that you can find a good therapist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a close friend who was Vietnamese. She was raised to respect her parents. She was RAISED that way. When I said I didn't want to do something my mom wanted me to do, she would say, "Why would you choose to do something you know will bother your mom?" etc. It was part of her culture.

It's part of American culture to be selfish and and ungrateful and independent. It's so ingrained in the American experience we don't even recognize it. I didn't until it was pointed out to me by my friend, who had no problem being grateful to her parents. We were in our 20s.

One of these things is not like the other

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had a close friend who was Vietnamese. She was raised to respect her parents. She was RAISED that way. When I said I didn't want to do something my mom wanted me to do, she would say, "Why would you choose to do something you know will bother your mom?" etc. It was part of her culture.

It's part of American culture to be selfish and and ungrateful and independent. It's so ingrained in the American experience we don't even recognize it. I didn't until it was pointed out to me by my friend, who had no problem being grateful to her parents. We were in our 20s.

One of these things is not like the other

Why do they have to be alike? We're raised to be all three.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is being grateful and then there is the fact that kids don’t ask to be born. You chose to bring the child into the world, so the flip side of your argument is that as a result of your choice, you were the one responsible for providing her a stable home. That’s how I look at it. Are you looking for validation? How strange.

I'm a CFBC adult and love this PP. Thank you for being a voice of reason.

what is CFBC?

I don't think this is the voice of reason. It's a very twisted way of looking at life. Most people are at least grateful to have been born. At least. If you don't enjoy life and only think you were born because of someone else's choices in life, there is something wrong.

What is there to enjoy? Do you think the human condition is so amazing? We are so vulnerable as a species and as individuals (women more so than men when being victims of violence). We all have to face death at some point and getting there varies for each of us but there is so much anxiety, depression, physical ailments etc. And yes, those of us who are living were born because of our parents' choices to have unprotected sex. Sorry to burst your bubble but no one actually CHOOSES to be born. There's nothing to be grateful for. If you feel grateful, good for you but you don't get to tell someone their way of thinking about life is 'twisted'. CFBC= childfree by choice

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is being grateful and then there is the fact that kids don’t ask to be born. You chose to bring the child into the world, so the flip side of your argument is that as a result of your choice, you were the one responsible for providing her a stable home. That’s how I look at it. Are you looking for validation? How strange.

I'm a CFBC adult and love this PP. Thank you for being a voice of reason.

what is CFBC?

I don't think this is the voice of reason. It's a very twisted way of looking at life. Most people are at least grateful to have been born. At least. If you don't enjoy life and only think you were born because of someone else's choices in life, there is something wrong.

What is there to enjoy? Do you think the human condition is so amazing? We are so vulnerable as a species and as individuals (women more so than men when being victims of violence). We all have to face death at some point and getting there varies for each of us but there is so much anxiety, depression, physical ailments etc. And yes, those of us who are living were born because of our parents' choices to have unprotected sex. Sorry to burst your bubble but no one actually CHOOSES to be born. There's nothing to be grateful for. If you feel grateful, good for you but you don't get to tell someone their way of thinking about life is 'twisted'. CFBC= childfree by choice

Your problem is the bolded apparently. You can fix these things. There is much to be grateful for in life. Also much that sucks. Unless you are living in solitary confinement under a life sentence, you can find the way out of your misery. There is something wrong with you that can be fixed, PP. It's not the human condition that's making you miserable. If it were, all of us would be miserable.

And you're not bursting my bubble either. Any idiot knows we don't choose to be born. Any idiot also knows that life is what you make of it.

[Anonymous]

This is so personality-dependent. Some people have nothing and are grateful for the blue sky and finding a dollar on the ground. Others (most people actually) see very little to be thankful for. I am super optimistic and think my parents did the best they could with the information available to me. One of my siblings thinks we were borderline abused. Same family,
different brains.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is so personality-dependent. Some people have nothing and are grateful for the blue sky and finding a dollar on the ground. Others (most people actually) see very little to be thankful for. I am super optimistic and think my parents did the best they could with the information available to me. One of my siblings thinks we were borderline abused. Same family,
different brains.

This is so true. Thank God my husband has the optimism gene, because I was born with the Debbie Downer one.

[Anonymous]

My DC is turning 20 and has expressed gratitude since they were about 15. Now that’s not to say they didn’t act like a spoiled ungrateful teenager at times! But I think it depends on your child’s personality. Mine is fairly observant and introspective, and I think when gratitude was expressed to us it is following some moment of realization about what they have, how they grew up, the relationship they have with us, both parents, in comparison to their friends, others that they meet. I don’t expect them to express it though, and I don’t need them to validate our parenting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does your AC child express appreciation for your parenting? I don't expect constant praise of course. It was a labor of love, but I guess I hoped that by her age (recent college grad) she would start to appreciate the family she has. The sacrifices that have been made. The quality of life we have given her. She just seems to take it all for granted, which is a little disappointing.

Is it, though? I see it as a mark of success that my kids believe that every family is normal, emotionally calm and loving. Why would I want them to know the hell I went through to give it to them? The whole point was to shield them from that hard stuff. (And if you did shield them from it, it isn’t their fault that they didn’t know about it.)

Same. I was seriously in my 30s before I really understood the awful childhoods that some kids had. Abuse, addiction, divorce, abandonment, screaming. It sort of blew my mind. My children are little, but they don't even think criminals are real ("oh, they're all in jail") and my dd commented that she didn't understand how a classmate only had a single mom and not a dad. She cried herself to sleep when she realized that some people get divorced and don't love each other forever (she's seen waaaayyy too many disney movies!)

I didn't appreciate my parents as much until I had kids. I always loved them, but just didn't understand how unbelievably hard it is to raise children.

Hmmm. You’re kind of making some bad comparisons there. Maybe you could talk to your child about families coming in all shapes and sizes and that some people even choose to be a single mother.

[Anonymous]

If she lives with you, tell her that she's going to have to leave if she doesn't start to show appreciation. If she doesn't live with you, tell her that she won't be welcome at your house, even for holidays and family gatherings, if she doesn't start to show appreciation. Also tell her that she's on her own if she ever needs anything in the future, whether she needs help buying a house or wants you to babysit her kids, and that you'll also leave her out of your will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does your AC child express appreciation for your parenting? I don't expect constant praise of course. It was a labor of love, but I guess I hoped that by her age (recent college grad) she would start to appreciate the family she has. The sacrifices that have been made. The quality of life we have given her. She just seems to take it all for granted, which is a little disappointing.

Is it, though? I see it as a mark of success that my kids believe that every family is normal, emotionally calm and loving. Why would I want them to know the hell I went through to give it to them? The whole point was to shield them from that hard stuff. (And if you did shield them from it, it isn’t their fault that they didn’t know about it.)

Interesting perspective. I just think that people walk around the world happier if they feel grateful for their good fortune.

Come off it OP, you’re not feeling this way out of your kid’s best interest

[Anonymous]

While DD, in her mid-20s, doesn’t talk to be about being grateful, she always expresses it in birthday and Mother’s Day cards and sometimes even Facebook, which she mainly uses for extended family.

And I’m very grateful for this.