Most parents think that their children end up the way they do as a result of their parenting skills. If the child becomes successful, sometimes the parents like to take the credit for giving them the resources they needed to get where they are. Other times children are blamed for going downhill as a result of the lack of parenting skills in their household growing up.

There are an immense amount of people that assume a child or children will end up like their parents. For example: if a child is raised in a home with two parents who graduated from college with Bachelor degrees in law and Business Communications, the child will most likely be expected to go to college, too, and have a successful career like their parents.

In other situations, if a child is raised in a home of abuse and neglect, lack of love and education, the child will have little to no expectations, and end up being unsuccessful and unhappy like their parents. However, these situations can be mixed up, and a child that is raised in an unhappy and unstable home can end up being successful; and vice versa. Future lives depend on the choices made by the child him or herself. It is absolutely possible to have outer influences from either parents or other parts of the family to determine which path of life a child will take.

The moral of the story is that children get to decide what they do with their lives. Despite the life they are given and how they are treated or brought up, they are the ones that truly take their lives in their own hands. I was brought up in an unstable home with almost nothing, and I came out being the most successful of the bunch (as my family tells me) because I decided that I did not want my past to define me.

I was unhappy, and I changed it. I feel the life my father gave me was the cause of that. I was affected positively by all of this, and I am quite proud of it. I like that I am the most successful kid in my family. And thus; the stereotype should end. Children can choose how their lives turn out regardless of the family and home they are brought up in. It does not always have to be a bad outcome. At least, not for me.