So many people have or had problems with their parents: parents blame their kids, don’t support them, bring them down, and don’t help them to overcome difficulties. “Sweet childhood” becomes a hell that kids try to forget for the rest of their life. Parents can really mess things up; they can mess up their kids' life, but claim that they have done everything right and the problem hides in their kids whom they shouldn’t have made.

This list can go on and on, and it seems like the phrase “Broken Generation” affects millions of lives of different times and countries, and sometimes very bright lives. The most influential and successful geniuses stood above all of that mess, drove their way to success, and showed the world what they really worth. 

Top 5 Geniuses with Messed Up Parents

1

Isaac Newton

Sir Isaac Newton was an English established physicist and mathematician and is credited as one of the greatest minds and a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. He was called a “Man of Science, Man of God”.

But no one would call young Isaac like that: a small weepy boy who grew up among rotten rednecks in a poor and dirty countryside of Lincolnshire. His father, also named Isaac Newton, died three months before his birth. As for his mother, Hannah Ayscough, she remarried and left Newton with his maternal grandmother when he was just three years old.

Only after long 9 years, when Hannah’s second husband died, she returned to her son and brought along three small children. He hated his mother and stepfather so hard that he made a list of sins committed up to the age of 19:

"Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them."

Family problems left an indelible imprint on Newton, so he had been struggling with anxiety and panic attacks for all of his life. Maybe he even died as a virgin, as he hated women very hard and was never married.

2

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was one of the most recognized and influential scientists, who was a nominated member of the Prussian Academy of Science, professor of the University of Berlin without the need to teach, and also offered the Presidency of Israel (but then he rejected that).

And the dumbest kid in the room. He had problems with speech, also known as dyslexia, and had difficulties with communication. He failed to talk until the age of four, and could not read until the age of nine.

Because of that, Einstein was a big problem to his parents. They thought that he was retarded and were so ashamed of him that when Albert Einstein was a teen, they took their daughter Maja and moved away from their hometown, leaving their son under the care of a distant relative. Albert didn’t like that, so he decided to drop out from school and to follow them right across the Alps. There he established his plans of graduating from The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to follow his dream of chasing a beam of light.

3

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and a predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras, who wrote the most important compositions during his last ten years when he was unable to hear due to his progressive deafness.

His father Johann van Beethoven, a musician who was better known for his alcoholism than for any musical talent, started teaching his son at a very young age, hoping that his son will be as recognizable as Mozart. But the way he tough Ludwig was really horrifying: he beat Ludwig for each hesitation or mistake; neighbors heard how a small boy was weeping while he played the violin and clavier. Johann van Beethoven used to flog his son, lock him in the cellar, and deprive him of sleep for extra hours of practice.

Whether is Ludwig’s success a result of his father’s brutal methods or not, he showed his bright talent from the beginning which eventually made him one of the greatest composers ever. 

4

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens, one of the most widely read Victorian novelists, is well-known for his beloved classic novels A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby and Great Expectations.

The core of Charles Dickens’ novels was his bad childhood experience: his father was imprisoned for debt. During his father’s imprisonment, Charles was forced by his own mother to leave school and to work at the boot-blacking factory when he was just twelve years old. That was the most significant experience of his life, he felt abandoned and betrayed by the adults who were supposed to protect him.

Those dark memories had been hunting him for all of his life, but his sentiments became a source of creativity for his work where he wrote about the tough life of the poor working class in the nineteenth-century England.

5

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was one of the most important, influential, and mysterious person in history. Rumors say that he wasn’t even a man but an alien who was sent to earth to save humankind from Tunguska meteoroid and to give us his magnificent and important breakthroughs.

Truth or not, let anybody guess, but not so many people know that Tesla had very strict and religious parents. His father, Milutin Tesla, was a priest in a local church, who was very educative, intelligent, and used to study sciences during his free time. But despite his interest in science, Milutin was a very religious and imperious father who didn’t allow Nikola to study physics and wanted his son to enter the priesthood.

When Nikola Tesla grew up and informed his father about his plans to become an engineer, Milutin rejected that and a future “Master of Lighting” almost left his dream if not for one strange occasion. Nikola contracted cholera in his late teens and was bedridden for 9 months. When Nikola was near death, he asked his father to send him to an engineering school if he survived. In the moment of desperation, Milutin agreed to send him to the best technical institute at the time. Then Nikola gave a faint smile and after few weeks he surprisingly recovered from the disease.

This mysterious and fast recovery proved that Nikola Tesla wasn’t a fool but rather smart. He might very likely have made up his disease to trick his father to finally let him become an engineer. What do you do to let your parents accept your decisions, aye?

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