Open Discussion--How Parents Can Rewire Their Children

[BwareDWare94 723]

This is a continuation of what used to be "Weekly Discussion" threads, but I couldn't keep up with them. I'll try to post more of these, moving forward.

Anyway, the topic I want to discuss isn't exactly something that has been termed by psychologists or anything of the sort, but I think it's observable in the way we were raised and the way, as adults, we raise our own kids, or (if we don't have children), watch our friends and siblings raise their kids. Anyway, parents are most responsible for shaping their growing children, emotionally. How parents treat their children on a day by day basis is what helps shape the way they handle emotions, adversity, trauma, etc.

I want to discuss how certain individuals go on to do horrible things and how many of those instances can be traced back to how their parents treated them, growing up, and if they happen to grow up to live in the same area as their parents, how the way they continue to be treated can affect their adult life.

This thought process was spurred by something quite horrible in my life--one of my friends from college, a guy I had several classes with, would often trade texts with, and would meet up for beers with, recently shot his father and then himself in a murder/suicide. Now, I hadn't talked to him in close to a year but we had kept in touch after college. Nevertheless, while I knew he had his troubles, I had no clue that what he was capable of could ever lead him to what he recently did. While speculation from afar is naive, I find it easy to believe that a potentially abusive relationship between his father and himself may have existed. It got me to thinking about the way we're raised, and how that can completely "rewire" the way we handle life, and can create the very possibility of doing horrible things.

Now, this isn't meant to be a "blame parents" thread because there are no perfect parents, and if we're lucky, our parents teach us many things "to do" as parents but in observing their faults, we learn what "not to do" as well. Nevertheless, let's move to a hypothetical situation similar to my friend's, and let's say that there is, for sure, an abusive relationship where the father is aggressively, intensely verbally abusive, and sometimes physical. If the son ever snaps and does what my friend did, is the son completely at fault because of how heinous the crime was, or is it a shared responsibility between both parties?

My take is this--horrible people bring about their own fates, regardless of how awful or violent they might be, and in a case as such, I see more fault--significantly more fault--in the person who traumatized a child so much that they grew into a human being capable of murder, not to mention suicide.

What do the rest of you think?

[GA_Eagle 595]

Sorry to hear about your friend, Bware. I don't have any answers here. Parenting is incredibly hard but there are lines that you don't cross, etc.

 

The road you're on, as far as blaming a bad parent for an adult child's actions, already happens in the court of public opinion if not legally. It also can be theorized that a parent learns much of their parenting behavior from their parents and from cultural ideas on parenting... so on and so forth

[blotsfan 2,112]

Bware, I'm sorry for your loss.

 

As far as your question, I think a parent could be morally responsible for what their child does, but at the same time, once the child grows up, you have to know that what you're doing is wrong. But if your friend's dad was abusive, I can't say I'm shedding any tears for him.