I think most parents see their kids as an opportunity to make up for their mistakes and past failures. I had a cousin who lived with us for a long time. My mum was always hard on her because of boys--she liked them a lot. And it seemed quite personal because in my mum eyes she didn't want to see her repeat her own mistake which was getting pregnant at a young age. I hopefully would want my kids to be high performs in class and intellectually sound because I actually failed in these areas.

I guess wee want to teach them the lessons we learnt so that they can at least get one mistake behind them. Yet where we feel we failed as children, they may not see it as a failure and see something else as failure instead.

My grandmother got pregnant from an American soldier shortly after the war, so her first child was not her husband's. When her youngest daughter got pregnant early before marriage, she was furious and threatened to kill the boyfriend!

You probably have a better foundation for parenting than most. As long as you're wanting to be a good parent you will be. We will all make mistakes, that's a given, but it doesn't mean we failed. As my daughter once said to me, if you think you are a failure as a parent then that's an insult to your children.

Commitment trumps 'natural talent' any day. I have one daughter who everything came easy to and onfe who always had to work hard at things. The talented one struggles more with working through things when they get hard, but she's getting there.

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