Rant: I Hate My Parents - Academic Success & Childhood Neglect

[~christina~]

People still buy encyclopedias? WHY!?

20 years ok, maybe. Today? What for?

The internet is the biggest FREE encyclopedia ever devised.

true but when I got the encyclopedia there was NO wikipedia.
I still like my cd encyclopedia. It has things that books and wiki mostly does not have. If I look up a species of bird, I can play the bird's songs.

 

[Moonbear]

What you choose to do, even as a kid, really ends up being your own choice. If you were self-motivated, you'd have gotten up off your duff all by yourself and done something else with your time.

I spent about 5 1/2 hours driving today with my dept chair for a weekend shindig we've both been invited to, and we had lots of time to chat (he was chattier than usual today). You know what it turns out our parents did to BOTH of us as kids? They yelled at us for reading too much on vacation instead of "doing fun stuff." Mine often complained that I always had my head buried in a book instead of heading out to play. Did that change anything I did? Nope. So, I think you're being rather harsh on your parents when they weren't forcing you to do the things you did with your time. If you were a typical kid, they could have yelled at you until blue in the face, and the only outcome likely would have been resentment that they weren't letting you do what you wanted to do.

Child prodigies don't become that way because their parents force them into it, they become that way because of their own love of whatever they're learning...for them it's fun and they want to do it, so do it.

 

[turbo]

What you choose to do, even as a kid, really ends up being your own choice. If you were self-motivated, you'd have gotten up off your duff all by yourself and done something else with your time.

I spent about 5 1/2 hours driving today with my dept chair for a weekend shindig we've both been invited to, and we had lots of time to chat (he was chattier than usual today). You know what it turns out our parents did to BOTH of us as kids? They yelled at us for reading too much on vacation instead of "doing fun stuff." Mine often complained that I always had my head buried in a book instead of heading out to play. Did that change anything I did? Nope. So, I think you're being rather harsh on your parents when they weren't forcing you to do the things you did with your time. If you were a typical kid, they could have yelled at you until blue in the face, and the only outcome likely would have been resentment that they weren't letting you do what you wanted to do.

Child prodigies don't become that way because their parents force them into it, they become that way because of their own love of whatever they're learning...for them it's fun and they want to do it, so do it.

My father appreciated my good grades, but he often faulted me for being too "bookish", despite the fact that I loved coursing through the forests and would run for hours at a time on gravel roads.

 

[Astronuc]

aren't you guys too old to remember all these tiny things?

I am 19, and don't even have a single memory (oo I never really tried hard enough to think about what happened last year) :).

I remember things back to my first year of life. I can describe people, places and events in the first town I lived in with my parents 49 years ago now, and my parents are surprised by the details.

 

[Saladsamurai]

My pa wanted to marry a woman to develop his business in Japan,
I like it because he is a smart businessman.

Wtf?

 

[whitay]

All I can say to the original poster. Imagine if you parents let you venture the streets? Who knows where you would be today.

 

[Cyrus]

Ho HO HOE. Look what santa Cyrus brought for you!

http://www.cluttercontrolfreak.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/kleenex.jpg

http://www.blackgayblogger.com/images/violin.jpg

 

[Evo]

Cyrus, you kill me.

 

[robertm]

You do need to stop whinnin by now (nice cyrus), but I must say that parents have an extremely powerful position on a child's life. Even if one is intrinsically motivated (which I think we all are to a certain degree) a bad parental environment can utterly destroy a great thirst for knowledge. Now obviously you will be just fine since you are here typing away on physic's forum just because you want to. It always helps to have support and external love and motivation; but you were born into the life you have so you just got to deal with it and try and learn from your past experiences.

Just remember what you wish you had and be super-dad/mom for your kids!

 

[Cyrus]

You do need to stop whinnin by now (nice cyrus), but I must say that parents have an extremely powerful position on a child's life. Even if one is intrinsically motivated (which I think we all are to a certain degree) a bad parental environment can utterly destroy a great thirst for knowledge. Now obviously you will be just fine since you are here typing away on physic's forum just because you want to. It always helps to have support and external love and motivation; but you were born into the life you have so you just got to deal with it and try and learn from your past experiences.

Just remember what you wish you had and be super-dad/mom for your kids!

I want to beat my kids for fun. I want to give them that opportunity I never had.

 

[robertm]

Hahaha! I love america!

 

[BobG]

Yep. The other kids thought I was a geek, too. When I was about 12 or so, my parents bought a set of World Book Encyclopedias. I started at A and read darn near every article through to the end. Some were tedious, but I devoured the ones about history and the sciences.

I was luckier. My parents had a set before I could even read. I actually learned my ABC's from the cover of those books and how to count, too. Eventually I even opened the covers and read them (the year end supplements were always great - they had cellulose layers to burrow further into the layers of human anatomy and things like that). I loved those books (my parents still have them, but they never renewed to keep getting the supplements).

Eventually, we lost the 'M' volume. My idiot sister gave it to one of her stupid friends who needed a book to prove she'd been at the library instead of killing time at a friend's house. Years later, I got married and, as my wife was unpacking her stuff in our first apartment, she pulled out the 'M' volume of our encyclopedias and said, "You know, actually, this belongs to you." When we visited my parents for the first time, I slipped it back into the set. You'd think it would have taken at least a few days for someone to notice, but my little brother noticed within about the first hour, "Hey! We have the 'M' volume! Where did that come from?!"

Poor kid. He spent half his life avoiding homework topics that started with 'M'.

Do your realize how many states start with 'M'? Poor kid couldn't even learn how to build a methamphetamine lab.

 

[Evo]

I was luckier. My parents had a set before I could even read. I actually learned my ABC's from the cover of those books and how to count, too. Eventually I even opened the covers and read them (the year end supplements were always great - they had cellulose layers to burrow further into the layers of human anatomy and things like that). I loved those books (my parents still have them, but they never renewed to keep getting the supplements).

Eventually, we lost the 'M' volume. My idiot sister gave it to one of her stupid friends who needed a book to prove she'd been at the library instead of killing time at a friend's house. Years later, I got married and, as my wife was unpacking her stuff in our first apartment, she pulled out the 'M' volume of our encyclopedias and said, "You know, actually, this belongs to you." When we visited my parents for the first time, I slipped it back into the set. You'd think it would have taken at least a few days for someone to notice, but my little brother noticed within about the first hour, "Hey! We have the 'M' volume! Where did that come from?!"

Poor kid. He spent half his life avoiding homework topics that started with 'M'.

Do your realize how many states start with 'M'? Poor kid couldn't even learn how to build a methamphetamine lab.

BobG needs to be our next "funniest member".

 

[turbo]

BobG needs to be our next "funniest member".

Are you trying to kill off Bob? People who get that "honor" don't seem to last.

 

[g33kski11z]

I think you just need a hug.

That's a close to a "hug" smiley as I have.. lol

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I don't think it's fair to hate my father because he is dead and cannot hate me back. My mother is another story.

On the last day of kindergarten, my teacher gave us an application form for 'My Summer Weekly Reader". She told us to give it to our mothers (these were pre-revolution times) who would fill out the information and put it in an envelope with 25 cents and put it in the mailbox. She pointed out the window to a mailbox on the corner of the school. I did as the teacher instructed and my mother did everything as required except for one thing. She mailed the application in a different mailbox. You can imagine the look of horror on my face as the envelope disappeared down the similar, but distiguishable, slot. Mo-om, Miss Lord (her real name, very confusing to a 5-year old) said the mailbox by the school. But it was too late. As you can probably guess, the magazines never came.

So I told my mother that I hate her. She said that's nice and offered me more pie. She never stands in the way of anything I set my mind to, but this was a bit much. I said, you don't understand, I mean deep unmitigated pathological hatred. For every way that she screwed up my life and especially about the weekly reader. She pointed out that my life was not screwed up. She nearly had me there. Usually when someone suggests to her that my life isn't perfect, she gets them in a half nelson until they recant, so I got off easy. I said Oh yeah? Well what about Reid Barton and Gabriel Carroll. How about Daniel Kane. She said that when I die, I will be asked a question. Not "Why weren't you like Reid Barton?" The question will be "Why weren't you like Jimmy Snyder?"

Then she asked me to show her how to open e-mail again so her guests can see what a great software engineer I am.

 

[Math Is Hard]

I don't think it's fair to hate my father because he is dead and cannot hate me back. My mother is another story.

On the last day of kindergarten, my teacher gave us an application form for 'My Summer Weekly Reader". She told us to give it to our mothers (these were pre-revolution times) who would fill out the information and put it in an envelope with 25 cents and put it in the mailbox. She pointed out the window to a mailbox on the corner of the school. I did as the teacher instructed and my mother did everything as required except for one thing. She mailed the application in a different mailbox. You can imagine the look of horror on my face as the envelope disappeared down the similar, but distiguishable, slot. Mo-om, Miss Lord (her real name, very confusing to a 5-year old) said the mailbox by the school. But it was too late. As you can probably guess, the magazines never came.

So I told my mother that I hate her. She said that's nice and offered me more pie. She never stands in the way of anything I set my mind to, but this was a bit much. I said, you don't understand, I mean deep unmitigated pathological hatred. For every way that she screwed up my life and especially about the weekly reader. She pointed out that my life was not screwed up. She nearly had me there. Usually when someone suggests to her that my life isn't perfect, she gets them in a half nelson until they recant, so I got off easy. I said Oh yeah? Well what about Reid Barton and Gabriel Carroll. How about Daniel Kane. She said that when I die, I will be asked a question. Not "Why weren't you like Reid Barton?" The question will be "Why weren't you like Jimmy Snyder?"

Then she asked me to show her how to open e-mail again so her guests can see what a great software engineer I am.

p.s. I always suspected the Summer Weekly Reader was a scam. Never got mine either.

 

[BobG]

p.s. I always suspected the Summer Weekly Reader was a scam. Never got mine either.

I always got mine. Surely you folks knew you should never put cash in the mail. Someone probably stole the quarter.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I always got mine. Surely you folks knew you should never put cash in the mail. Someone probably stole the quarter.

I can see the application form in my mind as if it were this morning. There was a circle the size of a quarter where the coin should go and two dotted lines to fold over and cover the coin with the paper. My mother secured it with a piece of scotch tape, so the stolen quarter theory is unlikely. Indeed, at the time, there was only one explanation needed. My mother put the envelope in the wrong mailbox and that was that. As an adult, I have the maturity to consider many other possibilities, but I haven't come up with a better one in all these years.

 

[BobG]

I can see the application form in my mind as if it were this morning. There was a circle the size of a quarter where the coin should go and two dotted lines to fold over and cover the coin with the paper. My mother secured it with a piece of scotch tape, so the stolen quarter theory is unlikely. Indeed, at the time, there was only one explanation needed. My mother put the envelope in the wrong mailbox and that was that. As an adult, I have the maturity to consider many other possibilities, but I haven't come up with a better one in all these years.

I would have been crushed. I've always been an obsessive reader. Annoyingly so.

I don't know how many times I've heard, "Umm, I'm talking to you? Could you quit reading the trash blowing by for about 30 seconds and look at me while I'm talking?"

"Yeah, sure. Did you ever realize they use whole eggs in Twinkies? When you think about it, I guess that would be an awful lot of eggs to crack. You think they use a BlendTec blender to make sure the shells are ground up fine enough?"

 

[Astronuc]

I was luckier. My parents had a set before I could even read. I actually learned my ABC's from the cover of those books and how to count, too. Eventually I even opened the covers and read them (the year end supplements were always great - they had cellulose layers to burrow further into the layers of human anatomy and things like that). I loved those books (my parents still have them, but they never renewed to keep getting the supplements).

Eventually, we lost the 'M' volume. My idiot sister gave it to one of her stupid friends who needed a book to prove she'd been at the library instead of killing time at a friend's house. Years later, I got married and, as my wife was unpacking her stuff in our first apartment, she pulled out the 'M' volume of our encyclopedias and said, "You know, actually, this belongs to you." When we visited my parents for the first time, I slipped it back into the set. You'd think it would have taken at least a few days for someone to notice, but my little brother noticed within about the first hour, "Hey! We have the 'M' volume! Where did that come from?!"

Poor kid. He spent half his life avoiding homework topics that started with 'M'.

Do your realize how many states start with 'M'? Poor kid couldn't even learn how to build a methamphetamine lab.

Great story! Good thing you didn't loose 'N' as well.

I can imagine not having ready access to information about magnesium, manganese and molybdenum, or mitosis and meiosis, caused your brother significant hardship. How ever did he get through high school? Is that why he didn't become a metallurgist?

 

[ehrenfest]

Great story! Good thing you didn't loose 'N' as well.

I can imagine not having ready access to information about magnesium, manganese and molybdenum, or mitosis and meiosis, caused your brother significant hardship. How ever did he get through high school? Is that why he didn't become a metallurgist?

Thank god the internet and especially Wikipedia blossomed when I was in high school and allowed me to avoid such traumatic events as having no knowledge of things that begin with a certain letter. I only wish that the internet and PF and Wikipedia were developed earlier like when I was in elementary school. One of the things my parents definitely did right was put a computer with high speed internet access in my room. Unfortunately, there are just as many unproductive and as productive things you can with high-speed internet internet access and I am really scared to think of what kinds of sites I was visiting as a teenager. I like to think that I grew up "on the internet" since I think many of the values and interests and dreams I have developed have come from all the information that I have absorbed while reading Wikipedia and such. Without the internet, I would have been a horrible horrible mess.

But to reinforce the ideas I expressed in my opening post: it was NOT fun growing up on the internet and it is NOT something we want to promote our kids to do. Instead of having memories of learning something important to me for the first time during a tete-a-tete with my parents or with a friend, almost all the things that are important to me were learned while staring at a computer screen alone in my room probably at some odd hour in the morning and after 30 minutes of using search engines to try to learn this important thing.

 

[B. Elliott]

I had to give my father a swift kick to the head when I caught him trying to throw away my entire World Book set. It was as though someone was trying to delete my favorite memories from my mind.

I think he actually accomplished throwing away my favorite one, the 1965 'Reviewing The Events Of 1964'. That's the one that sparked my love of paleontology.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Instead of having memories of learning something important to me for the first time during a tete-a-tete with my parents or with a friend, almost all the things that are important to me were learned while staring at a computer screen alone in my room probably at some odd hour in the morning and after 30 minutes of using search engines to try to learn this important thing.

I gre up before the internet age so I missed out on a fe of the letters too. Like you, I learned so much from sources other than my parents. But my parents taught me stuff you couldn't find with a search engine if you had a hole hour.

 

[G01]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_W._Barton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Carroll
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kane

These are examples of people who had parents who were nice enough to nurture their thinking abilities from a young age so that academic success was natural and that is allowing them to have amazing careers. They have an amazing basket of skills that they carry around with them and have all these versatile mental abilities that make doing math and basically anything else supereasy for them.

Compared to their parents, my parents are a complete joke. Between the ages of 0 and 18, my parents had almost complete control over my identity and what activities I participated in and where I went to school. And the choices they made have been detrimental for me. They had tons of resources yet I spent MASSIVE amounts of my childhood just doing nothing (i.e. watching TV, playing video games, trying to be accepted socially, traveling in cars or airplanes, having the most trivial conversations imaginable, eating deadly desert food filled to the brim with saturated fat and trans fat, listening to music in my room (while doing nothing else) for prolonged periods of time, trying to be rebellious, shopping for clothes that were "better" than the ones I currently had, playing with random "for-the-masses" electronic toys like Bop-It or little robots or race cars or whatever,... the list goes on and on)!

My point is that I did everything BUT focus on learning and academics and self-improvement and skill-development and all those good things like the people listed above. And this is TOTALLY my parents fault! Was I supposed to magically develop an interest in esoteric mathematics like combinatorics when no one had ever even explained to me what that word meant!

And now that I have developed an interest in mathematics, it is SO MUCH more difficult for to learn this stuff since the neural connections that I should have developed at a young age are missing. I have trouble with basic things like arithmetic since I just didn't practice them enough when I was younger since my parents didn't motivate me to!

Of course, maybe it is not really fair to blame my parents since they could just throw the blame on their own parents (my grandparents). And iterating that logic I should really blame my greatgrandparents and I guess this is infinitely regressive...

I hate this "family" system where random people are allowed to have kids and do WHATEVER they want to them short of physical abuse or neglect. I think society should send all kids to a place where parents like mine can't inflict irreparable damage on them.

Sorry for this rant but its not fair! :(

You need to stop passing the buck for your own future. Math does not come easy to MOST people. Even people with these amazing, nurturing parents don't necessarily have it easy with math. The few that do are very RARE exceptions. Stop complaining and focus on the following:

You apparently love math according to your posts here. is it not worth the struggle if you love it?

If you love something you are going to have to work for it. No one else is going to accept the excuse of "your parents didn't prepare you enough or nurture your math abilities." You have to take what you have and work with it. It is your life ehrenfest. Whateber work goes into the life the more will come out of it. But at this point, only you can put that work into your life.

 

[Evo]

When I was little, I asked for things like a microscope, telescope, chemistry set, etc... for birthdays and Christmas. I was lucky that my mom had three entire sets of Encyclopedias (which I read) as well as medical books and she would either buy me the books I requested on archaeology, astronomy and ancient history, or take me to the library so I had a better selection than the school library. I also had National Geographic. But I ASKED for these things. My brother had no interest in any of these things, all he did was play with his friends, while I stayed inside creating cool slides for my microscope and creating weird concoctions that I used on flies, which is probably why he got a law degree, then became a stock broker and then opened a worldwide chain of international finance offices.

 

[binzing]

I WISH I had a chem set when I was little. I don't think they even make them any more...
I do however have a lifetime subscription to Nat Geo. It cost $500 in 1992.

 

[waht]

I asked for an oscilloscope for one Christmas, my brother asked for a better computer video card to play games. Lo and behold one day Santa hauled a big package through the chimney.

 

[~christina~]

When I was little, I asked for things like a microscope, telescope, chemistry set, etc... for birthdays and Christmas. I was lucky that my mom had three entire sets of Encyclopedias (which I read) as well as medical books and she would either buy me the books I requested on archaeology, astronomy and ancient history, or take me to the library so I had a better selection than the school library. I also had National Geographic. But I ASKED for these things. My brother had no interest in any of these things, all he did was play with his friends, while I stayed inside creating cool slides for my microscope and creating weird concoctions that I used on flies, which is probably why he got a law degree, then became a stock broker and then opened a worldwide chain of international finance offices.

It's very annoying to think of my hs. They have a "lab" but apparently I never had a chemistry class in there. (no experiments or anything) But now I don't need a chem set since I use the real thing and have many holes in my clothes to show for it. wait..it should be =>
I would like to purchase a microscope but I wonder why I haven't, but maybe it was because I was preocupied with reading Encarta Encylopedia on the computer.(cd)
That's how I found out that I had a scarlet tanger visit my area.(bird pics and call as well!)

 

[kingdomof]

When I was young I was into science I guess. I liked plants a bit when I was 4/5, saw the periodic table of elements for the first time at age 6, and I started reading watered down science/watching science related tv shows around age 9. Now I'm starting a Biochem major and working in a Neurosci lab. I don't know what my parents could've done for me to help me with doing Biochem though, heh. It just seems that Physics/Math has all the genius students.