To ask what aspects of your parents parenting style would you not want in your own parenting style?

[TomLee475]

Basically what would you do differently to your parents.

I'm almost unhealthy obsessed with being the parent my mother wasnt. I'm so sad other people are like me but also quite relieved!
I don't shout or swear or smack. I am super organised, budget well, keep the house clean and tidy, and cook healthy dinners (for DD at least!)
I'm basically an instagram mum without instagram - things look fabulous, but I'm permanently knackered and sometimes I just want to run away!
But I dont ever want my daughter to feel let down by me, the way I feel that my mum let me and my brother down. So I just keep swimming!

Im more honest with my kids, and don't play stupid mind games.
We don't exclude any naritive no matter how uncomfortable, and talk about all the differences that make everyone unique.
We dont smack or give silent treatment.
And most importantly, we let them make mistakes and grow from it rather than lying and guilting them into scared submission

EVERYTHING ...

We won't ever smack them. We won't both work as much as our parents did if it means them being in child care a lot whilst they are young.

When I was young my DM used to feel really sorry for the kids in my class that never had many/any friends and so thought she was doing a good deed by setting up playdates with them despite my protests that they were not my friend. From this she received a lot of thanks from the parent as you can imagine (I'm not sure if this is why she was doing it).
This would then in turn isolate me and I had to spend time with people I did not like (and evidently no one else did either).
I did not appreciate being used as a pon to save other poor souls despite my own happiness.
I don't think I've ever really forgiven her for it, it went on well into early high school.
So I will not be selecting my future children's friends for them.

i grew up in the 80s and event though things were different then i had a very happy childhood but my dad didnt work for years(thatcher era)my mother a SAHM so although we never went without(i had many friends who went cold or hungry) we were classed as a dole family as was 99% of our estate

ive no bad memories of bad parenting as i was never smacked,grounded or witnessed any violence or arguments between my parents(they have been together 40 years)and my and my sister were brought up with happy memories but i follow(ed) a different route to them and majority of society

i did attachment parenting as babies but when they got to 3-4 its turns in to peaceful parenting and still do and my oldest is nearly 15(other ones 9)

people just dont understand when i react to situations differently than them ie dont shout and ball and dont punish.

my sister(ony sibling i have)and parents just dont get our outlook on life as we home educate as well and kind of opt out of "normal "society and they think we are hippies types(not vegan or vegetarian though but many of our friends are)

we surround ourselves though with friends that i found in home education groups that follow the same lifestyle choices we do

Not much, my parents did a pretty decent job. The only stuff is more modern, up to date thinking. I don’t insist on clear plates or forcing food on DD, I’m more relaxed as a parent. I still shout too much though!

I would put sun block on them
For a start
Also I wouldn’t become an abusive alcoholic or an adulterous coward who leaves them with an abusive alcoholic

My parents didn’t think it was important to have friends and would discourage me from seeing friends or doing activities outside of school because it was too much effort for them to take me places.

My ADC are doing things very differently from me.
They have had their children in Homeless Accommodation. I never had my DC there.
They have their DC living in houses with drunken adult males. I would never have had that.
There have been drugs around the DC. I never had that.
The ADC are so desperate not to be single parents that any man, drink or drug-addled will be fine. I did not and will not ever have that around any DC.
I never used shop's brand foods. They were given the choice of food for each meal and were never forced to eat anything which distressed them but they do that to their DC
Sometimes their houses are so filthy it is difficult to cope. I am not the perfect housewife but my house is never actually filthy, just untidy.
They seem to be taking advice from the males around them. I dont think these males are giving good advice

It is heartbreaking to see. As a Mum we want our DC to have the best but what do we do when they dont want the best for themselves?

I'm much more affectionate, although I dare say it would break my mum and dad's heart to read that.

I was one of three plus my mum had three difficult miscarriages, my "only" inevitably gets much more attention.

I'm stricter about tv/ computer games but less strict about bedtime.

My mum says I'm more patient, but I think she's doing herself a disservice on that one!

Apologise and admit when I fuck up.

No mysoginistic or sexist bullshit.

No ridiculous expectations based on what DD should be or what I wanted from life,instead of whom she is.

No beating her up cause she fucked up and life's shitty.

Always listen,always have her back and stand up for her when she needs it.

No pointing out her flaws constantly or backhanded compliments.

I'm more honest and straightforward. If she's old enough to ask,she's old enough to know in an age appropriate way.

She's allowed to be messy, and loud,and cheeky and have a personality.

I don't force my will onto her unless necessary.

Yeah so basically everything.

I monitor myself for DM parenting style then find a path that is like to cause less damage than she did. I cant guarantee I wont fyck up ow and again but I hope I have more rights than wrongs. The sheer inadequacy of her parenting is hard to explain and I've stopped trying to find out what was at the root
My only promise to myself was that the crap stopped with me

My dm is obsessed with people's physical appearance. She's a perfectly nice, Reasonable human being in all most other aspects, but comments on people's physicality all the time. So it's the very tall lady in a shop, or the fat man next door, or (my personal fave) 'the big lady, now I'm big, but she makes me look small' at slimming world - yada yada. She has made me grow up pretty much obsessed with the perfectly natural flaws of my body. She has made me believe that everyone is looking at me and scrutinising me. It's made me very unhappy over the years, and even now I look at my 'rugby players legs' and can hear her voice.

The irony is, she herself is desperately unhappy with her appearance, always has been, is always on a diet and has been all my life (and has always been overweight). I think this behaviour stems from her deep unhappiness with her own physical appearance, and it strikes me as a deep bitterness about her genetic Lot as it were. It makes me feel sad for her, not angry with her (although I've had to do a lot of work to get to that stage!)

I would hate to pass this to my children, and I try to protect them from her way of discussing people.

there are lots of common themes coming out here?

I don't smack my kids and I try not to shout at them - talking calmly gets a better response.

I'm very tactile with my kids and tell them I love them all the time

I work around their food dislikes rather than ignoring them

I tell my kids that they look great because they do. Both my sister and I have a complex about weight because my DM was openly critical about us

Hopefully when my kids have boyfriends/girlfriends I don't like I'll manage to keep my thoughts to myself - same applies for ones I do like! She hated my first serious boyfriend but loved the second one. Meant I felt under huge pressure to break up with number one and then again under huge pressure to stay with number 2. Not good.

Not so what my in-laws do with treating the kids so differently

I won’t force DS to clear his plate, he can eat until he’s full.
I won’t get pissed every day before DS is even home from school & then off load all of my problems onto him making them his problems too.
If he has interests & hobbies I’ll support him instead of refusing to give lifts because I want to get pissed instead.

No smacking
Making sure they are physically active and eat healthy (my parents never even took us for a walk and if I showed interest in any sport or physical activity I wasn't allowed and I've been overweight since about 8yo)

Not a lot. I see my parents with my daughters and think they're better at it than me!

I think the only things I'd do differently are fairly minor- my mum used to do everything for us (SAHP), I had no chores or anything and had no idea how to clean, pay a bill, put a wash on or anything. I'm still a bit rubbish but hoping I can get my children a bit more ready for the world when they leave home

Also I dont know if they directly compared us but me and my brother always felt like polar opposites (the sporty one and the brainy one) when in reality the sporty one was more brainy than average and the brainy one was more sporty than average. And they really encouraged the sporty one at sport and the brainy one academically whereas maybe it should have been the other way around so we were a bit more rounded. I am not sure how that happened but it seemed we were maybe sub consciously compared and pigeonholed. So going to try and make sure I dont do that, but I think its difficult as you do end up comparing siblings even though you dont mean to

Yeah so basically everything.

I wonder if your children will be saying the same in thirty years time? Every generation looks at the previous generation and wants to improve on it.
I felt suffocated by my mother but that was because of things that had happened in the area, an unsolved murder and a missing girl, I recall her meeting me from the bus when I was 18!

Brushing your child off when they tell you they are being bullied, trivialising what is happening to them, making them feel it is their fault, not bothering to ask if the bullying has stopped (it hadn't) and not noticing how unhappy your own child was.

Favouring one child over another all the time. Making your eldest (me) feel second class. Buying the younger child a £250 present for their 18th, when the eldest got a £21 present for theirs. Refusing to let your eldest ever have their bath before their younger sibling, when they have to share bath water, so the eldest always gets the cooler, grubby water and has to do all the cleaning up and tidying the bathroom afterwards.

Refusing to stop smoking in the car when your child tells you it is making them feel sick and headache-y. Denying that it is your cigarette smoke that is making them feel ill.

My mum was a peach of a parent.

My parents spent an inheritance I had received on a car so I won’t be doing that.

My parents were great and I intend on using a lot of their methods. I will, however, be more open to talk about "grown up" things with teens.

There were lots of things that were good and I knew I was always loved. They also treated us fairly. However, there are a number of things I’d do differently.

1. my parents overfed me. Love was displayed through food. They gave me far too much junk. I look back at photos of when I was 11/12 and they had let me get chunky.

2. they weren’t pushy or really set up any activities or things to do. My children do loads of activities so i don’t know what on Earth we did as children. They could have pushed me s lot more and I would have thrived. I did really well despite a lack of interest in my secondary school work but I do sometimes wonder what if.

3. they were both old before their time and didn’t really move with the times.

4. I never felt able to talk about sex, boyfriends etc. It was a taboo subject and I never felt able to talk to my mum about anything really.

I won’t foist my DC onto my parents and then abandon them for 20+ years.

I won’t be an aggressive alcoholic. I won’t hit them and I will not use the phrase I hated the most that my Gran used all the time “do what you want” said in an exasperated tone when asking if I could do something - it showed us from a young age that she could not care less about what we did so long as we were out of her way. I love her and I know she took us in when she didn’t have to and so I can rationalise her behaviour now I’m an adult - but when I was a kid it hurt.

I won’t force DD to go to school on her period with no sanitary products, or refuse to buy her a training bra when she starts to develop.

There’s a lot more! 😂😂