Something your parents did that you will not be doing?

[Catsandcannedbeans]

What is something (habit or behaviour) that your parents did that you will not be doing? I’m not really talking about things that are obviously harmful like “I won’t smack my kids” but things that you didn’t notice at the time but that retroactively really damaged you?

My mum always used to say she was ugly and imply she was unattractive without make up on, and I know she didn’t do this to make me feel bad but it made me feel horrible. Everyone has always said we look alike, and when I look at photos of her at my age we really look very similar. So she would be saying all this and in my head I just felt like she was calling me ugly. She also had an insane fear of ageing and would say she looked “so old”. She objectively doesn’t, and even now she looks good for her age, but you can’t tell her that. My sister also feels it impacted her self esteem, but not as much because she looks more like my dad (who unironically believes he is the most handsome man to ever live). It has taken me a lot of time to get over, and to be honest now I do think I’ve always been relatively good looking apart from when I was a teen and insisted on cutting my own hair. I don’t hold it against my mum at all, she is a really good mum so I am very lucky and I know she wasn’t trying to upset me or give me a complex she just has low self esteem.

My DD looks a lot like me, it’s something that’s commented on all the time. Even when I feel like shit I always make sure to not comment on it in front of her. Also I try and accept compliments graciously because you cannot compliment my mother, to the point where it’s sometimes very frustrating.

I don’t really have one relating to my dad, because he is just objectively quite a bad parent and was irresponsible (and really fun to be around as a kid). The only thing is he definitely treated me and my sister differently from my brothers. He was much more patient with us, and we definitely were better behaved (my youngest two brothers were a constant riot) but I think that’s a chicken and egg situation. If he had been less strict with them and been a bit more compassionate I think they’d have been a bit better behaved. I also think that’s a product of the time though. We treat DD and DS the same, but I think the vast majority of people do now.

Saved and saved and did without to leave me and my siblings something. I’m spending what money I have on my kids now.

Let me go to the dentist for many extractions (so I could get a brace) by myself, including a general anaesthetic, and then get the bus home. No adult to be with me.
Then the fixed brace fucked my remaining teeth as they couldn’t be cleaned properly.
Still really pissed off with the whole thing, many many years later.

Smacking. DC are both over 10 and I have never smacked them ever. Never even crossed my mind to do it. I was smacked (70s baby) and mum used to throw stuff at us like hairbrushes and shoes.

I will never expect my children to care for me or drop everything and rush to my side if I demand it.

I won't ever tell them they wasted my time/money/energy and have amounted to nothing.

I won't tell them what they can and can't study or do for a job.

@WorthyOtterQuite. Back when I was a kid it was the landline but she’d disappear into the bath for hours on end on the phone to her mates or her Mum while I entertained myself. On the upside I’m comfortable with boredom so long as I’ve got something to read, and am very happy to do things alone (travel, eat out, try a new class etc) but there’s something a bit tragic about a kid desperately trying to play a 2 player game on their own. It actually made DH quite emotional when I told him (he had 3 siblings and fun involved parents).

My children are adults now but I never used emotional manipulation with them like my mum did to me. For example "If you go to that party I'll never think the same about you again"
My parents were terrible sulkers and they wouldn't speak for a week after a slight row, making a horrible atmosphere for the family. I have never done that either.

My DM used to frequently compare me to my friends. I know it's quite common to be compared to your siblings,but she never ever compared me to my 2 brothers,just my friends,or rather,a couple of particular friends,who happened to be very bright,teachers' pets,who could never put a foot wrong. Even now,all these years later,it pisses me off. I can hear her voice in my head saying 'Why can't you be more ladylike,like Caroline?' or 'Why do you have to be so fussy about food? Why can't you just eat everything that's given to you,like Nicola?'. It left me with a bit of an inferiority complex, and I swore that I would never do the same with my own kids.

That is upsetting. I put my phone in another room (on loud Just incase) so I don't get tempted into using it while my son's awake

I apologise if I get something wrong. My family don’t.

I agree, openly talking about how shit you look, the diets you’re on, which celebrities are fat etc. I have my own self esteem problems as many do but I never speak about it in from of DC and never speak badly of anybody else’s appearance in front of DC (or ever)

Chain smoke at the expense of having sufficient food in the house and providing for your children

Use countless racist and homophonic slurs

Get into debt for stupid stuff and just never pay it back, have the children hide from the bailiffs. I knew how to spot a bailiff from about 8 years old

Meet a man, move him in, tell your 5 year old he’s your new dad, get pregnant by him and marry him in the space of 4 months. My step dad turned out to be the most awful human I have ever met (still.) I have been NC with him since the second I was old enough to move out

Leave my eldest child in charge of the younger ones from being around 8/9 years old

I am not a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination but I really try my hardest to be the best I can be. I’ve had to try really hard to unlearn a lot of things as I have grown up.

I've read this thread with growing interest and it'd brought back so many issues. The immediate thought was 'smoking' Both smoked strong cigarettes and the house smelled. I couldn't even bring myself to handle cigarettes or ashtrays. Then there was the drinking - DF worked nights except on a Friday when it would a short shift. DM and I were on eggshells waiting for him to come wondering if he had been drinking. DM was always on a diet and was obsessed. She even put me in a girdle when I was 8!!. She too said she was ugly , she wasn't. She was actually quite glamorous. She frequently alluded to her mental health and said she would 'go into' the local asylum. Was it a happy childhood ? Probably not. In hindsight I realise how much DM did for me - making dolls clothes, buying vinyl that she knew I liked. But they always gave me separate presents - even for my 21st. They never told me they loved me or that they were proud of me and my achievemnents

We had a meal for every day of the week.

So
Monday: leftovers from Sunday.

Tuesday: pasta & tomato sauce with salad (basically passata with veggie stock and cream, disgusting!)
Wednesday: rice pudding or pancakes with jam (yep sweet and disgusting!)
Thursday: chicken some stir fry concoction involving chicken, tinned mushrooms and rice with salad- was actually nice!
Friday: fishfingers, chips & salad
Saturday: chunky vegetable soup.
Sunday: Roast.

Breakfast was jam toast and hot chocolate, lunch a ham or cheese sandwich.... drink.was plain water and fizzy stuff on a Sunday.

Nope, we were not poor, mum just didn't know how to cook! Or only knew how to do the above to safe us from starvation. (Or so she thought)

However, I did learn how to cook and refuse to have the same 6 meals week in week out ...
I have about 16 dishes that I rotate. That's 16 for the summer and 16 different ones for the winter as I like to cook what's in season.

Bring up my kids in a cult

This! With bells on. I make a lot of mistakes and make a lot of apologies.

I used to get “Because I said so”. I always explain my reasons and ask if they’re fair.

Dismiss books and art and the life of the mind. In that respect, they were typical of the suburban English working class. There was a “ooo, that’s not for the likes of us” attitude to learning. As a result, I’m an obsessive autodidact. They were intelligent people, but they seemed to think reading poetry or going to art galleries was pretentious/getting ideas above your station, so they cut themselves off from all that. I remember going to the National Gallery with my mother for the first time and her asking a security guard if the paintings were real. I felt so ashamed I could have killed her. People today have no idea how suffocating the class system really was. Not reading serious books meant “knowing your place.” When I was young, I devoured writers like Aldous Huxley, Oscar Wilde, Anthony Burgess and Irish Murdoch. I think it was their intellectualism that attracted me, not because I was clever (I wasn’t), but because home was a cultural and intellectual desert.

• smashing plates all around the house when arguing with dad
• constantly talking about diet
• asking me to smoke so that I lose weight
• getting a plastic surgery and asking me to check how much skin was removed 😏
• telling me off for going to the super market with no make up 🙄

Have loud sex with zero fucks given about my children being in the next bedroom , I feel like it was the sound track to my childhood and I fucking hated it.

Im so curious why people without children are on a parenting forum? (not goady, genuinely interested)

Not be there.

One commuted daily, we didn't see them on weekdays most of the time. Weekends were spent surrounded by stress, arguments, chores and alcohol. The other was 'present' but a raging alcoholic so childhood was generally spent either walking between pubs to find them, or in the pubs with them. I walked myself to school and back from the age of about 7/8. They regularly forgot to pick me up from places. As I grew up, I was blamed for my behaviour and growing anger, never was there any fault admitted by anyone else. Upon having my children I vowed I would never, ever not be there for them. I'm far from fucking perfect, but I am THERE, putting them above everything whenever I can. They will never feel forgotten.

I’ve read this thread, and my heart goes out to many posters. I’ve been very lucky - my parents treated all of us (me and my brothers) pretty fairly. Though as the oldest I am sure my younger siblings would say I was the favourite! Despite the fact that, as my parents got increasingly affluent, the younger ones definitely got ‘more’ when they were at uni and started work. But that’s fine by me - I got what they could afford at the time, and I know that had I needed their help it would have been there.

We had a pretty hands off ‘Gen X’ childhoods - comfortable middle class for sure, but not pushy parents and no expectations other than we worked hard enough and did what we enjoyed when kids. No Sunday school, piano lessons or ballet for us! They’d both been to university, and there was an unspoken expectation, but no pressure, that we would too. My father funded all of us to go with no complaints - he earned too much for us to be eligible for grants. But he wasn’t very present when we were kids. My mum was a stay at home parent., and never returned to work. But then my Dad retired young (50) and so there wasn’t really much point. I guess I must ask her how she actually felt about that.

They have never been the most demonstrative parents, but they care and they are loving. They have helped us all over the years, and diverted chunks of inheritance to us when their parents died. Not all of it, but a meaningful enough sum to a twenty or thirty something. Like many boomers, I’m not sure they really realise how affluent they are, though they happily spend their money on travel, going out, restaurants, the house and cars. They certainly don’t want for anything! The only mention of inheritance is to say we’ll all be treated equally, and to let us know which of us are executors.

But to summarise, they are early boomers and our upbringing is as you’d expect for people who were at uni in the late 60s. They gave us the confidence to believe that we could do what we wanted to do, by just being quietly supportive in the back ground. I wish they’d spent a bit of time making us realise how fortunate we were, and how well off we were. Once I left home I realised that continuing the same lifestyle needed more money than I was earning post uni - but maybe that’s what pushed me to progress my career!!

To this day they let us get on with life - they are not in the slightest bit demanding; if anything, the reverse. I’d happily have them come round more often, but they’ll only come, or meet up, if invited. They think that we are all busier and that they can fit in with us - the reality is they are out or away more than most of us, and I include in that me who is also retired and also reasonably well off as well. I don’t have a boomer final salary pension though ;)

Have adult material in the house.

I know DS is going to see this stuff on a friend’s phone, eventually, but it won’t be on a device I gave him, or be under my roof.

Literally everything

Oh forgot to add this to my list

ive seen some really interesting material that involve not just humans … when I was 10!!

😑

Offload their marital woes to me. My mother did this constantly whilst I was growing up, she would try to emotionally manipulate me to side with her. She still does it now, I tell her I am coming round so she can say it in front of my dad. I the am accused of trying to stir between them! I have far less tolerance now of behaviours as I have grown up.

I see them less and am quite abrupt sometimes but I am genuinely done with it. I was the child, not the therapist or friend. I remember occasions where she would threaten to kill herself if she wasn't getting the sympathy or attention. Over the years she has worn me down.

She revels in gossiping about people,I tell her I'm not interested and terminate calls. As she is getting older she is getting worse which i withdraw from to protect my peace.

I don't put my kids through that crap and limit their exposure to her

Say nasty things about appearance. I used to get told I had rats tails for hair. Any photos where I was leaning forward so had a “fat roll” I’d be told I need to think about how I sit.
I always felt I wasn’t allowed to do anything better than she had.