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

There are so many things I wish my parents had done differently but I do acknowledge that there was a lot they didn't know (information was not as easy to find in those days), and a lot comes from the way that they were parented.

However, they lacked the basic ability to make their children feel loved. I can't remember them actually spending quality time with them, being hugged, having a laugh or a chat with them as a child. They thought as long as they provided food, home and basic clothes that was enough.

Everything is on their terms and there is no compromise. If I don't agree with them, they don't want to know. They are exactly the same with their grandchildren. They only feel to get to know a child once they turn 18 - but is for their selfish reasons so that they can talk about themselves, and ask for favours and they have always dismissed whatever I said and my feelings. I honestly feel they thought children were accessories and the most important thing is how they come across to their friends and Church community. To this day, they wonder why they don't have a close relationship with their dc or dgc.

I've tried guiding them and suggesting alternative ways to be more engaging and listen more and how I feel, but they point-blank refuse and say that is the way they are.

I wish they had liked me.

Listened to me. I never felt listened to and rarely had affection shown to me. Although neither parent was mean to me. My mum’s friend once told me that my mum wished I’d held her hand when I was little - but if I ever tried to she’d stiffen up and it felt uncomfortable. I have a totally different relationship with my daughter - although no doubt she’ll wish I’d done things differently!!

I wish both parents had treated me like an 18yo and not like a 12yo when I was 18+ but still living at home

I wish DM had sided with me in a particular situation rather than siding with my stepfather and expecting the whole house to revolve around keeping him happy (and with her)

Wow! Lots of replies and I'm looking forward to reading through them all later

i wish my mum had called me by my name when She did speak to me and even when she was talking about me to my sibling’s I was called she it that or her still to this day I’m 39 and she rarely calls me by my name

Such a sad thread. I wish it could be deleted. It's a 'Pandora's Box' thread

This is so sad, sorry this happened. Seems cruel, I'm sure she realised how uncomfortable it made you feel.

I wish my parents had got some help for their own mental health issues or at least were able to do some form of self reflection. Not really the done thing in the 70s & 80s though.

My Dad is a complete people-pleaser and will do anything to avoid any kind of conflict. My Mum is very paranoid, manipulative, she’s also has some psychosis. I don’t think either of them are happy, my Mum is very bitter and angry a lot of the time. We all had to play into her fantasy that she was some kind of highly intelligent, saint growing up. Nothing she ever did was in any way wrong and everyone else was beneath her.

Im not in contact with them any more, mainly for my own mental health and to keep them away from my DCs. The anger I used to feel has all gone. It’s all just quite sad.

My mother did this too. I even got her cast off underwear. The first time I got clothes that were fashionable was when I got a Saturday job aged 16. It made me so happy! I also got my haircut at a hairdresser for the first time in my life. My father said I looked like a whore.

I resent my mother for teaching me that the point of romantic relationships is to have children. Her and my dad did not get on at all, but also she upholds this fantasy that our family was different to everyone else, that it was perfect. As a result my siblings and I have all had disastrous relationships. I settled for someone who seemed like he'd be a good parent when I was still a teenager, I just didn't know what a normal relationship looked like and didn't realize that actually my parents' relationship was something to avoid, not seek to emulate.

Also I wish she advised me more as a teenager and adult. Always was very vocal about the fact that once you're an adult you make your own choices, but I was still way too young and needed help.

I wish my mother had allowed me to be me, with my opinions and ideas being respected instead of controlling every aspect of my life.
I wasn't allowed to choose my own career and when I decided it wasn't for me, got all the guilt of "We sacrificed a lot to put you through college and now you're throwing it back in our face etc etc"
She was always far more interested in what other people would think of her, than my happiness. I left an unhappy marriage but that brought shame on her.

I decided with my children that I would let them make their own decisions in life and that the most important thing was their happiness. They are both grown up now and are happy and successful. They can't believe what I went through.

I wish my mum hadn't always criticised me and my appearance. She could have put me on a diet without telling me I was fat, I've seen photographs, I was not fat or even overweight. I wish she had told me that you don't always get on with everyone and that is ok, it is not a failing on your part if someone doesn't like you, and you should not try to change their mind by being a walkover.

Taught me social etiquette, for example if you go out with a group. But tbh they never did that kind of thing anyway. But it's been really hard to learn as an adult.

Spent some money on us instead of her hobbies. I would have loved having clothes that weren't two sizes too small or at age 12 and a skinny size 6 if that, having size 12 hand-me-downs from her friends because they could see I had nothing.
I would have loved to have proper food in too and not have to make do with a tin of plum tomatoes for dinner. She'd spend £100's a week on her hobby.

I do have to thank her though. I learned a lot. I learned that my kids will have exactly what they need and as much of what they want as I'm able to provide. I am so close to my kids (teens and primary aged) and there's nothing we can't talk about. There's nothing they can ask for.

I wish my parents had taken my mental health issues seriously when I was a teen instead of vocally denying that I was anxious and depressed and was having panic attacks and seeking no help for me. Some of my grandparents had serious mental health disorders and my parents just didn't want to acknowledge/couldn't deal with the fact that I was unwell. It affected me deeply for a very long time and I still can't mention my (thankfully much rarer, now) black dog days to them. I also wish they hadn't moved around so much when I was a child, in pursuit of their next big idea – I was never asked how I felt, just had to keep starting new schools, which definitely contributed to the anxiety.

I wish my dad had calmed down his temper before I moved out.
He's so much calmer these days he's lovely to be around shame he wasn't like that when me and my brother were growing up.

Thanks. It was such a bizarre thing. It was actually only fairly recently (nearly 50) that I looked back and wondered about it and why. I have no explanation whatsoever as to why. It's baffled me completely.

Not let me take on so much responsibility .

I love my mum dearly and I so desperately wanted to help but I grew up feeling her happiness was my responsibility . She would tell me things that were horrific that I couldn't possibly begin to understand and never needed to know in that level of detail (sexual abuse/rape) . I used to think if she was upset - and she was upset, very frequently - that it was somehow my fault for not helping her correctly .

I couldn't cope as a child with that on my shoulders . As an adult it's very difficult to unlearn those habits, it's left me with horrendous mental health difficulties .

She's dreadfully unwell now, will die in the not too distant future (although no-one can put a time on it) and I torture myself at night thinking, was she always unhappy and lonely, and was that my fault?

I love my mum very, very much and always will do but there is a part of me wishes she could have been given appropriate help from the right people at a much earlier stage - I wish she could have accepted help . By the time she started to get and accept help she was already on the pathway she is now - it came too late.

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.

This is completely true. When I read these threads, everyone is always so confident that they are parenting much better than their parents did, but the truth is we probably aren't. Perceptions and expectations of parenting will change, and in another 20 or 30 years our children will be genuinely appalled at things we are doing and saying that are normal and appropriate now.

I wish they didn't dismiss my worries and just tell me I was being silly and that everything was okay.. I had an anxiety disorder that I lived with for 12 years because I was told I was being silly, and my mum even said at one point that I needed to get a grip.

Now, I am medicated, and life is so much better. If my parents had seen that I had an actual problem rather than just being silly and attention seeking, I might not have wasted so many years of my life feeling the way I felt for such a long, long time.

@foreternity I relate to this, still trying to unpick the enmeshed boundaries 💐

I wish that they'd hugged me and told me that they loved me.

I wish my mum had been less awful about food and weight. She spent the whole of my childhood calling me fat when I wasn't at all (in fact, I remember when I was about 8 getting our medical book out and showing my mum that my weight was in the healthy range, to which she replied that I should be aiming for the underweight range, a memory that makes me feel terribly sorry for my little 8yo self) and monitoring what I ate. It set me up for a lifetime of issues with food, although I'm mindful that it's now decades later and I should be owning my own issues.

I wish my dad had been less of a drinker and more able to control his temper.

If you can say this then you had good parents. Not all of us did.

I wish my parents had thought about us rather than themselves. I wish they had protected us from abuse. I wish my father hadn't left for a much younger woman. I wish my mother hadn't married an abusive man when I was 13.

I am a much better parent. I think about my Dd's in every decision I make.