My parents used to make fun of me for reading. Were they bad parents?

Yes you had bad parents because you ended up reading letsrun.com.

self investment wrote:

Anyway, my parents used to make fun of me for reading ...I don't really dwell on this ,,,

This is the thing about parenting, they make terrible choices sometimes. Making fun of you for reading was a terrible choice.

well yeah they were dead f'ing wrong about it, but that's doesn't make them bad parents, just very ignorant of the inherent value of reading and education.

As long as they loved you and cared for you and were involved in the going ons of your life, it'd be hard to call them "bad."

Did your parents have the same parents?

Who told you that you are excellent writer ?

At least you don't dwell on it.

I think it's great to read, but if it negatively impacts your social development or athletic abilities, then it's not as beneficial. Your parents should be supportive or whatever you choose to do and help you along the way. Making fun of you is a terrible thing if it actually hurt your feelings. Good parents are non judgmental and always there for you no matter what you want to pursue. Perhaps they were good parents otherwise and it can be excused, but to me it's definitely a red flag pointing towards poor parenting.

self investment wrote:

Now several years later I have both a great job and a great girlfriend and am frequently told I am an excellent writer and have an impressive vocabulary, direct products of reading books.

You didn't catch on to the use of commas after all those years of reading books?

You are starting a thread on it now? Maybe you are dwelling just a little? Maybe your parents loved you and just wanted to encourage you to experience life a bit more. They might have been teasing a bit too.

How many times have you told them how wrong they were to discourage reading?

G'head, pat yourself on the back, nerd. You should a been out running, lifting weights and hanging out in bars.

Your post reminds me of an interesting thing that happened to me last year.

I was at a friends house and his three kids were totally engrossed in the ipad. It was like the adults in the room didn't exist. The parents in the room were talking about the obsession worriedly.

Then, the lone 70 year old grandparent in the room said, "Well when I was a kid the adults thought reading too much was bad for you. I read all the time and my parents were freaked out by it and told me to go out and play."

Moral of the story. Parents always worry about what their kids are doing.

Reading fiction is a form of escapism - which is counterproductive if you want to make in the modern world. I stopped reading fiction a long time ago. So maybe they were good parents.

There wasa great study a few years ago that concluded that being surrounded by books was a better indicator of school achievement than parents income or eduction :

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0276562410000090

your parents were very wrong.

jorvack wrote:

There wasa great study a few years ago that concluded that being surrounded by books was a better indicator of school achievement than parents income or eduction :

Even if this wasn't true and books were legitimately bad for you, making fun of a kid is moronic. I don't want my kid to overdo the ice cream. I don't exercise this preference by making fun of my kid when he does eat ice cream. I do it by setting rules and by modeling the behavior I want to see...y'know, like a parent might do.

If a decent parent was concerned that you were spending too much time reading, they would discuss it with you, not make fun of you.

You are a disappointment to your parents.

Not all kids turn out well despite the efforts of the parents.

Neither of my parents ever read books. Reading books as something totally foreign to them. I don't blame them for not being able to relate, but it seems like common knowledge that reading is beneficial, especially when it's non-fiction and/or classical literature. If I'm to be honest, I'm dumbfounded how two adults could be so ignorant.

No, they did a bad thing but they were not necessarily bad parents.

Did they also call you "College boy" and

mock you for pursuing higher education?

Just wondering...