

Kafka’s Letter to His Abusive Father - hunghuuhoang
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/05/franz-kafka-letter-father/

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niels_olson
Thanks for posting this. As a father, I struggle with my roles. There are a
lot of them, and "ultimate authority" is unfortunately one of them. I believe
most developmental specialists would agree that children do need some negative
feedback. The frustrations come in deciding how much? When? Where? Who? For
which reasons? When is negative feedback definitely inappropriate? When is
punishment delayed punishment confused? When is my spouse or a grandparent
disciplining more than I agree with? How to handle that? When is a
conversation with spouse, in advance or in review, appropriate. And then
trying to separate the authoritarian from the nurturing parent I try to be
otherwise.

I'd say these sorts of questions go through my head 20 times a day on workdays
and 100 times a day during the weekend. Usually in flurries. Maybe there's
only a couple of corrections that actually need to be made, but the
introspection goes on.

And what to do when I did it wrong? How to atone to my child? That's perhaps
the most important part, I think. To see that wrong is wrong even when dad is
the one who's wrong.

~~~
erose
Good parenting is more a perspective and viewpoint. Respect them as people
basically the same as you, but with radically different life experience. How
to atone? If you recognize it as wrong you must have remorse. True remorse to
another person is evidenced by an admission of the wrong, cessation of the
wrong, and restitution for the wrong!

------
ishadua
Its so ironical, that no matter how much we advance in our times, in
technologies, in ehos & ideas - the relationship between parent and child
hasnt changed that much

