Raising kids.
So I have, for the second time now, run into an iteration of my son from the future, and for the second time found him to be an insufferable little twit.
I have no way of knowing if the version I'm meeting is a cognate -- our word for what you call an alternate -- or is actually the specific future version of the kid I just yelled at for telling an entire race that he was the Lord their God and if they did not bring him all their chocolate he would commence with the smiting. (Why does he even need chocolate? He doesn't *eat*.) But since this is the second time I've met the kid and this second one seems even *more* of a little shit than the first time I met his future self... Magic Eight Ball says signs don't look good for my success as a parent.
The most horrifying thing about it is that I remember being such a little brat myself... but I thought that I would know, having *been* like that, how to raise my kid to understand not to be that way. And I thought that I was never going to do to him what the Continuum did to me, and he was going to like me more than I like the Continuum, and he'd understand that when I tell him what to do it really *is* for his own good and not because I just don't feel like cleaning up the resulting mess or I want him to leave me alone, the way I felt the Continuum handled it when I had problems. And instead I find myself saying the same things to him my elders said to me.
I'm the first Q to raise a child in the Continuum ever. My ex is no help at all; when she was helping she was getting downright abusive on the poor thing, and then she told me I'd ruined him and she was leaving us both. Most of the other Q have totally helpful suggestions like "wipe him out of existence and try again", which really doesn't seem like a responsible parenting strategy to *me*. So I figured I'd ask here.
How do you not raise your kid to be you?
Or, at least, how do you not raise your kid to be the *worst* parts of you?
I have no way of knowing if the version I'm meeting is a cognate -- our word for what you call an alternate -- or is actually the specific future version of the kid I just yelled at for telling an entire race that he was the Lord their God and if they did not bring him all their chocolate he would commence with the smiting. (Why does he even need chocolate? He doesn't *eat*.) But since this is the second time I've met the kid and this second one seems even *more* of a little shit than the first time I met his future self... Magic Eight Ball says signs don't look good for my success as a parent.
The most horrifying thing about it is that I remember being such a little brat myself... but I thought that I would know, having *been* like that, how to raise my kid to understand not to be that way. And I thought that I was never going to do to him what the Continuum did to me, and he was going to like me more than I like the Continuum, and he'd understand that when I tell him what to do it really *is* for his own good and not because I just don't feel like cleaning up the resulting mess or I want him to leave me alone, the way I felt the Continuum handled it when I had problems. And instead I find myself saying the same things to him my elders said to me.
I'm the first Q to raise a child in the Continuum ever. My ex is no help at all; when she was helping she was getting downright abusive on the poor thing, and then she told me I'd ruined him and she was leaving us both. Most of the other Q have totally helpful suggestions like "wipe him out of existence and try again", which really doesn't seem like a responsible parenting strategy to *me*. So I figured I'd ask here.
How do you not raise your kid to be you?
Or, at least, how do you not raise your kid to be the *worst* parts of you?