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

I feel like this. Honest question though what do you think your / our parents could have done differently?

I've always assumed it's my autism. Maybe it is in my case?

I wish my mum hadn't had kids and I'd had another mother. She wanted an emotional crutch and someone to bully rather than a child to support.

I am 100% convinced that I'm parenting better than my parents did. Some people in this thread aren't just complaining about parenting styles - their parents were abusive!

I'm pretty sure that not smacking my children regularly, not ridiculing them and not putting them down intentionally is a much better approach than my parents. I don't physically and emotionally abuse my partner in front of my children (or at all!).

This one’s mine too, I was never encouraged to strive for a career and how important that is and also I wish I was encouraged more with maths as a child so I could have done better in my exams and then had better options career wise.

I don’t have children of my own but I’m always encouraging my teenage niece and nephew. Talking to them about school, what subjects they are passionate about, what kind of careers they might enjoy and have really tried to inspire a bit of ambition in them. Also the main subjects aka maths, English and science, I have told them that even if they find it boring they need to try really hard in these subjects and really force themselves to concentrate in class. As this will open up so many opportunities for them regarding what education they can take in the future. I actually wish my mum would have paid for a bit of private tutoring for me regarding maths.

I also wish I had been brought up to be less fearful and anxious but I know my mum did her best.

This

We overcompensate I know 100% that I am parenting my child much more than my mum did with me I tell him I love him and I’m not a narcissist I don’t ignore him for days weeks months years on end I don’t ostracise him no way am I anything like my mum why would someone who experienced abuse want their child to have the same experience they did unless they are sick in the head

Told me to look smarter and not so scruffy. All I ever heard was that I looked lovely. When I actually looked like a messy bully target. Some constructive diplomacy would have helped.

Didn't make hysterical dramas in public. Or at home, actually.

Was nice, not terrifying, to my friends.

Wasn't frankly weird about sex and didn't sl*t shame me.

Didn't have seriously dodgy fashion sense which was passed to me until old enough to know better.

Didn't have dubious hygiene personally and domestically

Didn't tell me so much detail of adult matters - I wasn't their little confidante and it just scared / stressed me out.

I think I'm only guilt of the top one, sometimes, with my family. And have perhaps gone OTT the other way with a couple of the others. Its quite interesting writing it out.

One of the most useful and interesting exercises I was given by a therapist was to list all the messages/lessons I learned in my childhood; good and bad. Very enlightening.

That my parents worked less hours. They worked 60 to 70 hours a week minimum most of my childhood. I was raised by a succession of babysitters and hated it.

I wanted my mum to take me to the beach, bake cakes with me, do my homework, tuck me in and read a bedtime story to me, be at school events etc. We had lots of money but it meant very little as it came at a price of me having virtually no memories of my parents around day to day. I also wished my dad would have stopped drinking. He eventually drunk himself into an early grave.

I wished I was groomed better, groom in the sense of wearing nice clothes, nice hairstyles, make up etc, plus social etiquette. I still feel woefully inadequate at times.

My mother's work was more important to her than her children. All my happy childhood memories are time spent with family friends and my dad - nothing about her.
She also passed critical comments on EVEREYBODY she saw, even though she knew nothing about them. I grew up doing the same as I thought that was what people did.
It wasn't till we were older that my sister and I realised that other mothers weren't the same.

If she did anything, it was to look at her example of "parenting" and do the exact opposite.

Probably push me more in terms of my education. They weren't really bothered however despite not doing great at school, I have actually done well for myself through good opportunities and hard work that came later. My mother also wasn't very affectionate at all. I do maybe overcompensate now with my own DC as I'm very affectionate and always tell them I love them. I don't want them to feel I was cold towards them and want them to have warm, loving memories. I do have a good relationship with my parents though. I accept them for who they are and appreciate what they've done for me.

@ahunf I honestly don't know, maybe not done everything for me? Made me do stuff I didn't want to do?

I don't know what they key is but I know my sister is very self reliant and strong. But then there is a 10 year age gap between us and they were very different parents to her.

Plus I lived through my mother's violent phase, by which time she'd got out. Possibly watching my mum beat my father black and blue broke me, but I don't know if it was that.

Sorry you feel this way too, it's a truly shit existence.

I feel this too, I didn’t realise at the time but I was never taught proper hygiene as a child, and my hair was always untidy, clothes looked scruffy and had constant lice in my hair as a child… 😕

I wish my mum had worried less because I think some of my social issues were simply not being able to join in when my year was wandering round the village together. I felt at times at primary I was always playing catch up because I never knew what had been said last night.
Otoh it did mean I was seen as a neutral person when there were fallings out so I didn't get tangled in them. And I can also see why she wasn't terribly keen on my wandering off from about age 6yo upwards and only returning as it got dark.

Having got the growing seed advert in the middle of the screen, I think the boy in red at least, will be writing in the future that he wishes his mum hadn't made him sit still and do boring videos.

I'm 40 years on from my childhood and I don't look back and feel appalled about anything my parents did. I do somethings differently and they genuinely didn't know about seatbelts for example but they enveloped my siblings and me in love, were genuinely interested in us and did whatever they could - including sacrificing stuff - to get us the best education they could. Our friends were welcome and encouraged. They had a happy home. They also modelled a great relationship (not perfect but very fair and decent).

So I think if you had genuinely good parents you don't look back like that. you understand that things are a bit different. That is not the same thing as a poster saying "I wish I had felt loved". That isn't a generational thing.

I agree. You get the odd person on these threads, who was fortunate to experience at least reasonably ok parenting and doesn't really believe that not everyone was as fortunate as them. There's the insinuation that people are just making a fuss about nothing. It's very narrow minded

@Hopefornothing

I think there is a lot of truth to what you said. My dad would not allow clothes for presents.

He'd had them as a child and was always disappointed.

But my dad was never a teenage girl, his siblings were never teenage girls.

Teenage girls quite like (the right) clothes.

I wish they had not brought me up to believe working in an office was bad. Left school and shunted straight into a cleaning job... because that was "real work".
Also brought up to aim to be married at in my teens, and popping out kids in 20s (I did neither).
Looking back, I wish they helped me with my school homework (they never ever did), or helped me with my GCSEs and A-levels (they did not give a crap about either).
I wish my mum left my dad decades ago... so he was not such a blight on my life now.

Dealt with my brat of a sister. She turned into an absolute monster and we are now nc.

@Mumof3teenagers I'm sorry you had a rubbish childhood :(

I wish my mother had:

Not walloped me to the point of me cowering on the floor protecting my head
Not kept talking about my Dad 'dipping his wick' all the time
Not insisted on pandering constantly to the violent brother of mine who sexually abused me when I was 10
Not dragged me off to another part of the country when she remarried
Not tried to drag me back once that husband had left her
Not made references to women who enjoyed sex being slutty
Not bitched relentlessly about my Dad
Not kept bringing up the above sexual abuse, even after I lost my temper and told her to shut up, just so that she could tell me 'how sorry' the abuser was
Not kept telling me (and all my siblings) what a WONDERFUL mother she was.
Not gone to my Dad's house after he remarried, made a violent scene that resulted in her being picked up outside our house by the police, upsetting 14 year old me so much I wet myself.
Not aimed an air rifle filled with talc at my Dad when he visited on Christmas Day and then repeatedly describing it as 'a joke' when I tried to tell her in later life how traumatic it was for me

I wish I could've lived with my Dad.

I know for an absolute fact that I've done better as a parent to my children. Not perfect, because who is, but pretty bloody good.

Apart from properly teach me about money, nothing. And I wish my Mum had lived longer. I am devastated that her and my DC were robbed of each other 💔