To be a bit sad that my parents didn't push me more as a child?

[Cleopatramanuf]

I've been reflecting on everything lately and feel a bit sad, like I've missed out on things which I could have been really great at and enjoyed.

For example, in primary school, I was very good at athletics. I was always chosen to represent my school at athletics competitions and would often get through to the final against the best other kids in the (very large) county and win. My sports teacher at the time was always telling me and my parents that I have great aptitude and that I should really keep up athletics after leaving primary school. My high school didn't have any athletics and so I asked my parents if I could go to one out of school. They agreed but I was very shy and came home and told them that I enjoyed it but felt shy. Rather than encouraging me to keep going, my mum just said 'oh well, you should quit then, no fun to be doing it on your own'. Now I wish she'd encouraged me to stick at it, I could have done really well!

Another thing, gymnastics as a child. I loved it. My mum stopped taking me because the centre was a bit grimy. I begged her to let me carry on but she just said no after that rather than looking for a different centre for me to go to.

Another example, I went to a cycling velodrome as a kid with a friend's parent and won loads of the races. The instructor came up to my friend's mum specifically to tell her that I showed real possibility and should go back. When she told my mum, my mum just scoffed and said 'bet they say that to all the kids' and left it there. I never got to go back.

A further one, when I was studying for my GCSEs, I told her that I wanted to be either a doctor or a vet. She immediately told me that I wasn't clever enough for that which really demotivated me when revising. I still did very well and in hindsight, with her encouragement, would have had a very good chance of getting into these careers. I am actually pretty bright!

There's so many similar examples and whenever I watch competitions or videos of all these people talking about their life or competing at a high level, I get a twinge of sadness that that maybe could have been me. I feel sad that she didn't push me to develop my talents and encourage me to reach my goals.

Most of us won’t acheive these successes though - not because our parents didn’t push us but because most people don’t have the immense drive to keep pushing forwards.

Actually an awful lot of people won't achieve them because they do'n't have the right connections, don't know where to take them, don't realise you have to ask for a trial (thinking specifically of gymnastics...only the extremely talented would be pulled out of rec just on a whim) , don't have the finances...the list could go on. I'll tell you for definite...Tim Henman was in NO way the most talented tennis player of his generation but he was the one that made it. Nothing at all to do with his parents and their connections/wealth...hmmmm....

My parents pushed, and it did me (and my sister) no good.

When I was being savagely bullied in secondary, the focus was on guilting me for fucking my work up by skipping school rather than the bruises, scratches and destroyed mental health. I wasn’t allowed to quit a hobby even though I begged and cried - the man running it was a pervert and I was too scared to tell. But I was good at it so I had to do it even if I hated it.

When my sister went to uni and couldn’t cope, the focus was on wanting someone in the family to have a degree rather than the fact she was calling me at 2am in tears because she was lonely and her housemate was punching holes in the wall on a drug-fuelled rampage.

emerald my dd sounds like yours - my advice would be to only persist in one or two key things she does really like or are a lifeskill she really needs, my dd will try and get out of the few commitments we have made even though she likes them because on that day she'd rather be at home or is a bit tired etc. Plenty of articles saying kids are over-scheduled, you do have to work with a personality type with kids that may not match your own.

Cleopatramanuf

Yes at a competitive level you’re right (though there are a very few inspirational athletes who started really late in life and achieved incredible things). You will still get many years of enjoyment, physical reward and personal accomplishment out of sporting activities you take up now though.

Career wise, you are still young enough to pursue any path you desire.

The thing is that most people have things that we could have excelled at and didn't. I'm a skilled skater, I have excellent balance and control of my body when moving at fast speeds and intricate move click easily for me. I have no doubt at all that had I grown up near an ice rink and in the vicinity of coaches I could have been a professional. I'm not necessarily talking about world class competitive skating but travelling about with shows like Disney on Ice, would I'm pretty sure, have been a really viable career for me.

But that's just not how life panned out, I didn't even get to ice-skate until my 20s and even then it was on a crap, small, over-crowded Christmas rink. I never got to fulfil my potential at a sport I love and that's a bit sad. I'm in my 40s and even if I had succeeded as a pro that life would already be over for me. And I'm unlikely to ever live near a decent permanent ice-rink. But that doesn't mean that I can't skate for the love of it. That I can't strap on a pair of rollerskates and build on my skills at the rink or on ramps (that weren't there when I was a kid but are now). That I can't have a decent pair of inlines and train for a marathon. I can't do what I love many times a week and even if I never got to reach the peaks it doesn't mean that I can't spend as long as I can doing it now.

Nothing at all to do with his parents and their connections/wealth...hmmmm

That's only one piece of the puzzle though. Equally his personality type, drive, hours and hours of hard work. He wouldn't have gotten anywhere without that.

In my experience, anyone who's got to the top of anything (including their career) has been 'driven' far beyond an average person. And have made huge sacrifices in the process.

Well my “idea” would be to accept that your parents weren’t willing to subsidise your ludicrously expensive and time consuming hobby on the off chance you could have competed for your country and then got on with leading your life and earn a living. Are you cross you couldn’t have a few ponies and play polo too?
Itwouldtakemuchmorethanthis, I'm sooo glad I never had you as a mum or dad!!

I am really considering studying medicine and need to find a way of funding it and I used my student loan on my first degree.

The upside of your current job as consultant for a big four company is that you will be able to fund any career change you really want to make.

🎵"I could've been someone!"
"Well, so could anyone!"🎵

You have been given a gift, develop it and enjoy. if you did not pursue the path to competetive sport due to social difficulties that is understandable given your tender age at the time, and your Mum may have chosen the best option by supporting your choice Who knows maybe you would have suffered greatly as a shy teen in the school with athletic options

Adult gymnastics can be a bit of a postcode lottery - there is very little on offer near me but I have friends in other areas who’ve managed to find great gymnastics clubs with coached adult classes rather than just practice sessions open to anyone. Email round a few clubs local to you and see what’s on offer, you’ll never know unless you try.

Sometimes people pick skills up quicker as adults as they have more body awareness but obviously flexibility suffers the older you get so this might take some work. What skills did you have as a child? Some things do come back to you surprisingly quickly.

There's the opposite problem nowadays with parents pushing their children into everything. It kills the child's own drive and determination, not to mention the effect a lack of down time has on creativity. Look at most people who are in their early twenties now - still living at home, dependent on their parents to wash their pants and provide three meals a day - they are the 'canary in the mine' of this pushy helicopter parenting trend.

@festive, I'm not sure what skills I could do, I don't really remember as I was taken out at 7. I just remember that I enjoyed it.
Now as an adult though I'm pretty flexible, I can put my whole hands on the floor when standing with straight legs and can do the splits. I would need to improve my flexibility and strength though.

RuffleCow, while you should know how to clean your knickers, in some places the housing and rental market is batshit insane if you don’t have a spouse. On a working class non-trade wage here you can rent...a room in a dosshouse. Or maybe even share a room in a dosshouse. You might luck out with a flatshare with someone reasonable, but it’s a struggle to keep the lights on in a studio or tiny one bed.

I dint think it’s just that you have missed out in opportunities because your parents (your dad could have been more involved too!!) be bothered or didn’t push you enough.
It’s more that they denied you those opportunities and actually your mum went out of her way to put you down in the process too.

Having said that, DESPITE the fact your mum actively discouraged you to go far, you still did very well. You sound like you are striving on challenge (like my dc btw). My word of caution in that one: don’t burn yourself down by wanting to always do mor and better. Being competitive has its advantages (like the fact a few posts have been enough to encourage you to try and go cycling/running/doing gymnastics’) but it also has its disadvantages (like nit knowing when to stop or putting too much pressure in yourself).

She immediately told me that I wasn't clever enough for that which really demotivated me when revising. I still did very well and in hindsight, with her encouragement, would have had a very good chance of getting into these careers.

Similar here. A teacher at school told me that if I carried on working well, I should apply to Oxbridge. Parents scoffed. Oxford/Cambridge was not for "people like me" from a very ordinary background in Scotland and at a comp. Oxbridge was full of titled aristos and I would hate it. Mum knew a friend of a friend whose daughter was humiliated at an Oxbridge interview for a regional accent - and so it went on.

I did well in my exams, went to Uni and got my degree, but my parents still have this massive chip on their shoulder about posh people and things being "not for people like us".

Fingers crossed you can find a class near you, sounds like this could be the start of a good hobby for you. I agree with @madaboutwands - don’t put too much pressure on yourself or feel you have something to prove. Realistically, to have competed at National Level as a child you would have had to have been selected for a performance pathway and already be training several days a week at 7, which I’m sure you would have remembered. Focus on finding an enjoyable class, meeting new people and having fun with it.

OP I feel sorry for you and the responses you’ve been given. My parents gave me so many opportunities (ones that they never had) and I’m very grateful for that. They let me try a variety of things and gave me the encouragement and resources to do my best. I didn’t “make it” in anything but now enjoy doing a range of different things as hobbies which I think make me a more rounded person and mean I have a wide group of friends and interests and feel very fulfilled with my life.

However, I know my brother resents the same upbringing because he wasn’t naturally driven like I was so he felt constantly pushed and pressurised to do things he didn’t want to do. So I do think it’s difficult for parents to get it right and it depends on the personality of the child as well as the parents’ attitude and means.

The good news is that early 20s is still very young! I didn’t think so when I was that age but I’m now early 30s and can confirm I have achieved a lot in the last 10 years, have switched careers and taken up new hobbies. Some of my friends compete to a high level in cycling and they only took it up in their mid twenties. The world is your oyster now - go and get what you want!

I competed internationally at a sport. I would say I had low to middle parental support. I had a huge inner drive to succeed, and was willing to devote all my time and effort to it, and also to doing odd jobs to fund it and asking other parents with children at the same thing to ferry me around, and if not I would run the miles home from training.

At some point scholarships and funding kicked in to help.

My dad is still bemused about it all, and says my elder sibling was far more talented at me at the sport (she did 6 months of it and they stopped taking me when she gave up) and he was amazed I managed to achieve anything.

I love him, but don’t listen to him. And I didn’t listen to him at aged 8 when he said it the first time.

I say this gently OP, even with parental support, it sound like you would have needed propping up throughout your entire sporting career, and that simply isn’t sustainable. Bad times happen - you are beaten, overlooked for a team, or injuries (don’t start me on injuries!) and I saw many of my fellow athletes give up in the face of that - even wth huge parental support. The drive to keep going for those of us that made it came from within us. I sometimes wondered if I would know when to quit....

Remember reading a report that said an extraordinary number of high achievers had lost a parent as a child. Not quite sure I’m prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice so my dds can excel at badminton

In my experience, anyone who's got to the top of anything (including their career) has been 'driven' far beyond an average person. And have made huge sacrifices in the process

Yes, this. It does help if you have supportive parents, facilities close by, money, luck, someone who gets you in the side door, but you will not get all the way to the very top of anything without bringing your own drive and determination into play.

I didn’t listen to him at aged 8 when he said it the first time.
Interesting - I was very easily put off by things people said when I was younger. At that age I would have just believed they knew best. Later on I would have seen they were doing something wrong but felt incapable of resisting. I was very timid. Mind you, even the way we react / our character is partly thanks to our upbringing. I was dragged all over the place as a small child, so constantly in unfamiliar situations, and left with other people a lot. But some of it must also be luck of the genetic draw.

Of course, but if you don't have any of the other things then drive alone is unlikely to get you there. I do consider myself a very driven person generally and have always worked hard at what I set my sights on. I ended up at a good university etc. Sports just weren't all that accessible to me as a child

I was the same ravenmum. And there was also the fact that I was too scared off my mum and her angry, abusive outbursts to challenge her. If i had managed to ask a friend's mum to take me to gymnastics (who would have paid for me?) or walked to it (miles through the centre of Manchester, alone?) she would have been furious with me. I tried to keep under her radar day to day as we lived on eggshells. I was not in a position to challenge her or go about pursuing these sports and to suggest it was because I lacked drive is actually quite insulting.

ravenmum I did listen to my father about a lot of things, and of course obeyed him around the house, but I just knew he was wrong about this. I just knew it, and so I thought ‘right, he won’t help, what’s another way?’ I refused to not have this as part of my life.

I had some coached that were supportive and liked my style, others that said no you aren’t talented enough for the top levels and selected other people. I just knew they were wrong too, and kept going. Even medical advice about how far to push my own body etc. In this area, I just knew I was right.

It sounds quite arrogant writing it and reading it back, but it wasn’t. It was more faith in self, a single-mindedness and a persistence. And. A trust in myself. As I competed at higher levels I found almost all of my team mates/competitors had it too.