I communicate with my parents ...
Displaying poll results.44116 total votes.
I communicate with my parents ...
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents become better people as a result of practicing it. - Joe Mullally, computer salesman
Missing option (Score:2, Funny)
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Or for those of us who chose the last option, "Not often enough".
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[_] They're dead, you insensitive clod!
... or the European version ...
[_] They're dead, you ignorant Claude!
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[_] They're dead, you insensitive clod! ... or the European version ...
[_] They're dead, you ignorant Claude!
I bet you wouldn't say that to his face [wikipedia.org].
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I would. Chances are, by the time he gets it I got to safety.
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bruce wayne, is that you?
Re:Missing option (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia ... (Score:3)
... parents leave your basement!
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
It's been a while since the Russian Reversal actually been so appropriate to /..
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My parents left me their basement...
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I'm going to have to build a basement apartment for my mother after my father is gone, which probably isn't far off in the future. Never thought one of them would live in MY basement. I also never thought they'd get old some day.
No kidding. And that just brings up another related, equally unwelcome topic, doesn't it?
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Missing option: (Score:5, Funny)
Only when they knock on the basement door.
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The last option could have been "Only when they knock on the basement floor"
Hey, as long as you're not the children of Daft Punk, you'll be fine:
http://xkcd.com/740/ [xkcd.com]
(nevermore!)
Does.. (Score:2, Funny)
yelling from the basement that you ran out of Mountain Dew count as "communicate"?
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Hon, writing on Facebook ain't "talking".
Well this is generating tons of redundant comments (Score:2)
I call my mom on christmas and her birthday. She calls me over for dinner a bit more often.
We both understand that no news is good news.
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I try and keep in touch a bit more often than that... it means that things like getting ordained as a priest come as less of a surprise :)
(my mum is the one who's the priest btw)
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Missing Option: (Score:5, Insightful)
Other Missing Option: (Score:2)
I live in my basement you insensitive clod!
Re:Missing Option: (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't that fall under the "Daily" option?
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lol - that was the first thing that popped into my head, too, and sometimes it is true.
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...or at setting up remote access.
At least once a week... (Score:5, Informative)
... to tell them: no, you are not going to win a free ipod from Bill Gates by forwarding that to me and 30 others; no, there will be no donations made to the girl born with no face either; no, you are not being tracked by the FBI or contacted by a Nigerian Prince; no, you are not going to be hunted down and killed because Dad flashed his high beams; no, the boy in England collecting business cards is a grown man now; no, Robin Williams did NOT write that; and no, there are no rules about eating pizza before kissing.
I've given up asking my Mom to stop forwarding chain letters to me. But at least once a week I have to send her a link to Snopes. By now, I'm positive she never reads them.
Glub forbid she actually go to Snopes before forwarding crap or telling me about the latest revelation or opportunity she discovered in her inbox.
At least she knows not to give out her SSN or Visa information to anyone.
(I hope.)
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The cruel-to-be-kind solution is: when you send a debunking link, don't hit "reply"; hit "reply to all".
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... to tell them: no, you are not going to win a free ipod from Bill Gates by forwarding that to me and 30 others; no, there will be no donations made to the girl born with no face either; no, you are not being tracked by the FBI or contacted by a Nigerian Prince; no, you are not going to be hunted down and killed because Dad flashed his high beams; no, the boy in England collecting business cards is a grown man now; no, Robin Williams did NOT write that; and no, there are no rules about eating pizza before kissing.
I've given up asking my Mom to stop forwarding chain letters to me. But at least once a week I have to send her a link to Snopes. By now, I'm positive she never reads them.
Glub forbid she actually go to Snopes before forwarding crap or telling me about the latest revelation or opportunity she discovered in her inbox.
At least she knows not to give out her SSN or Visa information to anyone.
(I hope.)
Obligatory XKCD [xkcd.com] comic
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My mother keeps sending me pages from Snopes. Do you think that's a bad sign?
Friends (Score:3, Interesting)
My Dad died a few years ago, but Mom and I are close. We're good friends. We send email back and forth, and talk on the phone every Sunday morning.
She's my mom; I'm her daughter. We have that mother-daughter relationship. In a way we always had it, even in the bad old days when I was still pretending to be a boy.
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stop lying..... no girls read slashdot.
Since when?
Talk vs. Communicate (Score:5, Funny)
I talk to my parents about once a week. We communicate on a much less frequent basis.
Cheers,
Dave
I avoid it (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to get along with my parents, but after I let them know I'm transsexual they've spent most of the time telling me I'm wrong, suggesting I'm mentally ill and other reasons to stop me. I was even told I cannot be a girl because I was always good at physics. It has gotten so bad I just don't want to talk to them anymore.
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I'm not sure you're even gonna read this, but I noticed you've gotten a couple of negative responses above already, and I couldn't let that stand without adding at least one positive.
Be yourself, and go your own way. If you are a woman, then you are a woman, and nobody has the right to not accept or respect that. You're not wrong, and you're not mentally ill, and if your parents don't understand that, then - sad as it may be - not talking to them anymore, at least for the time being, is a valid choice.
Of co
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When you see a transgender person, do they look like a woman? Does anyone treat them like a woman?
Yes, and especially yes.
But I've known a few TGs in my time. Had one as a lodger once..
What you can't expect parents to get used to is this: their son announces his intention to destroy himself, and have himself replaced with a stranger that vaguely resembles him.
Seen it happen. Takes time, but it can and does happen.
Even if you think you want to be a different gender, it isn't possible.
It's not a want. It is to a large extent possible.
But thanks for playing devil's advocate :)
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When denied treatment up to 30% of transsexuals kill themselves. I was at that point myself, but instead of ending my life I started self-medicating. That's when the doctors finally agreed to treat me. You seem to be under the impression that this is something most psychiatrists support and will just let happen if you ask for it rather
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Your post was generally good, but please: "she" , "herself". I only say this because you seem to be the type that actually tries to be respectful and tolerant. I would not bother otherwise.
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Posting on Slashdot, an interest in physics, parents whose response is "wtf? wtf??? we never saw this coming". Are there any other warning signs that maybe you might not be a woman in a man's body, but something else might be up? It sounds like you've cut yourself off from anyone who thinks you're making a mistake, and surround yourself with people cheering on your brave decision.
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I really wish that the hormonal effects were completely reversible, because then I could simply tell people who ask how I know for sure to go try estrogen and testosterone blockers for a few months. They really do quite a lot more to your psychology than what is politically correct to say out loud. All kinds of things change, ranging from what sex feels like to how you feel when you try to relax. Having the "wrong" kind of hormones in your blood will seriously mess you up, I wouldn't wish it upon my worst e
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I was just thinking that, but I'm going to assume that he* was just falling for one of /.'s stupider assumptions: no matter the username or how they refer to themself, how could there possibly be a woman here?! But that's a whole 'nother ball of wax.
*Yeah, I do it too.
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Two transexual comments in such a short time (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2066560&cid=35697642) seems a bit much for coincidence.
Could the "communicate with parents" subject line have special resonance?
Re:I avoid it (Score:4, Informative)
Hrm, two random events coinciding with each other is not a coincidence...
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It would not surprise me if that was the case. Dealing with family can easily be the most difficult part about being transsexual, even if some parents are much more reasonable than others.
Re:I avoid it (Score:5, Insightful)
If you (BlueParrot) can't tell your parents about my situation, try to get another family member or family friend to tell them:
My wife and I have two children, a son (44) and a daughter (39). Our daughter is gay and lives in Canada, where she married another woman, a very caring wife. We see her and her family -- including our granddaughter (2) -- about once a year. Our son is straight and lives about 30 minutes away, with his beautiful wife and their children (14 and 3). We see him about once a week.
The fact that our daughter is gay is not a big deal when I consider our son's situation. Our son has metastasized lung cancer. He went through 20 radiation treatments to destroy a tumor on his hip. He went through gamma knife treatments three different times to destroy tumors on his brain. Surgery is not an option because both lungs are involved. (No, he never smoked; he is allergic to tobacco smoke.) At the moment, our son is living with his cancer because medication has it under control. He works full-time, plays softball, and enjoys his children. But we don't know how much longer that medication will remain effective. We don't know how much longer we will have our son.
Your parents need to realize that your sexual identity or orientation is not a big deal at all.
As for the poll question, I cannot communicate with my parents at all. My father died in 1971 in my mother's arms. My mother died last year, one day short of her 100th birthday. I do communicate with both my children several times a week.
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Oh please, cancer is a choice~
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"I was even told I cannot be a girl because I was always good at physics."
Now that has got to be the flimsiest, most desperate straw I've ever seen anybody grasp.
Ignore them, let them be. If they use this kind of argument they probably know they're wrong, and all they need is enough time to accept that.
Meanwhile, live your life as you want it to be, not as others expect it to.
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I have a friend who's gay and still hasn't come out of the closet to his parents. He's well into his 20s now.
Thing is when he was younger, he was always the ladies' man, and this is how his parents knew him as well (he even told us about how his dad secretly congratulated him when he lost his virginity with a girl) but when we'd talk girls with him we knew something wasn't quite right. He was always like "yeah so I fucked this girl *yawn*" and we were all like "DOOOOOOD SWEEET YOU DA MAN BRO!!!" and he was
not sure what to think (Score:2)
That absolutist female/scientist thing is just misogynistic BS, but I can see how people would be put off by gender-identity issues even if isn't right for them to be in an ideal world.
Myself, I'm definitely a normal straight male in this regard, but I'm not sure what my opinion on others in those kinds of situations is, though/because social liberals and social conservatives are giving two different impressions of how I _should_ think.
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Perhaps, but people are awfully quick to insist it is a mental problem, even though psychotherapy is useless for making us feel better, while altering the body is known to be effective for the vast majority. Kinda similar to how judgmental moralists initially rejected the idea of a microbiological cause for infectious diseases, since everybody "knew" illness was god's punishment for sins.
Just re
Skype (Score:4, Informative)
Something similar has happened in the last few years with meeting in person and low cost flights. Living in a nation away from your beloved ones nowadays is much, much easier than it was 15 years ago.
Obvious most of you don't have kids (Score:4, Informative)
Grandparents = Free child care!
Okay, not in all situations... but really, it's a win-win. They got to see the kiddos for a few hours, and we didn't have to pay for a babysitter.
(of course my daughter is older now - but grandma still runs her to school a couple times each quarter when we've been in a bind)
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The flip side of this is that my parents point-blank told me they would not come visit me because I did not produce grandchildren for them.
On the other hand, they seem to have no problem with calling me for tech support.
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Dude... I understand your point, but I could never, ever aggree with you. First, I'll tell you I am married, and my wife and I decided to not have kids.
A lot of our friends ask why and tell us that we won't have anyone to care for us when we get old. Which I find as absurd as your idea...
Why? Because no one has to take care of his/her parents when they get old. Let's say I wanted to move to a different country and never look back? Why would I have to come back and take care of my parents? Why in hell my kid
agree on your grandparent point (Score:2)
Yes, we spent a lot of time with Grandma and Grandpa, especially when we were younger. Good times. Living nearby definitely helps
Why so serious? (Score:2)
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Never? (Score:2)
There's no option for 'never'. They aren't dead, so not at a seance, and not even once a year. They have nothing in common with me anymore other than biology, and say things that are inappropriate, and hurt the rest of my family, so no, I don't talk to them ever.
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If my experience is anything typical... (Score:2)
..you go through cycles, like most other things in life. I actually have very decent parents (far better than a good share of my friends), and I grew up talking to them (really talking) about most things.
Then I went away to college. And, entered that who process of trying to define myself as an adult (which, is a completely different thing than the "who am i" of teenagerhood). I stopped talking to my parents for the better part of a decade. As in, I spoke to them about once a month, but didn't really ta
If only they had e-mail (Score:2)
I'm one of those people who finds that telephoning is the last thing that I think to do.
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The next poll - Comms with the inlaws (Score:2)
Only When (Score:2)
Depends on which parent (Score:2)
My parents are divorced.
I speak to my mother at least once a month. We would talk more often, but time zones get in the way.
Cats in the cradle... (Score:2)
It's all about priorities. Do we put our parents first, then we'll communicate more often. When I got married, got a career, got kids, my priorities shifted to my own family, career, children. That isn't saying that my folks aren't more important than my career.
My parents are over 1000 miles away. We email and play silly games together on Pogo and see each other once a year. They have their life and I have mine, we are cool
Ugly Kid Joe for the win (Score:2)
Definitely like Ugly Kid Joe's recording of that ever since I stumbled across the aforementioned .mp3
All the time (Score:2)
it's easy to interact with them all the time when you still live at home (didn't feel the need to move out of the area for college, and haven't run across an out-of-town job yet)
That being said, neither super-chummy nor super-distant.
Re:Once a week? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us actually have families whos company we enjoy and with whom we like to communicate. It has nothing to do with weakness or dependence, your "apron strings" quip notwithstanding.
My parents are both dead (within the past couple of years) and though I lived 2500+ miles away and saw them in person only a couple of times per year, I enjoyed speaking with them up until they passed away. I still get a twinge when I come across something I think would interest one of them when I realize I won't get a chance to tell them about it. I realize I was extremely lucky, but I'm sad for people who can't wait to cut their parents and siblings out of their lives.
No need. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sad for people who can't wait to cut their parents ... out of their lives.
No need to be. Some of us had abusive, many times physically abusive parents. Many parents have problems with alcohol and drugs.
I stay in touch with mine out of duty, I guess. But I have to keep my distance for my own sanity; otherwise, I regress to the extremely angry asshole I used to be. When you grow up in that kind of environment, you think it's the norm and it makes for an extremely difficult time as a member of society. Many criminals were abused children and fortunately, I got help before I turned into one or blew my own brains out with a 12 gauge.
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Many parents have problems with alcohol and drugs.
Well, I know my parents had a big problem when they found out how much alcohol and drugs I was doing...
<rimshot/>
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Re:Once a week? (Score:5, Insightful)
So many of you keep in touch weekly. I don't get it. Cut the apron strings already!
If keeping in touch means "hi hows it going, can I borrow some money?" or "hello, can you do this load of washing for me?" then I can kind of understand your apron strings comment, but once you outgrow that you can still enjoy the catchups for their own sake. These people did change your poopy nappies and put up with your whiny teenage years afterall, it's the least you can do!
It also sets a good example for your own kids - maybe they'll still visit you when you're old and lonely.
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These people did change your poopy nappies and put up with your whiny teenage years afterall, it's the least you can do!
Except in cases of divorce, abandonment, drug/alcohol abuse, being narcissistic assholes, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
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True. I guess the "by dancing on their graves" option was missing. Nothing to do with cutting apron strings though.
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Pissing on his grave sounds just about right to me. The world will be a much better and kinder place when he is 6 feet under it.
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I'd have to guess that is the exception, rather than the rule.
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"why you DON'T lose everything enjoyable about life by having kids."
legit question; however you attitude and derogatory states undermines you transparent affect to look intelligent.
I have kids, and I am not a moron. Randomly have unprotected sense and then be surprised your going to ahve kids would be what a moron does. AS opposed to thought and planning.
Are there thing I don't do that I did before? of course. Does that means I am enjoying life less? no. Because there are a variety of other enjoyments that
Re:Once a week? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Once a week? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between reliance and keeping in touch with the people who raised you, and regardless I think in most cases keeping in touch with parents is more for their sake then yours.
Weekly seems reasonable enough to me. Daily is too much, because as an adult life doesn't really change that much on a day to day basis. You go to work, you sleep, you eat, etc... not enough material for a daily conversation. Yearly is not enough. Yearly is for distant relatives you met a few times and old friends who moved away. These are you parents, they should get better than that.
And it's cliche.. but you'll probably regret that "cut the apron strings" attitude when they're gone.
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Weekly still seems a bit often from my point of view.
Sure, there are always a few new things every week that could be mildly interesting but it's not like I feel the need to inform my parents, my cousins, all my friends, my sister and of course her friends and post about it on facebook and twitter and...
Maybe if you're obsessed with letting the world know what's up in your life right now all the time it makes sense. For me it's generally enough to communicate with my parents every now and then (I'd say it c
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You will find as your parents get older, you tend to talk them more again.
Unless you are just a cold and insensitive clod.
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Or, as others have been pointing out, unless they are just cold and insensitive clods.
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One of my definitions of "family" is "the people that know all of your many faults, but accept you anyway."
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It'd be interesting to graph this by age. I would guess that the frequency of contact drops off with age, with the biggest drops coming in early adulthood (leaving home) and late adulthood (death of parents), but there could be some upswings as the parents become elderly and need more care, or on the rebound from the early-adulthood drop when they become more like peers and less like parents.
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So many of you keep in touch weekly. I don't get it. Cut the apron strings already!
Cut the apron strings? My parents are some of my best FRIENDS. I don't think anyone would think it is odd that I talk to most of my best friends daily or every other day. Some people manage to have healthy relationships with their parents throughout their lives. Geez.
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After reading the replies to this, I think it may be an age thing. When I was 20, I couldn't get far enough away. As I get closer to 40, I realize they will not be around forever, and I take every opportunity I can to communicate with them. It isn't about them supporting me, or me supporting them; as I have gotten older I more and more consider my parents as friends. Granted, I have great parents who raised me well, and I understand that is not the case for everyone.
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I didn't know 17% of Slashdotters were female.
I didn't realize only 17% of Slashdotters live in their parents' basement!
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it's actually more, take the "at least once a week" category, living in their parent's basement does not mean they have to actually *talk* to them.
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