I believe the parents are not the best teachers in my life and your life. Well, in fact they did teach us how to walk and speak and stuff to let us go into the "real world". However, I think that's only when we were young when we didn't know anything about the world. Since we learn more stuff from school and know what's going on around the world, parents are not the best teachers.

These are evidence from my personal experience. I had a lot of troubles with my mom. Not serious troubles though. Most of time, I talk about something but my mom doesn't understand what it is. Especially, since I go to international school, she can't share my problems anymore. There is a huge, wide generation gap. It doesn't necessarily mean my mum is too stupid or uneducated(my mom finished western art in a four-year university in Seoul.) However, the big troubles were made since we moved to China. She seems too lazy. She seems only playing golf and chatting around with other Koreans. My dad is too busy and he is usually not at home. He comes back to home when I'm in a dream. My point is since you are living in a different environment as your parents did, your parents cannot actually help or support you on a schooling, knowledge or information. Parents still do support you emotionally but there is nothing they can actually help you if they don't understand your situation and what you are doing at the moment.

There are really many teenagers or children who had a strong artue and struggle between their parents. So, as the result of it, they just go out and escape from their home. As majority thinks, parents are the examples of children to follow, children can even learn something bad their parents did. Such as a serious fight involving physical actions of your parents and a divorce of parents. Children who saw that fight and they might do the similar things in their life. There is a statistic of possibility of divorce rate of people who had experienced their parent's divorcement. I can't remember a specific, accurate rate but I still remember that the people who had experienced parent's divorcement more often get fight or divorce even though they didn't want to follow their parents. Because the parents are also human- beings who can make mistakes and have some strong emotional feelings, they might give some bad examples to their children.

Parents have such a limited experience. Besides, they are highly biased on you. They sometimes force you to follow their rules and thoughts or ideas. Especially, in a Korean culture, children had to obey to their parents to show their respect to elders and parents. I strongly believe that following parents as a teacher for your life should not be counted as showing respect to your parents.

I personally think the best teacher in your life is yourself. I believe the teacher is a person who give you different attitudes and give you the best solution or the best way of learning. I've heard that the best way to learn is teaching yourself. If you can teach yourself very well, then you already got your best teacher ever in your life. The other best way to get knowledge or learn something new is through experience. I think the best experience is travelling independently.

Yourself is the best teacher in your life. If you know yourself then you will learn the most efficiently. The best way to learn something is by getting experience. Getting experience for lessons on your life is relying on your attitude and mind. True, we look at parents' screw up and we do try not to make the same mistake. Such as driving, drinking and how to be a good adult, person and what it means to be honorable and how important taking care of yourself. Parents cannot teach more than what you realize. I believe that what you realize from your friends and experience are more than you are told from your parents. Parents are good teachers but not the best one. You are teaching yourself! Your successful life is dependent on you.

So from your experience with your mom's behaviour are you not learning? Are you not taking note of what she does or not does not do that you will do or not do with your own children one day?

One day, in your life, you will look Mom and Dad and wonder "when did they get so smart?" You can learn things from your friends, the right things hopefully, but that is only because they are fun to talk to and hang out with. All your Parents talk about is "have you finished the homework Mr. bulldogg gave you?" Or "you haven't finished your chores." Those things aren't fun, why do they matter so much? They matter because your parents want you to grow up to be a good, responsible person.

A lot of Teenagers experience "I want to leave home" syndrome. But, the smart person deep down inside of most are telling them that they will have no money and nothing to eat or buy expensive clothes with. These become street kids with no future. Don't let your Parents' arguments bother you because my Wife and I argue and we have been married for 43 years. Your Parents work hard so that you won't have to work so hard when you go to College. They may seem like they don't pay you any attention but you are on their minds every day.

That isn't quite comforting, missilleer. The less people worry about me and leave me more or less to my own devices, I've noted that I'm generally better off at home Right, don't worry about me working on the bandsaw until I'm bleeding to death.

True, BP_2, experience is one of the best and longest-lasting forms of education. But what about learning from the experience of your parents? Chances are a young teenager has no experience in driving these days; so what does he do? Watch his parents, of course, and learn from their screwups. Don't knock parents as being inferior to experience when you could be absorbing their own way of going about things.

It diffirent actually..

Kids these days and kids of the past, and kids of the older times...

You have to agree there.

Parents teach you the more moral and being a better man in life. While school is just acedemically.. You get what I am saying?

And I agree with the guys above... Parents teach much more than what you can realize.

Missileer and Deerslayer had some good points that you shoudnt look away from.

Good point on morals, MightyMacBeth. My parents instilled discipline into me, and I gotta thank em for it. That, and making me live in a home in the middle of nowhere, where I can see the effects of poor living without having to experience them.

First of all, thanks for all of you guys who replied to me~~ I read all of your replies and edit some more in my passage. Please, read it again carefully and reply if there is something you agree or disagree.

VIEWS FROM AN "OLD FART" (61).

I can remember when I was just a little "shavetail" of 7 or 8 - I had just walked in the door with a brand new ten cent comic book (yes I said ten cents). My mother spotted me and asked me where I'd gotten the money for the comic. After much hemming and hawing on my part, I finally told her I had taken it out of the store without paying for it (I really didn't steal it - I just hadn't paid for it). She made me take it back to the store to pay for it and made me personally apologise to the owner (a man I had known my entire life and whom I considered to be a friend). I didn't talk to mom for at least two weeks.

My father on more than one occasion, administered a little "leg switching" for various and sundry breaches of good order and discipline for having a mouth that didn't know when to quit when dealing with an adult (I was a "bad" boy). I always told myself "just you wait, someday I'll get big" (funny the thoughts of a child).

I know you will say that these are the things that a parent is supposed to do to teach a child morals and good manners and that things are different once you are an adult and you have left home to be on your own. I would agree with you (to a point).

What does NOT change is that no matter how old you get, there is always just one more thing that your parents can teach you.

(20+ years later)
I'm married with a young boy of my own. I come home to find my son sitting on the sofa with a sour look on his face and my wife with a thundercloud riding over her head. It seems my 7 year old had "stolen" a pack of chewing gum and my wife was madder than h*ll. I screamed, hollered, banged the table top and threatened to practice drum beats on my son's bare bottom - and the phone rings. Mom was on the line and wanted to talk to me. I was not in the mood for small talk and informed mom about the latest disappointment my son had just handed me. < >.......... < >.......... < >.......... < >..........< >

The line went absolutely void of sound for about 30 seconds - and - then mom started laughing. When she could catch her breath, she "reminded" me of my little ordeal with the "stolen" comic book and asked me if I had forgotten the moral she taught me when she waltzed me into the store, made me pay for the comic and apologise to the store owner and promise him it would never happen again (27 years old and mom is still teaching me lessons).

Over the years since I left home, I have often wondered how mom and dad had gotten so blasted smart.

It was only after I had kids of my own that I realised just how dumb I was as a kid and just how their lessons had made me so smart.

All the book learning, all of the schooling, all of my adult experience and the greatest lessons of my life have been as a result of the lessons that were taught to me by my parents.

That is one good story Chief Bones.. not a better example could be given.

A good personal experience that is filled with truth..

Bullpup five, alot could be gained from that post..

Good luck