I would give my parents a low-90s score on their approach to raising me. I hope I can come close to them in my parenting DS.

Right:

- Unconditional love in a stable and close-knit family
- Lots of one-on-one attention and family time spent pursuing interests together
- Modelling self-respect and confidence as a woman (my mother), and chivalrous masculinity (my father)
- Giving me space to learn to be alone happily, and to appreciate myself without the need to be defined by others
- Modelling high achievement and setting high personal standards
- Making financial and personal sacrifices to send me to a specialized school, and ensuring that one parent was always at home during my early years and school holidays
- Accepting some grade skips and SSA
- Joyfully and sincerely seeking out my opinions and discussing current affairs and scientific developments from an early age
- In my father's case, sincerely trying to avoid the harshly critical and perfectionistic habits of his own abusive father (and, IMO, making strides relative to his father)
- In my mother's case, fostering intrinsic motivation for good organizational habits in high school (noteworthy because she has always lamented her lack of study skills, despite high achievement)
- Always trusting and believing my word, and fostering a family culture where open communication about sensitive topics was encouraged
- Being unrelenting, yet tactful, advocates in the face of poor educators
- My mother: modelling humility and patience with difficult personalities (I.e. myself and my father!)
- My father: gentleness and commiseration with respect to sensory sensitivities
- Giving me carte blanche to study in any field, without any perceived pressure in any direction
- Respecting my wish to not engage in many of my hobbies at competitive levels. I do things because I like them; I am not a performer.
- Being proud of me for being who I am.
- Having the courage to be authoritative parents, enforcing reasonable boundaries, and not being caught up in the mania of being your child's friend at the expense of being a parent

Wrong:

I firmly believe that weaknesses are strengths that manifest themselves maladaptively. As a matter of degree, I'd weight the "wrongs" as being much less important than the much more abundant "rights", where the same habits were used positively.

- Father: projecting his own insecurity of never being "good enough" to his father onto me. Not so subtly competing with me, and needing to compare any achievement of mine to an experience of his.

- Father: Explicitly teaching me that (I quote), "If you're smart, you don't have to work hard." He thought it was marvellous that I could bring home 100s with zero effort and denigrated anyone who had to work at all. It was a strange message, because he had clearly worked hard in his life to achieve what he had, and his actions were otherwise so positive.

Wow, did that ever cause problems in my first semester of university, when I was underage, enrolled as a second/third year student, living away from home for the first time, and full of hubris. Talk about a moment of reckoning. It took a semester for me to learn that I did need to do some work to get the grades I was used to, and I spent a year believing I was a moron for having to work. It was the first time I had ever needed to do anything other than show up and do the work cold. I met someone who was objectively FAR smarter than me in my field (as in, tenure-track-at-24, extreme PG, light years ahead of me) and I'm now ashamed to say that my first reaction upon meeting him was anger and resentment. I missed out on friendship and learning opportunities with him because I was too petulant and jealous of what I wasn't. How sad! I won't make that mistake again!

- Father: Being happy to debate and discuss ideas only so long as my opinions mirror his. Perceiving differences of opinion as a rejection of him. Being over-committed to consistency over truth in his stated opinions.

- Father: Bragging about me shamelessly to others in my presence, including showing people my report cards (ugh!), and constantly telling me I was better than others for being smart. (ugh!)

- Parents: Not accepting all acceleration offered by the school. Given reason: social adjustment. Suspected real reason: I would have been accelerated more than my father had been as a child. He was a radical accelerant, and that was an important part of his self-identity.

- Father: Complaining bitterly and sulking anytime I didn't come in first place. I really didn't care, but he felt slighted on my behalf somehow.


What is to give light must endure burning.