Mr and Mrs K's New Journey to a Debt Free Life.

AlexLK

patanne wrote: »

Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It seems to me that you have been a victim of this. Is your son hearing these comments? I was fortunate & had a sibling who told my parents to stop undermining me in front my child & it made them take a look at themselves and they changed. I think that the best thing for mini K is to have less contact with them to stop them doing the same thing to him. Because frankly I think they are like my parents and nothing either of you can do will ever be good enough. Mrs K's parents sound similar but she is more like my sibling & they are fortunate enough not to let it effect them. Please do try not to let them get to you (virtually impossible I know) & do not let them spoil your relationship with your son. Again check out self-fulfilling prophecy it was a real eye opener for me.

I have. However, I am struggling to see how it relates to me / my situation. My parents have not always made snide comments about me, in fact quite the opposite was true when I was younger.

EchoDelta wrote: »

Alex it makes me feel very sad to read about how your parents treat you. I am sorry. You are not inadequate. They should be able to be supportive or at the very least not actively unsupportive! "Inadequate son"? No no no!

If you are in the mood for a parenthood book have a look at Alfie Kohn" Unconditional Parenting ". He has some stuff online as well. Our job as parents is to ensure that our children feel loved unconditionally (not just to love them unconditionally but to make sure that they get that message too) and I found it an empowering read. (and don't worry - it's not permissive parenting - you don't end up with a horrible brat!)

I bet there were way more right notes than wrong'uns in your audition too!

Hope that you got some sleep in the end and feel more positive this morning.

I will take a look, thank you.

Managed to get some sleep and looking forward to my day ahead with my son: going swimming and "wildlife spotting" after doing a bit of work on the Triumph, he likes "helping" with cars (in reality it makes a job take twice as long :rotfl:). Then onto music teaching this afternoon / evening.

HPoirot

Hi, just to say please do not dwell on what your parents say which might come across as snide. If they are driven, motivated people it might be hard for them to understand why as their only child you are not equally driven, hence the comments. I do not mean this in a negative way, we are all different and manage our lives differently. That might just be their way of seeing things or the comments might be meant to motivate you to perform at what they think would be your best ability.

As for the money for your son's pre-prep, you do not need to feel a failure, they are providing their only grandson with what they probably provided their only son, again that's their view of what is important. It may be that they would be more laid back if they had other children / grandchildren to shower their resources on. In any case I would step back and not take things too personally if I were you. HTH.

debtfreewannabe321

I'd say thank you very much for the offer. And take it. End of. Don't take things so personally, things back when we were kids (i think i'm only a couple of years older than you?) were a little easier. Plus it helps that both of our father's run successful businesses and had more disposable income than we currently do....I couldn't afford the fees for my son a fair few years back and my father stepped in for me. He didn't hold it against me, he didn't belittle me over it, he wanted to help. I was equally just as happy to take ds1 out to save my pride and put him in the local school but my dad wanted to help, just as your dad does. He may not show it but perhaps this is his way of acknowledging that he knows you're struggling and he wants to help? Take the offer graciously and if you're in the position to take over fees in a year or so, offer to do it, however he may see it that this is something he wants to do and for you to refuse may offend him (this is just an assumption but he sounds very similar to my father). Besides he's probably aware he won't be around for ever and wants to help in little ways he can whilst he is here (sorry if this sounds morbid not intended)

7roland8

AlexLK wrote: »

looking forward to my day ahead with my son: going swimming and "wildlife spotting" after doing a bit of work on the Triumph, he likes "helping" with cars (in reality it makes a job take twice as long :rotfl:). Then onto music teaching this afternoon / evening.

You sound like a great dad Alex - and from the outside it looks to me it was your parents who were inadequate - oh yes paying money for you expensive schools but failing to instill confidence and now undermining you. I think I can pretty much say hand on heart I have never said a snide undermining comment to my eldest - who is almost 30.

LannieDuck

debtfree321 has a good point - our parents' generation had huge equity increases in their properties, good interest rates on savings, good pensions etc. They also had more public assistance, e.g. grants for uni (cf fees), child benefit for all.

There are plenty of parents who are having to help their children get on the property ladder, letting their children live at home longer etc. It's certainly not unusual for your parents to be giving you a helping hand. Many, many other families are doing the exact same thing.

Mara_uk7

LannieDuck wrote: »

There are plenty of parents who are having to help their children get on the property ladder, letting their children live at home longer etc. It's certainly not unusual for your parents to be giving you a helping hand. Many, many other families are doing the exact same thing.

Exactly right, But not all parents are as mean spirited as Alex's seem to be by rubbing his nose in it.

Or ... Alex, you seem to be a sensitive lad, Could it be that you are taking things a little too much to heart ?

Maybe you need to stand up to your parents just a little, tell them they are hurting your feelings with their comments , and if they cant play nice, maybe you wont come over quite so often ? They possibly dont even realise they are doing it.

After all, youre already relieving them of babysitting quite so often by letting little K go to nursery. Maybe you could turn down Sunday lunch & take the K famly to Wetherspoons for sunday lunch once in a while;)

PS .. They do other types of roast there !!

In_Debt_Bet

Hello Alex

I'm not a parent myself so I could be wrong here but I would have thought the only person who's opinion of how good a father you are matters is Little K and I wouldn't mind betting that he thinks you're doing a pretty good job.

Please try not to be so hard on yourself

Bet x

wegle

In_Debt_Bet wrote: »

Hello Alex

I'm not a parent myself so I could be wrong here but I would have thought the only person who's opinion of how good a father you are matters is Little K and I wouldn't mind betting that he thinks you're doing a pretty good job.

Please try not to be so hard on yourself

Bet x

Totally agree with this Alex. You sound like an amazing Dad. You enjoy spending time with your son and you only want for him to have the best of everything. I think that's pretty high up on the good Dad scale.:)

gallygirl

AlexLK wrote: »

Both of them are rather different to me; they are ambitious, charismatic leaders thus, those comments were "supportive" so far as they were concerned.

Alex, with respect, 'charismatic leaders' don't leave people feeling like a lump of ....... Seriously, neither wonder you have self-esteem issues if that's how they reacted to your playing.

EchoDelta wrote: »

I bet there were way more right notes than wrong'uns in your audition too!

I'm sure you were playing all the right notes..... just not necessarily in the right order :rotfl:. Dare you to watch this and not smile.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zHBN45fbo8

Seriously, as others have said, you are out of practice. Keep it up and you'll succeed.

Now for the serious bit......

As for helping out with the btl's - you don't want to help out because you'll get nothing out of it? Your parents have given you so much over the years and are now planning on funding your son's education. Shame on you - I'm surprised no-one else has said the same .

kissjenn

Hi Alex,

How about a trade off with your parents? Volunteer to manage the BTL's in exchange for their helping with mini-k's fees...would that make it feel better?

How do you actually feel about the whole prep school thing? Did it make you happy or do you think he'll benefit a whole lot more from mixing with lots of other kids and then going to a private school when he's a bit bigger.

Up here the stats are something like 40% of secondary pupils go private (always thought it was a very high number), but most do at least the first 5 years of primary in their local school.

It all boils down to what you want.

And I agree with Gally Girl. A charismatic leader is one who changes their tone and style to suit their audience. A few people do respond well to a professional aka your parents style kicking while most are motivated to up their game by a gentler approach. Bullies do what you call charismatic.

Chin up. When do you hear about the audition?