I believe our experiences growing up with the parenting we have is often subconsciously repeated when we ourselves start parenting. After all, it's the only lesson we've had on raising children. Then as they start to develop as little people we suddenly start seeing some of the results of that parenting style. That is when we suddenly wonder if we're taking the right approach.
I was always a firm parent, but I also always treated them as people and encouraged them, as much as possible, to try and fail for themselves. However, looking back I was trying to raise them right, to the standards of the system. It wasn't until my eldest was almost 10 that things came to a head and I took them out of school. I thought I had a fairly good relationship with them up until then, but we became a lot closer after that. That was when I finally stopped trying to guide them along the expected path and they started finding their own paths.
Yes of course we tend to parent how we were parented, that's why I truly feel like a veil was lifted when I realized we had a terrible and disconnected way of operating. I felt like I was constantly conveying the stress and expectations of some faceless higher up until we said "screw this, we can do better, it's time to let go" one day and became closer to our children too. It's never too late to become close to our children, right? <3
I love this quote and figured you may as well ~ "A gardener does not grow flowers, they give them what they need to grow."