\n
As a blended family, a common experience nowadays by all means, each set of children got to view the parenting of the other portion of the family growing up and even into adulthood. This harks to one of my pet peeves: parents\u2019 unrealistic perspectives of their children.<\/span><\/p>\n I understand, in a way. I get very paternal at moments in my life. The idea of having a family and settling down is an ideal future that I\u2019d consider myself incredibly fortunate to have to any degree. <\/span><\/p>\n But, these dreams of what I view my future to be don\u2019t contain these dynamics where my children are perfect. I don\u2019t even hope my husband is perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n My childhood wasn\u2019t perfect by any means; whose is? My relationship with my mother was not perfect, my health has been far from perfect–but it\u2019s precisely because of all these scars and hurdles that I have a profound love for life and everyone in it.<\/span><\/p>\n If you go around parading your son or daughter as some straight \u2018A,\u2019 supergenius, meanwhile they\u2019re snorting coke and not passing their high school classes, is that really loving your child? <\/span><\/p>\n While you live in your delusional world, you\u2019re training yourself to dismiss behaviors you should be paying attention to.<\/span><\/p>\n Why is it so uncomfortable for parents to realize that their child does not have to be the next Jesus Christ to live a wonderful, happy, important life? There\u2019s always this knee-jerk in this sheltered suburb of mine toward any issues children have.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s like everyone here is trying to be Penelope from SNL. Child rearing is a one-up contest, apparently.<\/span><\/p>\n A parent will bring up that their child will start at Sinclair or something in the fall and the roundtable of \u201ccan-I-speak-to-the-manager\u201d adults will respond with something like \u201cOh, yeah? Well, my angel has an IQ of 209, controls the president of the United States, single-handedly resolved the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and cured AIDS. Twice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, you\u2019re so entertained by your fantasies you\u2019re desensitized to receiving the signs your child may need your help. Why do we not want to help the ones we love?<\/span><\/p>\n Do we just not love our children anymore? What about our friends and family? How honest are our concepts of each other?<\/span><\/p>\n I consider myself incredibly fortunate that if you\u2019re on my Facebook list or anything like that, I will happily fly thousands of miles to help you. I will be there if you need me, as soon as I can be. I will be there yesterday if I have to.<\/span><\/p>\n The point being, everyone that knows me knows I\u2019m not perfect–and it brings us closer.<\/span><\/p>\n If my life story ever reads like \u201cBarton woke up and had an alright day, then slept,\u201d no one would read it. While that sounds ideal to me, a severe insomniac, it points out that what we take interest in often arises from conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n I believe from growing up, trading away my identity for security, it made me appreciate the relationships I have in my adulthood significantly more. It doesn\u2019t fill that void, but it sure soothes it while helping to discover new passions. <\/span><\/p>\n When I was about 18 or 19, my family had calmed down and we got to rebuild the relationship, arguably for the first time, as real people who had real problems that deserved real, collaborative work.<\/span><\/p>\n We tried the storming through life pretending if we ignored these challenges, they\u2019d surely resolve. Life will personally find you and belittle you wherever and whenever you have that mindset. <\/span><\/p>\n We had to drop our egos to get somewhere. We couldn\u2019t get over hurdles while we were weighted down by unrealistic perspectives of ourselves and others. <\/span><\/p>\n I think some of us need to spend some more work thinking which we truly value: our pride, or the children we claim are our pride and joy? Facades and ignorance are dangerous acts for families in dire straits. <\/span><\/p>\n Value your real relationships. Life isn\u2019t perfect, but it is real\u2013 so why get hung up on idealism?<\/span><\/p>\n Barton Kleen<\/strong> As a blended family, a common experience nowadays by all means, each set of children got to view the parenting of the other portion of the family growing up and even into adulthood. This harks to one of my pet peeves: parents\u2019 unrealistic perspectives of their children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10290,"featured_media":13706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[1999,1384,222,1725],"class_list":["post-14933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-barton-kleen","tag-opinion","tag-relationships","tag-with-kleen-conscience"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3SR","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Barton-Website.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14934,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14933\/revisions\/14934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nExecutive Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"