Do parents respect bad kids more?

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I was a very good kid. I believed that I was the kindest child to have ever existed, although my family didn't think so. I never hurt another child (if anything, I was the one being hurt), I was compelled to nurse back to health every injured animal I stumbled upon, I never stole anything, I got good grades outside of an occasional C. I should have been every parent's dream child. Maybe my kindness and "goodness" came off as weakness, and triggered a misdirected predatory instinct in adults.

Extended family members seemed to like me, but looking back, I can't help feeling that the liking was "transactional": (1) they liked me only because I acted in an inquisitive, supplicating manner, rather than because they had sincere respect for me, and (2) all "niceness" went out the window the minute I didn't act like they expected me to. I told my therapist about how my family treated me, but she just smiled and nodded like someone who doesn't speak English. Or worse, she mocked me by asking rhetorical questions like: "Aw, do you feel sad when you parents yell at you?" Because of that, I turned to alcohol for comfort when I was 12.

In my case, the hike was supposed to be "for my health"; I was 8 at the time. I had a weight problem for most of my life, which I didn't get under control until 2014. And like I said, not bringing water along was because my parents were limiting my water intake. Maybe to teach me the value of patience too. The walk itself was actually not too bad; the park/preserve was on relatively flat land. It was the sun and the lack of trees/shade that made it hard, as well as the inability to run off-trail to the nearest 7-11. (I had, and still have, a photographic memory for directions; I had memorized where the 7-11 was.) My parents could run faster, obviously, and would stop me.

In my personal experience bad kids more often get what they want because grown ups do not want to listen to their tantrums and give in, but they are respected less and not more.

Among me and my siblings one of my sisters was a lot more misbehaved than the rest of us. My parents would walk on eggshells around her to some extent and expect me and my other siblings to do the same. It wasn't out of respect. It was because they didn't want to listen to 5 hours non-stop screaming, yelling, crying and temper tantrums.

If I compare what my relatives say about her or my other siblings when the person talked about is not present, I can tell for sure that she is not respected more.
People walk on eggshells around her. That means she sometimes doesn't get criticized when other people would and people give in and let her have her way when they wouldn't normally.
It also means they more often talk negatively about her behind her back to vent their frustration with her behavior and because directly criticizing her in her presence leads to reactions everyone can gladly do without. She is trusted less. People consider her behavior irrational.
That's not respect. It's avoiding another temper tantrum.

I've seen similar reactions to other unpleasant people. They don't get respect, at least not directly for being unpleasant. They get lies to appease them and if they're physically aggressive too they may get fear.



Being a complete doormat risks being taken advantage of though and bullies do pick easy victims. It certainly is not how you become popular with other people. But good parents do not bully their own children.
You may have been too well-behaved for your own good as a child but the main problem wasn't that you were too well-behaved. The main problem was that your parents simply are abusive.

In my mind, that's still respect. Parents respect bad kids' wishes more, specifically by being more willing to grant them, regardless of motive. Quite often, my family made it clear in no uncertain terms, that my wishes didn't matter, even well into adulthood. Even though I was every parent's dream child (or so I thought). Meanwhile, many "bad" kids would get candy, TV time, a special outing, etc. just for existing, as opposed to having to earn those things like I did, only to have them revoked last minute over some perceived slight. My parents motive for all this was, as they worded it, "to make a good person out of you".

Many a time, I tried misbehaving, in hopes of making my parents give up on "making a good person out of me" and resign themselves with having a "bad" kid, so I could have more freedom and/or small pleasures. That failed. To get respect from their parents---not the same as love/approval---a kid has to be "bad" from the get-go, not a "good" kid behaving badly.

Come to think of it, it's no different than the "nice guys vs. jerks" dichotomy. Women say they want nice guys, but date jerks. Parents say they want their kid to be "good", but respect bad kids. Case in point: my older sister was exponentially more defiant and less docile, and our parents respected her far more than they ever respected me.

In that case we simply didn't think of 'respect' as the same thing.
Indeed, parents tend to allow bad kids things or let them get away with things they do not allow well behaved ones. It's out of a lack of options though. You can allow them, you can put up with whatever behavior they choose to display if they don't get what they want, punish them harshly till they comply which would take some time, may be abusive and illegal, may result in them retaliating and may result in them threatening suicide or making a fake or in rarer cases real suicide attempt or put them in a home for difficult children.
In short, parents don't have any desirable or pleasant option and will often opt for what's least exasperating which is giving in or, if their child's wish is too unreasonable, just listening to their temper tantrums.

That's not a kind of 'respect' I ever found desirable, not when I was a child and not now.
But I can see how it would have been the better option growing up with your parents.


True.
In general people are more willing to accept someone's established behavior than someone's attempt to change.


Albeit this gets amplified by the vagueness of the terms.
Nice guys who can't attract women often have social anxiety issues, sometimes don't share their own opinions out of fear of insulting someone or making a bad impression which can lead to them seeming boring or bland, can be nervous enough to seem desperate and may let people take advantage of them.
One of my cousins does volunteer jobs, donates money, is generally helpful, finds something positive about pretty much everyone, listens to what others have to say, can explain things without sounding condescending and hardly ever says anything negative about anyone, stopped some bullies when ha still was in school etc. He never had a problem attracting women (albeit most of the time he was in a relationship rather than sleeping around but by his own choice). I don't see how anyone could see him more as a jerk than as nice. What he doesn't have is social anxiety or low self esteem and he doesn't infinitely let people take advantage of him but politely tells them 'no' if they get too unreasonable.
And honestly when I think of a nice person someone like this cousin is more like what I initially think of than someone ridden by anxiety and desperate to please people.
The guys I know who have an easy time attracting women and sleep around a lot all have a certain level of selfishness though and certainly have the potential to be jerks, but most of them don't act like jerks most of the time (they're a small and not really a random sample among all guys who sleep around a lot).


They may well want "good" kids.
In the case of your parents I can fully believe that they just wanted to exert power over someone - whether they were aware of it or it was subconscious. 'Want' wouldn't necessarily translate to 'treat well'.

Wow, brilliant! I've been talking about this since I first joined this site back in 2005.

I strongly believe that parents enjoy having power over their kids, whether they admit it or not. Especially considering how exerting power over your kids over matters like food/meals, naps, bedtimes, and grades is easy to do under a thinly veiled guise of "caring". And no one can prove the parents wrong! Because they "care", of course. Now, a "good" child is easy to boss around, who's very docile and will always comply, out of desire to please, fear of punishment, or both. A "bad" child, not so much.

Let's be honest: We live in a very disempowering society. Individuals have little or no power over their own lives. They're ruled by corrupt cops, psychopathic bosses, and government spying. So people crave power. And the easiest way to gain power is to bring a defenseless child into this world. I'll go as far as saying that if parenting didn't come with virtually limitless power over one's child---like if science found a way to have people be born as adults---many parents would never have kids in the first place.

I fully agree when it comes to parents who are abusive, overly harsh or have their child's future all planed and insist on making their adult child follow their plan. I just don't think that it's all parents or all parents to the same extent or that it's the only reason why people can want children.
But in the case of your parents "caring" and "making you into a good person" do sound like excuses to exert control.


People can crave power more than they'd admit because everyone likes to paint a favorable picture of themselves. They can also glorify certain kinds of relationships and forget that in fact not all parents love their children.

If people were born as adults that'd change everything about the parent-child relationship. Parents who want children to boss someone around would lose their reason to have any but it's not the only reason why someone could lose their reason to want children.

Another reason why parents might want kids is to have a cute baby to play with. Someone passive to feed, dress in cute clothes, tickle, show off to society, and be able to say: "I made this baby." This lasts for a few years.

However, people forget: passive babies turn into sentient children. They develop food preferences, bedtime/nap refusals, activity choices, etc. On top of that, they outgrow their cuteness, which makes their actions irritating. So parents get angry: "How dare he/she change on me like this?! I was supposed to have a passive, cute baby to play with!" It's similar to tech rage, like slamming your desk when WrongPlanet pops up a Captcha screen that deletes your post. (Because you feel duped when a site you expect to work doesn't work.) But because it's socially unacceptable to have those feelings toward one's child, parents look for other outlets. This is known as "reaction formation" in psychology. Most often, parents pick "caring for the child's well-being" excuse as a front for exerting power.

Another thing: when a baby turns into a child, he/she can't coast through life on cuteness anymore, and an adult-like respect dynamic comes into the equation. So then, parents have more respect for a strong-willed child than a docile child, even when outwardly "loving" the latter. Not unlike how they'd respect the same traits in an adult. Hence, this thread.

There are *some* exceptions to your observations. I must say I do mostly agree with your observations. But there is another reason for parenting: to make up for what the parents themselves did not have as a child. It's like version 2.

There was this scene in the "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" movie, where the mother told the daughter:

... Listen to me, Toula. My village saw many wars. Turkish, German. They all made a mess. And my mother, she said, “We’re lucky. We’re lucky to be alive!”. And I thought, “We’re not lucky to be alive. We’re not lucky when they’re telling us where we should live what we should eat!”. Nobody has that right. And then I see you, and I see Athena and Nicko. We came here for you, so you could live. I gave you life, so that you could live it.

One of the first things we taught our children is to say "No" to us. Anyway, look at this letter I wrote for my son on his 8th birthday: http://www.eikonabridge.com/Ivan_8th_birthday.pdf

... Mom and Dad are truly blessed to have you in our family. It’s a privilege to be your parents. And we thank you for the opportunity to be part of your life. Meanwhile, just keep enjoying life and thrive, and be a cool eight-year old!

So, there you go. The world is not entirely evil. I treat my children as equal-rights fellow human beings, from the days they were born. Equal-to-equal. That is perhaps hard to comprehend for other parents. But, as I have said, it's version 2. You finally get a chance to right the wrongs. I am perfectly fine with my children growing up to be wiser than I am. I look at them as my teachers, from day one. Equal-to-equal. I guess that is very hard for neurotypical people to comprehend.

Sorry, this is way too schmaltzy for my taste. Especially the "privilege" part. You chose to bring your son in to this world, or at least made the best of it. "Great outcome", sure. But "privilege"? Ehh... not buying it.

The "love" in my family was very much transactional: I had to earn it with good behavior and good grades. The "price" kept increasing as I got older. By the time I hit puberty, I decided that getting love from my parents wasn't worth my time, and instead planned to get it from a future girlfriend. Being an aspie, I didn't find one until 18 or 19. I'm certain that if I were a bad kid, my parents would have loved me more unconditionally, and they'd have been happy to get a simple "please" and "thank you", as opposed to expecting me to act like a perfect little obedient automaton.

Now, I tried talking to a therapist about how I felt unloved in my family. She mocked me, sided with my parents, and tried to gaslight me into thinking I'm wrong. I was smarter than to fall for it; I pretended to have had a breakthrough, and profusely thanked her for showing me the "real truth". I knew that if I tried to argue with her, I'd only make things worse for myself. So appeasing her was the best alternative.

At this point, the only way I'm righting the wrong is by not having kids at all. And now that my new health insurance went into effect, I can even get a vasectomy on the cheap.

How does you getting the vasectomy and not having kids at all right this wrong? I don't follow.

Erh? What's there to buy or not buy? Did you read my letter or not? My son wrote his first computer program at age 5. Today he is 9 years old. Everyone around him goes crazy about him: school teachers, ABA folks, music/art teachers/buddies in a non-profit org, other parents, his cousins, and recently, even some friends. He is just extremely creative and sweet. My daughter performed flawlessly on stage again, for a Xmas recital, with her own music composition for piano, singing at the same time. My children are not savants, but they are both sweet and creative. Do you know how many times my wife and I have looked at each other and told ourselves: "This is heaven!"? Did I know ahead of time that my son would be creating all sort of things using all sorts of materials and circuitry, or that my daughter would be good at composing songs and performing on stage? Of course not. THEY DEVELOPED THEMSELVES. I only provided the appropriate environment and opportunities. That is why it's a "privilege," especially when you see all the misery from other families. That's the thing: other parents see their children as lacking of something. They look down on their children. I look up to my children. I see them as better than I am. That, I think, is the difference.

I know how you feel at this stage of your life. Been there. But, depending on your luck, you might change your perspective at some point. For one thing: you are gonna miss all the fun. And I am not talking about fun for yourself. Let us face it, AI and Robotics are already here. We live *inside* the Technological Singularity. It's the time for autistic children to shine. This is their time. It's an exciting moment of history. You might not understand what I am talking about, but think about this: your children might.

Here's how. I know that my family would want me to get married and have kids, despite having treated me like a human Tamagotchi, and telling me how unpleasant my marriage will be. So I'm choosing not to do either, although I never wanted to in the first place. I also don't try to retaliate in other ways. I still call them, I still give them Christmas gifts, and I still visit them regularly. I like to think that essentially chopping down the family tree is punishment enough.

My only deterrent at this point is fear of chronic pain after getting a vasectomy. And the release of Vasalgel (a far less invasive procedure) on the US market got delayed for some reason. I also help my caus by avoiding romantic situations with women ages 28 to 36; that's the age most women are very desperate to have a child.

I support you not wanting kids if your expiriences with family are like this.
There are enough people in the world, it's not your moral obligation to bring more. Let's leave it to the ones expecting to enjoy parenting.

Is Vasalgel reversible?

It's supposed to be. Vasalgel is thick but porous. It allows inert (non-fertile) testicular fluids to pass, but blocks sperm. One injection is meant to last 5 to 10 years, after which point, it deteriorates and starts letting sperm though. (A man needs two in total, one per testes.) If a reversal is needed sooner, Vasalgel can be dissolved by injecting a sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) solution into the same site.

Vasalgel has a potential side effect too: feeling of chronic pressure down there. However, it could be an anti-placebo effect, due to knowing that "something" is blocking the vas deferens. Full clinical trials will provide more information.

I don't like to do things are get into things I can't back out of. If I wanted to be able to prevent myself from reproducing I would go with the Vasalgel when it becomes available. Just in case you change your mind years later. Do you understand where I'm coming from?