[masraum]

Originally Posted by berettafan

you and me both brother!!!

they aren't cars where you can just turn the wheel in the direction you want them to go, apply brakes when you want them to slow down, etc.

Originally Posted by Cajundaddy

We raised 3 and two of them are thriving, champions in their respective fields. The third leads with her emotions and makes life much harder than it needs to be.

That's the thing, these are people with their own personalities. You can, at best, nudge them a certain direction, and hope for the best. What you do that's successful in one may not work in another.

A big part of how a person turns out comes down to that person and their personality. You can have kids that come from great parents that turn out horrible and you can have kids from horrible parents that turn out great.

I work with a guy now that's intelligent and successful. He came from a background and home-life that if you heard about it on Jerry Springer, you'd think was "dramatized for TV".

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

My wife is now retired. Back when she was the HR director at a local university she talked about parents coming in with their college student kids to apply for a student job. They would fill out the application for the COLLEGE student child. Then do most of the interview for the kid. She was always astonished any parent thought they were really helping the kid.

It's a shame. Those parents think they are helping the kids, but they are hurting them on so many levels. Or hell, maybe the kid is pretty much a loser that's only gotten as far as they have because the parents have done everything. Maybe the parent is giving the kid a better life than they would have on their own.

I think we often make the mistake of assuming that everyone has the same potential to be level headed, rational, reliable and at least moderately successful, but the same way that some folks have blue eyes and some brown, some folks are natural athletes and some are not, some are naturally intelligent and some aren't, the same goes for the personality traits that make us successful or not.