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I feel really conflicted on this one. On the surface, he's right, let kids be kids. But parents almost always overstep their bounds to do what they think is b

I feel really conflicted on this one. On the surface, he's right, let kids be kids. But parents almost always overstep their bounds to do what they think is best for their child. We've all heard of Tiger Moms, and parents basically forcing their kids into being a doctor for their own good. When it fails, it fails spectacularly, but it often doesn't fail. Is it wrong that a child was forced into something that gave them a great life? It just feels weird hearing a millionaire, rather successful, badmouth his parents and throw a pity party because they made him do something he was good at as a child. The vast majority of people would likely trade their position for his, childhood be damned.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
“Something he was good at as a child” You can become good at anything with practice. The standards for a 7-year-old are very low, and the fact he became good at acting is probably because he was forced to do it so much. I assume he'd rather have had a less traumatic childhood than be a millionaire.
- silisili 4y ago
  Would he rather have grown up in Eastern KY with a free childhood, but the only real job prospect being coal mining? I mean, ideally we all want wealthy parents who give us unlimited time and support and freedom, to pick a job we love doing and get paid well, etc. But it's just not reality for 99% of people.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
    You can change career later in life, but you can't get back a happy childhood you never had.
spoiler 4y ago
> But parents almost always overstep their bounds to do what they think is best for their child. Most people who believe this have grown up with either narcissistic parents, or just otherwise emotionally (not fiscally or materially, which neglected children often confuse misattribute as love and care) neglectful parents. The narcissistic ones simply love to fill their children's heads about how self-sacrifical and hard parents they are, yada yada yada. I strongly encourage anyone to read up on "good enough parenting" and narcissistic family dynamics, especially if you think you had an "overprotective" parent that couldn't respect boundaries. Edit: here's some links to encourage research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_enough_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_enough_parent https://narcissistfamilyfiles.com/2020/03/15/12-unspoken-rules-of-engagement-in-the-narcissistic-family/ https://narcissistfamilyfiles.com/2020/03/15/12-unspoken-rul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_parent Aside: there's growing research that supports narcissism (especially intergenerational narcissism) and narcissistic abuse has been on the increase, and that roughly 1 in 5 people have suffered from narcissistic abuse at least once in their life (check out Ramani Durvasula's book or literally pick any literature or research on narcissism)
Krasnol 4y ago
I know one of those "successful" kids who actually became a wealthy Radiologist. In the end it's a "ignorance is a bliss". He's missing a significant part of his childhood. He did try to come up with a replacement for a few months during his studies but realised that he was simulating and overdoing it. I've never seen him "let go" if you understand what I mean. I'd never tell him but seeing that is quite scary and I wouldn't want to exchange my freedom as a kid for all his money. Also he's married to a person similar to him. They don't have kids. They are a very boring couple but they try and we try to drag them along sometimes.
- hobo_mark 4y ago
  > I've never seen him "let go" if you understand what I mean. I don't quite, what do you mean? Thing is, I spend all my waking hours working to compensate for a relatively underachieving upbringing and have little idea what I'll do in a few years, after I'm done with what I wanted to build. There are the usual aspirational things mentioned elsewhere in this page (learn languages, play instruments...) but those are a ton of work, definitely not letting go.
gjulianm 4y ago
> but it often doesn't fail. Is it wrong that a child was forced into something that gave them a great life? I've seen it fail more often than not fail. Maybe from the outside the person has a great life but on the inside they're not actually happy. > It just feels weird hearing a millionaire, rather successful, badmouth his parents and throw a pity party because they made him do something he was good at as a child. The vast majority of people would likely trade their position for his, childhood be damned. I'm not that sure. What good does it make to be millionaire if you're deeply unhappy? Of course, if someone is starving right now they might want to swap places, or if they're unhappy already they might as well be unhappy with more money. But I don't think that state is something people really want.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  I'd rather be unhappy that I lost a few life experiences as a kid than being unhappy now because I can't pay my rent, I'm living off ramen, and my apartment has bedbugs, but that's just me.
  - gjulianm 4y ago
    It's not "I wish I didn't lose a few life experiences". Will Wheaton has expressed several times that he has severe chronic depression and anxiety. There's a lot of range between "can't pay rent" and "severely depressed millionaire" and I don't think people want either of those extremes.
    - MisterBastahrd 4y ago
      Millions of people have severe chronic depression and anxiety. Most of them don't have the resources to get treatment, they don't write memoirs that get republished, they don't end up getting an interview on Access Hollywood to talk about what a shit childhood they had, and they don't have a megaphone to throw their parents under the bus while enriching themselves from the legacy that was only possible because of their supposed trauma. It's one thing to say "hey, this is my experience, many people didn't know, I thought it sucks, I want to warn people about it, and I struggle with the results." It's another to say "I hated my childhood, I never got to do anything, here are ten thousand reasons why I hate my parents, and I'm gonna continue to throw them under the bus until people stop paying me to talk about it." It's normal to dislike some people. Even your parents. It's flat out unproductive to be perpetually bitter about things that happened 30-40 years ago when you're about to be 50, and I'm a person who would know given my own childhood... and my own (which I thought was fairly traumatic emotionally) was a cakewalk compared to my SO's. If those people care about him as little as he says, then the only person he's hurting by continuing to revisit it is himself. There's a difference between being upset that it happened and being so angry at the people who have long since either forgotten or forgiven themselves that you need to go on TV about it and then follow it up with a blog post. I don't think it helped him, he comes off as petulant, and it definitely didn't hurt anyone else if his narrative is accurate.
spoiler 4y ago
> Is it wrong that a child was forced into something that gave them a great life? There's a difference between encouragement and support and forcing. Forcing is never good or healthy. It's always abuse, no matter the mental gymnastics involved we use self-rationalise traumatic childhoods. It's no different from me forcong you right now to do something. Parents don't own their children. They can buy a doll if they want a doll. Edit: also "great" mean little in this context, as it means different things to different people.
- silisili 4y ago
  It's a really hard line to draw. When you realize mistakes you made as a kid and young adult, the pain or disadvantages it caused...and you love a little creature so much you never want them to experience that, it's easy to overstep bounds. Not that that's here nor there if the framing of the story is true. But we all know there are three sides to every story.
  - spoiler 4y ago
    I understand the impulse of wanting to prevent suffering, and even to some extent to prevent mistakes. However, mistakes are how children learn. You make a mistake, you learn not to do it again. That is also how you learn to cope (which is a critical skill in adulthood) with emotions and consequences. These children then go on to make mistakes in adulthood, and they don't have the necessary emotional framework to healthily cope; this leads to more mistakes, etc. Also, these people never, well, "learned" how to learn from their mistakes either. So they self-blame, self-hate, and repeat the same mistakes. Let children make mistakes, but provide a support net for them to go back. Let them deal with the consequences, but also show compassion, explain why this happened (and it involves other people how it made other people feel), and SHOW them how to do better. If you reprimand children, also make sure you praise them. Parents are there to teach children how to live their own life, not tell them how to live a life the parent wants. Of course, there are some mistakes you will want to prevent, like letting your kid run into ongoing traffic, etc. But we're not talking about life-threatening mistakes. This is obviously harder and more "stressful" than just locking your kids up (and this isn't even just a dysphemism; this happens through repeated emotional abuse), and shouting at them "do this, do that or nobody will love you". That's not parenting, that's just fucking sick.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I'm no millionaire but I certainly wouldn't want to switch places with him. I'm sure he definitely had a better life than those living in constant hunger and poverty, but from what I can tell he wasn't necessarily at risk of any of that. There's always someone with a worse life. I'd rather be homeless and hungry in America than live through the drought and famine that's hitting parts of Africa right now, or to have a roof over my head in the Chinese concentration camps. Being rich and famous doesn't make you happy. I fact, I'd say the opposite is often true: Hollywood produces some of the most twisted, desperate, depressed and depraved people out there. Today, Wil Wheaton is in a position many of us dream to achieve, being famous and beloved by the masses and probably not having to worry about money for the rest of his life, but to get there, he had to survive a lot of trauma. Is all that money worth it watching some movie producers scratch up your sister's face as a child actor? What if the gamble hadn't paid off? His sister suffered through a similar life but I haven't heard much from her. Going through all that to have the glamorous life of... a massage therapist? No, thank you. You can learn to give massages without the parental neglect. Wil was lucky to get a successful career out of this but that was never certain. Comments like yours often come off as envious to me. Some want the glamorous riches so bad they overlook the childhood trauma. Perhaps you've survived your own trauma, but "at least he got something out of it" is still a terrible take.
pjc50 4y ago
> great life? The only person really qualified to say whether or not it's great is the person themselves.
nvarsj 4y ago
You are making the mistake that success provides life fulfillment and happiness. Does it though? Would you accept childhood trauma and a life of battling with depression and anxiety, so you could be "successful"?

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago

“Something he was good at as a child” You can become good at anything with practice. The standards for a 7-year-old are very low, and the fact he became good at acting is probably because he was forced to do it so much. I assume he'd rather have had a less traumatic childhood than be a millionaire.

silisili 4y ago
Would he rather have grown up in Eastern KY with a free childhood, but the only real job prospect being coal mining? I mean, ideally we all want wealthy parents who give us unlimited time and support and freedom, to pick a job we love doing and get paid well, etc. But it's just not reality for 99% of people.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  You can change career later in life, but you can't get back a happy childhood you never had.

spoiler 4y ago

> But parents almost always overstep their bounds to do what they think is best for their child. Most people who believe this have grown up with either narcissistic parents, or just otherwise emotionally (not fiscally or materially, which neglected children often confuse misattribute as love and care) neglectful parents. The narcissistic ones simply love to fill their children's heads about how self-sacrifical and hard parents they are, yada yada yada. I strongly encourage anyone to read up on "good enough parenting" and narcissistic family dynamics, especially if you think you had an "overprotective" parent that couldn't respect boundaries. Edit: here's some links to encourage research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_enough_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_enough_parent https://narcissistfamilyfiles.com/2020/03/15/12-unspoken-rules-of-engagement-in-the-narcissistic-family/ https://narcissistfamilyfiles.com/2020/03/15/12-unspoken-rul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_parent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_parent Aside: there's growing research that supports narcissism (especially intergenerational narcissism) and narcissistic abuse has been on the increase, and that roughly 1 in 5 people have suffered from narcissistic abuse at least once in their life (check out Ramani Durvasula's book or literally pick any literature or research on narcissism)

Krasnol 4y ago

I know one of those "successful" kids who actually became a wealthy Radiologist. In the end it's a "ignorance is a bliss". He's missing a significant part of his childhood. He did try to come up with a replacement for a few months during his studies but realised that he was simulating and overdoing it. I've never seen him "let go" if you understand what I mean. I'd never tell him but seeing that is quite scary and I wouldn't want to exchange my freedom as a kid for all his money. Also he's married to a person similar to him. They don't have kids. They are a very boring couple but they try and we try to drag them along sometimes.

hobo_mark 4y ago
> I've never seen him "let go" if you understand what I mean. I don't quite, what do you mean? Thing is, I spend all my waking hours working to compensate for a relatively underachieving upbringing and have little idea what I'll do in a few years, after I'm done with what I wanted to build. There are the usual aspirational things mentioned elsewhere in this page (learn languages, play instruments...) but those are a ton of work, definitely not letting go.

gjulianm 4y ago

> but it often doesn't fail. Is it wrong that a child was forced into something that gave them a great life? I've seen it fail more often than not fail. Maybe from the outside the person has a great life but on the inside they're not actually happy. > It just feels weird hearing a millionaire, rather successful, badmouth his parents and throw a pity party because they made him do something he was good at as a child. The vast majority of people would likely trade their position for his, childhood be damned. I'm not that sure. What good does it make to be millionaire if you're deeply unhappy? Of course, if someone is starving right now they might want to swap places, or if they're unhappy already they might as well be unhappy with more money. But I don't think that state is something people really want.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago
I'd rather be unhappy that I lost a few life experiences as a kid than being unhappy now because I can't pay my rent, I'm living off ramen, and my apartment has bedbugs, but that's just me.
- gjulianm 4y ago
  It's not "I wish I didn't lose a few life experiences". Will Wheaton has expressed several times that he has severe chronic depression and anxiety. There's a lot of range between "can't pay rent" and "severely depressed millionaire" and I don't think people want either of those extremes.
  - MisterBastahrd 4y ago
    Millions of people have severe chronic depression and anxiety. Most of them don't have the resources to get treatment, they don't write memoirs that get republished, they don't end up getting an interview on Access Hollywood to talk about what a shit childhood they had, and they don't have a megaphone to throw their parents under the bus while enriching themselves from the legacy that was only possible because of their supposed trauma. It's one thing to say "hey, this is my experience, many people didn't know, I thought it sucks, I want to warn people about it, and I struggle with the results." It's another to say "I hated my childhood, I never got to do anything, here are ten thousand reasons why I hate my parents, and I'm gonna continue to throw them under the bus until people stop paying me to talk about it." It's normal to dislike some people. Even your parents. It's flat out unproductive to be perpetually bitter about things that happened 30-40 years ago when you're about to be 50, and I'm a person who would know given my own childhood... and my own (which I thought was fairly traumatic emotionally) was a cakewalk compared to my SO's. If those people care about him as little as he says, then the only person he's hurting by continuing to revisit it is himself. There's a difference between being upset that it happened and being so angry at the people who have long since either forgotten or forgiven themselves that you need to go on TV about it and then follow it up with a blog post. I don't think it helped him, he comes off as petulant, and it definitely didn't hurt anyone else if his narrative is accurate.

spoiler 4y ago

> Is it wrong that a child was forced into something that gave them a great life? There's a difference between encouragement and support and forcing. Forcing is never good or healthy. It's always abuse, no matter the mental gymnastics involved we use self-rationalise traumatic childhoods. It's no different from me forcong you right now to do something. Parents don't own their children. They can buy a doll if they want a doll. Edit: also "great" mean little in this context, as it means different things to different people.

silisili 4y ago
It's a really hard line to draw. When you realize mistakes you made as a kid and young adult, the pain or disadvantages it caused...and you love a little creature so much you never want them to experience that, it's easy to overstep bounds. Not that that's here nor there if the framing of the story is true. But we all know there are three sides to every story.
- spoiler 4y ago
  I understand the impulse of wanting to prevent suffering, and even to some extent to prevent mistakes. However, mistakes are how children learn. You make a mistake, you learn not to do it again. That is also how you learn to cope (which is a critical skill in adulthood) with emotions and consequences. These children then go on to make mistakes in adulthood, and they don't have the necessary emotional framework to healthily cope; this leads to more mistakes, etc. Also, these people never, well, "learned" how to learn from their mistakes either. So they self-blame, self-hate, and repeat the same mistakes. Let children make mistakes, but provide a support net for them to go back. Let them deal with the consequences, but also show compassion, explain why this happened (and it involves other people how it made other people feel), and SHOW them how to do better. If you reprimand children, also make sure you praise them. Parents are there to teach children how to live their own life, not tell them how to live a life the parent wants. Of course, there are some mistakes you will want to prevent, like letting your kid run into ongoing traffic, etc. But we're not talking about life-threatening mistakes. This is obviously harder and more "stressful" than just locking your kids up (and this isn't even just a dysphemism; this happens through repeated emotional abuse), and shouting at them "do this, do that or nobody will love you". That's not parenting, that's just fucking sick.

jeroenhd 4y ago

I'm no millionaire but I certainly wouldn't want to switch places with him. I'm sure he definitely had a better life than those living in constant hunger and poverty, but from what I can tell he wasn't necessarily at risk of any of that. There's always someone with a worse life. I'd rather be homeless and hungry in America than live through the drought and famine that's hitting parts of Africa right now, or to have a roof over my head in the Chinese concentration camps. Being rich and famous doesn't make you happy. I fact, I'd say the opposite is often true: Hollywood produces some of the most twisted, desperate, depressed and depraved people out there. Today, Wil Wheaton is in a position many of us dream to achieve, being famous and beloved by the masses and probably not having to worry about money for the rest of his life, but to get there, he had to survive a lot of trauma. Is all that money worth it watching some movie producers scratch up your sister's face as a child actor? What if the gamble hadn't paid off? His sister suffered through a similar life but I haven't heard much from her. Going through all that to have the glamorous life of... a massage therapist? No, thank you. You can learn to give massages without the parental neglect. Wil was lucky to get a successful career out of this but that was never certain. Comments like yours often come off as envious to me. Some want the glamorous riches so bad they overlook the childhood trauma. Perhaps you've survived your own trauma, but "at least he got something out of it" is still a terrible take.

pjc50 4y ago

> great life? The only person really qualified to say whether or not it's great is the person themselves.

nvarsj 4y ago

You are making the mistake that success provides life fulfillment and happiness. Does it though? Would you accept childhood trauma and a life of battling with depression and anxiety, so you could be "successful"?