I'm thankful for my parents. Growing up, I thought that my parents were needlessly strict and uncool and that all my friends had it better than me. Only once I

I'm thankful for my parents. Growing up, I thought that my parents were needlessly strict and uncool and that all my friends had it better than me. Only once I was old enough to look at other parents from an adult perspective did I realize how...well, competent my own parents had been, compared to most. Turns out there are a lot of ways to screw up parenting. Many of my friends' parents divorced, others just quietly resented each other; some were too permissive, others were "helicopters;" some were too distant, others tried to be their kid's best friend; and of course, some were outright abusive. The older I get, the clearer it is to me that these parents were just "older teenagers," not true adults. In that regard, my parents really had their shit together (and still do), and I benefited from that enormously. Thanks mom and dad.