What do you wish your parents did differently?

[sirensi]

Interested now I'm a mother.

I wish my mum didn't call me dramatic all my life. Really I was just anxious, and these were my feelings. It's left me unable to talk about my problems now

A quality response

I wish my parents had taken my really quirky behaviours, OCD’s and excessive anxiety seriously when I was a child. I am certain that it was inattentive ADHD and I am still having issues at 49 and can not afford a private assessment (NHS waiting times 4+ years where I live). I don’t blame them as it was the 70’s/80’s but I really had issues as a child and they did nothing to help me. I still slightly resent them for that as my mental health has been shit my whole life and they just respond with ‘Oh that’s just you, you’ve always been strange!’. (I do still love them though).

Exactly

Thing is, how I remember things may not have been how it was at all. I wish they had taken more active role in my university choices, but maybe they did and I didn't listen? Maybe they were totally stressed too but as they were unfamiliar with the system (they were from another country) didn't understand the options? Maybe they thought it really was up to me to figure out and didn't want to push me in a direction I'd grow to resent?
I do wish they had not been so determined to keep out of my marriage and early motherhood. I was in my 40s and my parents well into their 70s but it was like they decided they couldn't voice an opinion for fear of coming across as interfering. I had imagined walking the pushchair in the park with my mum giving me tips and advice. But it never happened.
I certainly wish I had talked to them more as they grew older.

Put me and DB first rather than themselves and what they wanted and wanted to do.
Far too long a sad story to type but the lack of support financial and emotional, they have given DB over the years is horrible and I could never imagine not supporting my DC that way. I would give my DC every last penny I have; they were buying new cars and taking month long holidays when he was homeless.
That my DM has never, ever stood up to my domineering DF. In their 80s now and her life is completely ruled my his routine and unreasonable demands and she's unhappy but it's her own fault.
That they had little/no interest in my education. I am currently helping DC decide on A level and degre

Oops posted too soon..helping my DC with A level and uni choices. Totally interested and trying my best to be supportive.
They were disinterested at best.
Finally, they have never been hands on with DC. Again, their lifestyle comes first.

More affection
Seeing me and allowing me to have my opinions/preferences
Guiding me a little in growing up - hygiene, friendships …

BEING there.. they were physically, but Dad was always working / socialising.. Mum was a bit hedonistic.. hence my first marriage at 17.

most things
cant really blame them, mum had MH issues and left us when I was very young
Dad did his best but I wish I’d had more guidance and support as a teen, not decision making but information given on what my options were

I wish she wasn't my mother or anyones mother. As she's uncapable of love, kindness and empathy.

You beat me to it. I was coming to say exactly this.

My Dad died of exacerbation of a smoking related health condition even though he did give up about 18 months before that (it was already too late).

My mother is in her eighties and remains a dyed in the wool 40+ a day chain smoker. Every time going somewhere or doing something different is suggested her first reaction is to ask whether or not she will be able to smoke. If she can't then she probably won't go. It sometimes makes me feel that cigarettes come before everything and everyone.

It makes you feel that their first love is always going to be cigarettes. I can never really work out whether I am being unfair there. I loved my parents and know that they loved me, but how I wished throughout my childhood (and adulthood too) that they would give up smoking.

Lots of things.
I wish they hadn't hit me for being "naughty". Or criticised almost everything about me. Or been awful to each other (shouting, violence).

I'm trying to be a much better parent myself and reading the book "The book you wish your parents had read" by Philipa Perry has been very cathartic.

Wore a condom that randy night in ‘79… and backed it up with a coil or some other method of reliable birth control.

I wish they had realising beating up a child is very damaging.
Over feeding, under feeding and force feeding encourages eating disorders
When the police arrive because you have lost your temper so badly with your own small children, you have scared the neighbours whom try to stay out of things as a rule, it is time for divorce or social services.

I wish more than anything my mother had left my father, and we could have had the happy ending I had dreamt about as a child, he still casts the longest shadow over our lives and bullies everyone and anyone mercilessly. As a result my mother is a shell of a person living on a cocktail of antidepressants to numb the reality of her life. We don't see him anymore, but I am still afraid of him even though I am 53 years of age.

Mine never bought me half way fashionable clothes that were anything like what other young teenagers wore. When i was a teen my mother said that we were the same size and her clothes were perfectly suitable for me to share. Including things like her bathing suits. It was not a cost issue either- professional jobs, we went abroad alot. But I was going to school mufti days wearing my mother's floral blouses with lace collars and skirts. I went to my high school dance wearing a dress she wore to my aunt's wedding. I was so so teased.

Also, their hobbies were reading. Anything physical was out so I never developed a habit of exercise, or indeed a habit of having interests and hobbies.

I love my mum but don’t understand her parenting

sent to Coventry at 3/4 ignored for days weeks months then years

put on a diet when I started nursery at 3.5 ended up obsessed with weight and have had eating disorders my whole life

I know my mum doesn’t really like me I have no idea why

Everything.

I wish my parents had downsized earlier from a house to a flat. To free up time and money to travel and enjoy life. Mum died a few years after retirement. Tme is precious.

I’m a parent myself and broke the cycle my 7 year old son is always happy and he tells me that everyday

I wish they had managed to stop my sister from bullying and tormenting me our whole childhood. She was a nightmare and still is.

I think most people will always wish their parents did something different. Because everyone is different. One way of parenting works well for one person and not another.
You'll see people replying with how they wish their parents weren't so overprotective and interfering. And the next saying they wish their parents had given more advice and not left them to do what they wanted so much. Each will then likely parent the opposite way to their parents, probably leading in 40 years to a reverse complaint from each families children. (Usual disclaimer. I am not including actual abuse situations in this.)

Do I wish my parents had done some things differently. Yes of course. But equally I am aware they did the best they could at the time. I'm autistic and this was not picked up on in childhood. After being diagnosed in adulthood my mum could see how much sense it made. So do I wish she hadn't told me off and punished me for behaving in ways now known to be related to my autism? Yes of course. But she didn't know. Do I wish she maybe tried to talk me out of some terrible decisions I made as a teen/ young adult? Yes. But i also know I likely wouldn't have listened and would have got angry that she was interfering because as we all know a teenager "knows best" and the wise adults "know nothing".

As parents we/ they have no way to know how each parenting method will affect each child until they are grown.
Trying to encourage a child to take up more sport for example. How do you know if more pressure will make the child upset and angry that they are being forced and will then grow up complaining their parents forced them to do things they hated. So the parents worry about that so stop trying to encourage sport as much and instead listen to the child saying no. Then the child grows up saying they wish their parents had pushed them out of their comfort zone more as it was needed and now they lack confidence as an adult.

Despite what people think as new parents, their way will never be perfect either. And even though you can learn from your parents mistakes, you'll likely just make new ones instead.

You put it better than I ever could. I had the same experience. She Never showed love Of any kind, never gave any guidance, always showed favouritism to my siblings. Constantly told me what I was do wrong but never explained how to do it right. Never gave any praise for anything. Life was a dark gloomy place for me.

Oh I wish mine had never met one another, got married and had children. My Dad should have been with someone who could handle him, not someone who belittled him, and my mother? She should never have been born.

That I didn't get told to 'stop being so sensitive' by my dad and that my mum didn't threaten to send me to live with my dad when we argued or decide 'which side my bread was buttered' as she sometimes put it. I wish my mum had talked to me more about relationships and growing up, the lack of this led to me making some regrettable decisions with 'relationships' and not having a clue about how to say no.

I wish my dad bothered to stick around instead of preaching to others to Man up.

I wish that he invested in us as his children, rather than now wanting to parade his professional adult children whom he couldn't have cared one iota about when we were small.

I wish my mum had married a better man who would have worked with her as a team, rather than had the parasitic relationship that ensued. (He had a professional wife, who had a house and he could live for free without a mortgage and without supporting his brood.)

I wish my mum had not tried to keep up with the Jones at church and in the community, as it meant that we had little from her. And the same is still true today, church social climbing first, then me and her DGC far far down the list, way behind DSis and her life as a medic.