Juste a mini post about something that was on my mind today:

I really don’t get parenting.

You all know some people that qualify as assholes. We’ve all met, at some point in our lives, brats that obviously need a little extra discipline. I’m pretty sure there’s a big correlation between being a bad kid and becoming a bad adult.

In my opinion, a “bad” kid is the kind of kid who openly disrespects authority figures, including their parents, for no real reason. The kind of kid who turns into a teen that drinks alcohol, smokes and does drugs very frequently. Having very bad grades and/or failing classes because he/she “doesn’t care” is also a red flag. I’m trying not to be a judgmental prick here, tell me if I’m failing at it. Obviously, opinions vary wildly about the definition of a good or bad kid, but the actual definition is irrelevant to the topic of this post, so replace it with whatever it is that you think makes a child naughty or nice.

I know some people who were disciplined a lot, including physical punishment, and ended up just fine. I know some people who barely ever received anything worse than a weird look from their parents, and also ended up just fine. I happen to also know some people in both those categories who turned out to be bad kids.

So what does it mean? Does parenting actually have no influence on how the kid turns out? That can’t be right. In that case, is it completely up to luck if your parenting style matches the kid’s nature and makes him into a decent human being?

Maybe some parenting styles are more likely to be successful, but none of them is good enough for every single child? Are there really some kids that are bad, and can’t be changed?

Actually, how do you even define who’s a bad kid? Obviously, most parents think that their kid turned out okay, so can you ever truly know if you’ve succeeded at parenting?

I’m not a parent, so I can’t answer this, but if you’re reading this and you are one, you should be able to answer this question. You probably think your children turned out pretty well. You probably also think that this is thanks to your parenting style. While this may very well be true, I’m more interested in knowing how do you know that? What are your reasons to think that? When did you figure it out? If you’ve felt like your child was perfect ever since his birth, maybe that’s a little biased. But that alone doesn’t make it false.