SO glad you can see through it all and used your experiences to make a better life.

A 'flip' to the cartoon:

Leonard Bernstein's father wanted Lennie to be a businessman just like he was and encouraged Lennie to study 'business' and follow in his own footsteps. As we know, Lennie went on to be one of America's greatest composers/musicians.
When Lennie's father was asked later about how he had encouraged his son to be a businessman instead of becoming one of America's greatest musicians, the father said, "Hey, how could I know he was going to become Leonard Bernstein!"

When I was staying at his house once during college break, he caught a huge rat that had been visiting their place and he was going to drown it and I said, Let's bring him with us to the big Wisconsin fair and let him go free at some nature area and he went along with it 100%. I give big props to my father.

(He was pretty clueless about me and my sister being kicked out. We stayed with my sister's boyfriend who was an older guy, musician at night and he even was trying to impress the guy when he met up with the boyfriend once. I thought Why in Heck is he trying to impress this guy. He had a new wife, so that was part of his story at the time.)

SANTA ROSA, CA—A study released by the California Parenting Institute Tuesday shows that every style of parenting inevitably causes children to grow into profoundly unhappy adults. "Our research suggests that while overprotective parenting ultimately produces adults unprepared to contend with life's difficulties, highly permissive parenting leads to feelings of bitterness and isolation throughout adulthood," lead researcher Daniel Porter said. "And, interestingly, we found that anything between those two extremes is equally damaging, always resulting in an adult who suffers from some debilitating combination of unpreparedness and isolation.


https://www.theonion.com/study-finds-every-style-of-parenting-produces-disturbed-1819573056