Do parents respect bad kids more?

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Damn you had some bad therapists. Thats not necessarily true for all of them tho. Dont judge a group based off an individual. There are plenty of great therapists out there who truly care for their clients young and old.



I think theres a BIG difference between "abusive" and "tough".
My parents would almost certainly fall under "tough" but they are by no means abusive. And you are right, my siblings and I were very polite, well mannered, mature, and respectful as children and often praised for it by other adults. We also had great grades, were quite successful in our extracurriculars, and got into good colleges. So clearly, a little bit of toughness can be quite effective. But I go to a college within easy driving distance of my parents, talk to my mom on the phone every day, and I know how excited they are to be grandparents. I didnt like their parenting style when I was young and I dont think its one I will use on my own children, but now that Im older I can see the benefits of growing up the way I did.

There is a reason why I had tough in quotes you know.

I'll add something else. The parents wonder why their kid is 36, but lives like a drifter and a Peter Pan. He doesn't want any career growth beyond his current level. He moves apartments once every several years, and you're thankful he at least stays in your geographical area. You clearly remember him being heavily into science as a child, but his current interests are limited to bread and circuses. He brusquely dismisses you when you mention him getting married or having kids. He says that he wants to be a free man until the day he dies. You know very little about his current friends or the places he goes to.

Great the\rapists [sic], really? Name ONE! And pray tell, what would a GOOD therapist say or do, when a child tells shares that his parents yell at him and call him cruel names? Obviously, a good therapist isn't going mock him by saying "aww, you feel sad when your parents mistreat you" in a cooing tone with a tilted head. But what? The therapist won't have the child removed from home, unless the abuse is physical! It would be a conflict of interest, since the parents are a paying customer! Which confirms my point: All "family" therapists are garbage! I know for a fact I did a better job playing marriage therapist for my parents when I was 12, when they constantly fought with each other, than that garbage did being my actual therapist when in her 40's.

(sniff) (sniff) Is that Stockholm Syndrome I'm smelling?

Yeah but thats what Im saying. Your experience with therapists doesnt apply to every single therapist out there. And Im sorry your experiences werent good ones, but its kind of ridiculous to believe that now every therapist is terrible. Thats like saying that since one restaurant gave you food poisoning, all restaurants are terrible and you should never eat out again.



Um okay so not cool. Do you even know what Stockholm Syndrome really is??

One thing I have noticed on the internet is abusers tend to see themselves as tough but yet people see tough parenting as being abuse.

Interesting fact here: Abusers do the same things to their kids normal parents do but the abusers just take it to a further level. It's about context. I wonder if some people are so clueless or if they just don't care and they go "lot of parents do that to their kids, this is normal parenting" as an excuse.

I've read lot of posts online mostly in r/raisedbynarcissists. Occasionally I have seen someone popped in there talking about their parent and it's clear to me they have a mental issue or the family is just poor than them being an as*hole or just abusive and people in that sub will tell them so. It's about context too. Is the parent limiting their kids showers because they can't afford a big water bill or because they have other family members in the household and they need to save hot water for others or are they just doing it to be controlling? I remember that big discussion about it in the thread when someone complained about not being able to have a nice shower and it's limited to 5 minutes.

Apple and oranges!

When someone gets food poisoning in a restaurant, there's a defendant you can come after, and an owner who takes responsibility. Most often, the restaurant pays out damages; failing that, it goes bankrupt and closes. But when a the\rapist [sic] abuses a patient, the therapist walks away scot-free. Because, as any therapist would say, "It's the client's responsibility to make himself feel better; I'm only here to guide him." With the "guidance" consisting of the therapist retraumatizing the patient; for his own good, of course. And the parents get to say: "We were so loving, we even took our kid to a therapist, but he's so misbehaved, not even a therapist could help him." Win-win-win for everyone but the child.

And that's why whenever I hear on the news about a child getting taken away by Child Protective Services, running away from home and getting in harm's way, or worse, all I can feel is schadenfreude. Even though I want to feel compassion for the parents, like an normal NT person would, I just can't.

Good point. A lot of times as children I think we cant grasp certain adult concepts and simply think our parents are being unfair, but oftentimes theres a very good reason why we cant do something or have something.
As you become a mature adult though, I feel like a lot of things from your childhood become a lot clearer



Agree to disagree. If you dont want to give therapists the time of day who am I to care?

Actually, there are certain things that are unclear and I'm 40. So, go figure.

Example: I don't understand why I'm to accept the maxim life is not fair yet we have had the American Revolution and Civil Rights movement that in a way demanded fairness.

Another example: Why do conservative types get to b***h about the unfairness of life when it comes to welfare and their tax dollars going to welfare programs?

Why such inconsistent standards from those who demand we accept that life is unfair? Why is it wrong to b***h about it and to attempt to make things fairer?




I could live to agree to disagree but I do understand where Aspie1 is coming from. Thing is though family therapists and family therapy comes down to being a business and these therapists are not just therapists but businessmen and businesswomen. They're going to do the things that will keep them in business which includes satisfying their customers. In family therapy, who are the customers? Parents, guardians and other adults who are footing the bill are the customers. The treatment/cure or whatnot will be something that will satisfy the customer and may not be beneficial to the patient.

This is what Aspie1 I think is getting at. Think in purely business terms and this is why I think he hates family therapy with a passion. They don't treat or help the patient but satisfy the customer (Parents).

I can see why he would use Jack Daniels therapy. He was medicating all the stress he was under not being able to satisfy what was demanded or what he perceived was demanded of him.

Actually, there are certain things that are unclear and I'm 40. So, go figure.[/quote]

Yes well thats why I said "a lot of things" not "all things"

Yes, 100%

I mentioned before that a conventional family is like a prison system. Well, kids are the inmates, parents are the prison guards, and family therapists are the court judges. The court system is fair and unbiased on paper, but in practice, it most definitely serves the prison system, not the inmates inside it.

In fact, I could go as far as saying that a conventional family---in contrast with a Mutual Adoption Club---is LESS fair than an actual prison. In a prison, well-behaved inmates may not be outwardly respected by prison guards, and often harassed by badly-behaved inmates, but they're appropriately rewarded for good behavior. They get TV time, extra commissary privileges, longer yard time, and most importantly, time off their sentence. Good kids in a family are "rewarded" with additional expectations and escalating standards. That's like requiring a well-behaved inmate to do a longer work assignment without paying him extra for it. Is that "respect"? The hell it is!

Ya know Im still shocked that this thread is as long as it is and you still think theres only one way (your way) to view families and interactions between parents and children.
Newsflash- all families are different. No offense, but your idea of Mutual Adoption Clubs sounds horrifying to me, and Im sure a whole lot of kids from loving homes who truly adore their parents and siblings would never want to be forced into a situation like you described. I, for one, would not be willing to give up the family and home life that I have if given the option. And even on my worst days as a kid when I outrighted hated my parents I still wouldnt have chosen differently. Sure it might be tempting to some children who come from less than loving homes, but for many of us, family is an extremely important and highly valued part of our lives that we would never willingly want to change or get rid of.

And if I remember ur previous descriptions of these adoption club communities or whatnot I think I can sorta relate. I grew up in a very small neighborhood where everyone was friends. The next door neighbors on both sides of my house had kids my age I was best friends with my whole life. Our families were so close I used to walk to my neighbors to eat lunch whenever my mom was making something I didnt like bc I knew she would make me my favorite. They were like second families to me.
The group of close aged kids in the neighborhood (jokingly called the minion squad) would all hang out together after school. In this way, as a child me and my siblings grew up largely outside of our own home. My friends parents were close enough with us to treat me like their own- which meant I was subject to their own rules and punishments. I got used to their different parenting styles and knew my way around most of the houses in the neighborhood. Swimming at the Carrows, football nights at the Gills, the Marneys had a zipline, the Smiths had a tree house, mine and the Davis's house backed up the lake etc etc. It was a lot of fun growing up in such a close knit community.
But at the end of the day- my mom would ring the bell and we'd all go home to our own houses and our own families. And despite sometimes wishing that my parents were as nice as Abigails or spoiled us as much as Walkers, I never once wished to return home to a friends house instead of mine. My parents are my parents, and I wouldnt have it any other way.

It's not "my" idea. It's Aldous Huxley's, author of "Island", as well as the better-known "Brave New World". "Island" had Mutual Adoption Clubs like I described. "Brave New World" had no concept of family to speak of: all humans were conceived in test tubes (referred to in the book as "bottles").

OK OK, I concede. You have a "purer" view of family than I do. I clearly remember fighting to the proverbial death (which always came) whenever my parents tried to take me home from anywhere. Be it a fun public venue, a city park, a friend's home, or even a relative's home. Because in my mind, a family home was a place where the fun comes to die. And it wasn't entirely inaccurate, either.

Actually my father told me about this. When he lived in Co-Op city in the bronx it was like what you described. It was a close knit Jewish community. And, as an aside during last period every friday my father met my grandmother during his last period of school to simply help her with her groceries.

Something else I'd like to add to your point: Talk therapy is the ONLY industry where it's the UNHAPPY patient who will keep coming back. So the therapists have a vested interest in keeping their patients unhappy. So, they'll give juuuust enough help to delude the patient that he's feeling better. But only for a moment. The minute they notice a patient feeling happier, like smiling more during sessions, they'll throw an emotional sucker punch by reopening deep-seated wounds in order to retraumatize him. Better yet, if a patient, while otherwise feeling fine, brings up a trauma from the past (like bullying), they'll pressure him into talking about every little detail of the trauma, thus intensifying and/or reintroducing the emotional pain from the event. In both cases, their goal is to keep him coming back to "process" his depressed feelings.

With family therapy, such a method is ridiculously easy. All you gotta do is emotionally abuse the child during the session in order to make him cry, thus making him want to return to make the sadness go away. If he says anything that does against your plan, pretend you don't know what he's talking about. All while telling his parents: "he's getting so good at sharing his feelings" (crying counts). The parents believe the charade, and keep sending the child back. By the time the parents realize what a ripoff therapy is, the therapist is $10,000 richer. That's per patient!

Talk therapists are basically emotional drug dealers. I'm saddened such a profession is even allowed to exist!

Your analogy does not apply to all families, but I realize it may apply to some.

When arranging therapy for my daughter I had a simple way of making sure the therapist considered my daughter to be the client: I said upfront that I was promising my daughter absolute privacy and that I expected the therapist to adhere to that. She did, even when I lamented about feeling knowing more would be helpful to me as a parent. She gave the answer she needed to: "I will run that by your daughter and see if she is willing to have you join us for part of a meeting."

You see, I have been LISTENING to all these posts over the years, absorbing how some things might be interpreted by my kids, and vowing not to be "that" parent. Children need boundaries, sure, but there are also times they need to have agency. One of the toughest jobs a parent has is knowing which is which.

I have failed in plenty of ways as a parent, but thankfully leaving my kids feeling powerless under the control of prison guards was not one of them.

As for talk therapists being emotional drug dealers, I strongly disagree - if you get the right therapist. They've helped me. They've helped my husband. They've helped my son. They've helped my daughter. We did the process and moved on; none of us stayed in for more than a year. I suppose it can be like taking pain killers: know yourself going in, what you need, and when to move on. And have a therapist that won't pressure you when you know you're ready to move on. Just like you can have a bad doctor getting sloppy with the pain killers, you can have a bad therapist.

I remain sorry that your family and your therapist all failed you. If I could reverse it all for you, I would. But we know I can't. Just know that I HAVE heard you all these years, even when I've given you a really hard time.

To say something in my therapist's defense, she invited my parents to join the session only once. It was the MOST AWKWARD SESSION EVER. My mom and the therapist talked nonstop about me like I wasn't there. My dad chimed in from time to time, but mostly observed. When I tried to get a word in, I got shushed. Which made sense: a 12-year-old boy doesn't hold a candle to the natural camaraderie between two adult women. Next time, my therapist asked my permission to have my mom and/or dad join the session again. But when refused, and told her how awkward last time was, she did her old shtick: tilt her head to the side and say "awww" in a cooing tone. I knew she was mocking me, but I was glad she respected my wishes. The next session with her and my parents, a few months later, was without me present.

They're drug dealers in a sense that want you to keep returning. So while they give you a word of encouragement or two, they also periodically retraumatize you, to keep you going back for more and more "doses" of therapy. (My therapist's excuse was "it's more important to feel better in the 'long run'". ) I smiled and nodded to her face, and at home, quietly swigged my parents' whiskey while they weren't looking.

But all right; you persuaded me. I'll bite. Do tell: How exactly did therapists help your family?