Parental advice about upbringing not being the same as training a doggie. Woof. I think I was trained rather than brought up. Keep your mouth shut unless you're asked something! Children are silent when grown-ups speak! Speak with two words! (that one might be too Dutch) Stand straight! Sit up straight! Ellbows off the table! Hand over your mouth! Eat your dish empty! (too good to translate properly) Finger out of your nose!
What were you told?
First thing that pops in my mind, what gave me the dogtrain feeling is to be special and do normal. Maybe not such a bad combination, but when used by parents as a denial of the child's feelings, it kills. I mean when you stand out and you are clearly too impertinent for the parents to handle, they tell you to do normal and when you show to conform to the herd in a way and they can not handle it, they tell you to step out. it sure gave me a feeling of denial of my person, my being special. On my search for a mix of going with the flow and my way of being special took a long time of my adult life, to wash away this dogtrain-message out of my head. It will never completely.
At the time it never even entered my mind that I could possibly be something special. Or different, or whatever. I desperately tried to be the same myself, in vain, thank god. But I too am still very much a trained dog. Woof.
Eat your dish empty! = empty your plate (dish)
Thank God for Jo Frost a.k.a supernanny ;-) Well, I'm no parent myself but I do believe that one day your kids will use such commands against you. When they are older they will laugh about it and rebel against it. Sure they need to be learned tablemanners and such but still a lot of people take bringing up the kids too far.
I was raised on antoher planet I guess. After trying hard to educate my two older brothers, both attempts ended in two guys who never finished schooln my parents gave up the education idea.
So my parents asked themselves, what is education? What is it good for? It is a non excisting utopia. So they let us do what we wanted to do, there were a few simple rules to make the household possible, but behind that we were as free as a bird. No manners, no nice dinner-table-attitude. Just have fun and relax. That was my education. And I am copying that kind of philosophy so hard that it gets creepy sometimes. The older I get the more I see my mother when I look in the mirror. Yesterday I bought a porcs-heart to dissect it as a kind of homeschooling, my kids think I am really nuts, planning to have a food fight with dead meat.
Hilde