Family Relationships

Family. That one word connotates so many different things, emotions, people, etc. to each person who hears the word. "Family"'s connotation depends on our experiences with our individual family members. The constant, almost traditional, relationship between parents and children is one that is full of bickering and disagreements about desires coming from each side.

Parents - Parents are the children's guardian, therefore, they are the children's shield from mistakes that are easily made. However, some children do not see this; they do not see the fact that their parents are trying to shield them from the mistakes that they had once made during their childhood. If the offspring merely ignores the wishes of the parents, then the children are basically forcing their parents to watch them go down the same awful road that could resurface tragic memories from the parent(s)'s past(s). However, there is also the matter of projection. What is projection? Projection is when parents decide to live their life through their children. Why? There are many reasons behind projection, one of them being the fact that the parents may not have had the means to live the way they wanted, their parents may not have had the money or the willingness for their children to follow their dreams. However, what several parents do not see is that they are forcing their children to go down the same road that led them to projection when they project upon their children. The children of the most current generation see the world in their own eyes and they see opportunities in themselves that others cannot.

Children - Now as a female who is slowly maturing to the point where I am able to recognize my parents' wishes and the reasons behind them, I am still reluctant to follow some of their commands. Some of their commands seem to be very unreasonable to me. However, I try (emphasis on the word "try") to understand their reasoning behind what they tell me to do. They say what they do for the sake of my safety, my future, etc. Sometimes I feel like they don't love me, a ridiculous assumption on my part as they act the way they do BECAUSE they love me. I have a friend who thinks that her father does not know anything about the world right now because he is a man who lived "back in those days." Quite frankly, whenever I hear her say this, I feel that she is wrong. My acquaintance boldly states that her father will never understand the troubles that we are going through today as teenagers, but I am absolutely sure her father is aware of that and everything else. Offspring give their parents less recognition than they really deserve for their survival in the past. Is there a reason to this? (Well there is a reason to most everything, in my opinion.) As some of the readers are teenagers, I may be able to say that this inferior recognition is due to teenagers' rebellious stage of life when they feel that they know more than their parents. Therefore, recognizing that their parents are aware of the troubles would be, in a sense, going against their "superior" knowledge that they possess as teenagers.