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2 siblings, similar age but one is clearly smarter, more diligent, more blessed as far as appearance goes and has a winning personality. A clear case of a long term winner vs someone who unless he is proverbially kicked in the butt regularly will amount to mediocrity at best.
How can anyone even give the impression of liking both equally?
How to motivate the loser?
The first one will be self-sufficient and therefore will be ignored by the parents while they are busy bailing out and trying to motivate the second one. It will be obvious to the first one that they are not the favorite and will spend a lifetime trying to measure up to a mess.
Given that OP has referred to this "loser" child as a "deadbeat who will never amount to anything" in another thread... pretty sure OP is the parent.
Sounds like the kids are older, so looks like the damage has already been done.
As someone who probably wasn't the easiest teen to parent, I thank my lucky stars that my parents were nothing like the OP and continued to remain loving and supportive through difficult times. I turned out pretty OK.
Wow. I looked back at some of those other posts, too, and the OP's obvious disdain for the poor kid is appalling.
When you do indeed love your kids unconditionally, its not a race. Its a gift.
Confused how someone posted that One is loved more then the other....Love is immeasurable when it comes from the heart.
Its all in perspective. Too bad some humans gauge the value of a person based on exterior or one particular strength or flaw. Haven't met a perfect human yet so when admiration or distain comes into play I have to remember its "my perspective" that may need re-aligned to reality. OR sometimes the person is indeed as suspected, which means I run the other way......(thinking more along the lines of harmful humans that roam this treasured earth).
I wish people would not jump to ridiculous conclusions.
It was not a troll post. I am nigh-on 50 FFS and do not reply asap as I actually work for a living. I'm a humble civil servant. To those who are hypothesizing that I am taking out my own 'failure' on others - wrong, I did well academically and pretty well socially. I have a decent university education, a decent job and a decent personal life.
This is about not wanting someone to fail in life. It comes from a position of concern. We can all pretend everyone has equal abilities but that is just not true. Why pretend someone is a proverbial Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali when they are just a Bonecrusher Smith?
This is not about 'unfair treatment'. Everyone gets treated equally, some just have more self determination and the desire to make it in life. One has just finished HS and started college and the other is at the tail-end of the HS journey. Silly suggestions like 'adoption' are not worthy of acknowledgment save to the extent that they show the person who suggested it to be irrational.
I have sought strategies before to motivate a person. The individual is not without abilities: physically blessed with good height and strength, but between the ears is a vacuum or at least a vacuum as far as long term planning aspects of the mind go.
I hope my judgement is wrong but I see what I see.
I wish people would not jump to ridiculous conclusions.
It was not a troll post. I am nigh-on 50 FFS and do not reply asap as I actually work for a living. I'm a humble civil servant. To those who are hypothesizing that I am taking out my own 'failure' on others - wrong, I did well academically and pretty well socially. I have a decent university education, a decent job and a decent personal life.
This is about not wanting someone to fail in life. It comes from a position of concern. We can all pretend everyone has equal abilities but that is just not true. Why pretend someone is a proverbial Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali when they are just a Bonecrusher Smith?
This is not about 'unfair treatment'. Everyone gets treated equally, some just have more self determination and the desire to make it in life. One has just finished HS and started college and the other is at the tail-end of the HS journey. Silly suggestions like 'adoption' are not worthy of acknowledgment save to the extent that they show the person who suggested it to be irrational.
I have sought strategies before to motivate a person. The individual is not without abilities: physically blessed with good height and strength, but between the ears is a vacuum or at least a vacuum as far as long term planning aspects of the mind go.
I hope my judgement is wrong but I see what I see.
I think the source of everyones chagrin at the audacity of your posts is the fact that children are not trophies. Neither are they employees that need to meet certain standards of performance or otherwise be deemed unproductive.
A parent’s primary duty is to get their child ready for adulthood. Any failure of that happening is primarily the parent’s. If the child is intellectually challenged; that isn’t a new trait, and should have been noted early in life. Any failure to make adjustments and provisions to ensure the child's success in adulthood in spite of those limitations is the parent’s.
But then again that would depend on a person’s definition of success wouldn’t it? Who’s to say what yours is? Based on your posts, probably some superficial standard involving money and how many people you think know or like you. Being educated does not always equal being smart. So giving people your credentials in answer to their amazement at your posts shows you really dont get it.
It is why, many here doubt you are a parent, and those that do, think you should give it up to someone more deserving or experienced. Because if, for all your credentials you don’t understand that pitching one child’s abilities against another's is a sure fire way to ensure the less able child never lives up to their potential, then yes, you shouldn’t be parenting anyone.
IF you are in fact a parent, yes your judgement is wrong. You should have noticed your child’s lack of intellect much earlier in life and sought to figure out how best to motivate and help him in spite of that fact many eons ago. If that hasn't happened already its more your fault than his and you should be trying to figure out how best to fix the mess you have made of things without your obvious resentment at the kid. If he is unintelligent, ,he cant help that- it is a result of the gene pool and environment he comes from, both of which a parent is responsible for. If he is unequipped to handle life and is doomed to become a ‘loser’ that is, again, not his doing.
But...since time travel is not yet possible, you have no way of knowing what a person will amount to in the future so while i’m certain this will be very difficult for you, stop assuming you do.
The issue is not raw ability, rather laziness in the person concerned.
Well, "laziness" may be your interpretation of what's going on. Its probably something very different, triggered by how the person has been treated, and how they perceive their own self worth. If someone has been convinced they will never be equal to another sibling, never be successful as that is defined by a parent, what you call laziness could be frustration, hopelessness, or an attempt to appear disinterested. What they haven't found, and what you don't seem to be assisting with, is the thing in their life that has meaning; the thing for which they do get motivated. Pretty hard to do when everything someone tries is looked down upon. If you de-value things they show a slight interest in (and it could be unintentional or subjective, not direct criticism), it makes sense that they seem to give up. Again, your own lens through which you are viewing your child probably creates much of the problem.
Last edited by Parnassia; 01-27-2018 at 02:50 PM..
Is the OP the parent or not? I'm still trying to figure this out.
Did I miss something?
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