I am the result of “bad parenting” and a better person for it.

Just look at all the things my parents are supposedly doing wrong in this one photo of my sister and me.

To start, I can’t be more than four… and I am holding a sharp stick (gasp). A stick that, in the hands of a preschooler, could clearly double as a lightsaber, a spear, or at the very least a tool of chaos. My parents? They didn’t seem worried. They didn’t swoop in with helmets, bubble wrap, and a list of government regulations. They just let me play.

Next to me, my baby sister is sitting in a chair that, to modern eyes, looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen. She isn’t strapped down with duct tape, NASA-grade harnesses, or enough padding to survive reentry from orbit. What if she slipped, fell, and (heaven forbid) died? Spoiler alert: she’s alive, well, and thriving to this day.

And then there’s the sun. We’re sitting outside, exposed to that great fiery ball in the sky… and I guarantee you we were not slathered in SPF 150 sunblock every 12 minutes like today’s recommended protocols. Yet here we are, decades later, somehow surviving the trauma of vitamin D.

But of course, that photo was just a single moment in time. The “bad parenting” didn’t stop there – it actually got worse.

I remember being eight years old, running around with neighborhood friends, completely unsupervised. Nobody was checking in every five minutes. There were no GPS trackers, no “Find My Child” apps, no parents hovering from the sidelines like anxious drone pilots. And this wasn’t some quiet little village where everyone knew each other either. I grew up in Istanbul – a city of more than ten million people. By modern standards, this should have been a nightmare scenario. Yet somehow, it became the best part of childhood.

Add to that the fact that I grew up in a Muslim country. Oh, the horror. By some people’s logic, that alone should have scarred me for life. But instead, it gave me perspective, empathy, and the understanding that cultures are not threats – they’re opportunities to learn and grow.

Here’s the truth: my parents let us be kids. We played. We built forts out of scrap wood. We fought with the neighbor kids, made up five minutes later, and went back to playing. We fell, skinned our knees, and got back up without anyone calling a lawyer. We explored like kids should (without being told that everything was dangerous, everyone was suspicious, and the world was one giant “Do Not Enter” sign).

And because of that, I (and my sister) are the result of “bad parenting.” Which is exactly why we are who we are today.

We became strong adults, capable of traveling the world without fear of new places or people who think differently than us. We became confident adults, knowing that even if someone isn’t there to solve a problem for us, we can figure it out ourselves. We became healthy adults, learning how to balance jobs that keep us behind screens with sports, exercise, and time outdoors.

My parents’ “bad parenting” gave us resilience. It gave us courage. It gave us the ability to laugh at challenges rather than run from them.

So when I think about raising my own son, I can only hope that I’ll be just as “bad” a parent as mine were. Because if he grows up with the same strength, confidence, and curiosity they gave us, then I’ll know I did it right.