How old were you...?

[SeriouslyRetro]

When you saw your parents as real, whole people? With their own emotions and dreams or fears. Their own likes/dislikes. Their own baggage. Their own talents.

18, after I moved out for uni.

8 years old.

Shhhhh........dont tell them the may expect me to grow up!

Always really. They’re both very deeply flawed people.

Probably about 6, I made my mum cry and was so shocked! I screamed! After that (I probably would have been regardless) I was a very observant/empathetic child and yes I saw my mum low a fair amount.

16 or so

Well how I see my parents has never changed! I always thought they were amazing and I still do.

Now I’m older I recognise how hoard they worked and respect them all the more, but they’ve certainly never fell off then pedestal I’ve put them on

Thank you, it’s so interesting to hear about people perceive the people who raised them.

I find the older I’m getting, there’s a renewed wave of realisation of what they went through, that they are only people much like I and my peers are.

They’ve fucked up and they’ve tried their bests

I would say about 21

When they got divorced when I was 13

I remember at 22 suddenly realising they weren't perfect. It was quite scary! It was hard to accept. However gradually it helped me realise our 'perfect' family really wasn't so perfect. And it wasn't my fault that I couldn't live up to this perfection. However, I have struggled massively with striving for perfection in my adult life and it is something I constantly have to fight against. If I take my eye off the ball I end up giving myself a mental breakdown.

Not till my early 20s Then I realised how much I dislike my mum.

My mum called me a bitch when I was 13. On reflection it was very much uncalled for. Up until then I hadn't heard her swear so it was the first time I saw another dimension to her, though thankfully it wasn't a frequent side I had to see. Probably saw them both as people who lived lives and had thoughts outside of our immediate family when I was about 15/16 and they were going through their divorce.

I think in my teens when they got divorced. I got to know them as individuals rather than the parent ‘unit’ I saw them as before.

I can’t remember the exact age but somewhere between 7 and 11
They let us see n hear far too much especially about their money worries
Blighted my childhood

Around 18 months old when I was having to look after them emotionally. My parents were a hot mess. I didn’t get to be a child.

My mum put everything on hold until my siblings and I were self sufficient. The day I (the youngest) graduated from college and had a job secured she asked if I would join her on a round the world trip. We left a week later and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Sixth form age, I think. Or maybe early on in university.

I'm not sure, but my parents had both been married before, I had half siblings who were adults when I was born, so I always knew a lot about their lives before I came along from an early age.

Around age 14. We were going through a bit of a tough time and I realised that she couldn’t fix all the problems I had in the world.

When you saw your parents as real, whole people? With their own emotions and dreams or fears. Their own likes/dislikes. Their own baggage. Their own talents.

I am 34, and I have very little knowledge of my parents' emotions, dreams, fears, likes/dislikes, baggage and talents.

They were, and are, very emotionally distant and private.

For years they allowed me to think that they didn't have christmas presents so they could buy for me and my sister. Turns out they gave one another plenty, they just opened them separately when we had gone to bed.

That's just an example I can think of. Really it was not a warm home, or homely, or comfortable at all. So I never developed any knowledge of them.

My father died when I was a child, and my mother was never the same afterwards, so I don't think I ever did, really. She's gone now, too.

Sometime in my late teens, its scary when you realise your parents are mortal humans and not the super humans you thought they were your whole life.

TBH the older my parents have gotten the more child like and dependant they have gotten. It's a complete reversal of rolls.

Late teens I think. And I still feel guilty that I didn’t see them as people in their own right until then!

12. My mum left home with my dad's best friend, so there was no hiding that. When my dad told me (she left him a note, nothing about us) he cried and that's when I realised shit was real.

Later she tried to get the courts to give her custody (as it was back then) and I pretty much laughed in her face and, as a 14 year old (sister was 12, brother 6) told the court person who'd come to take statements that none of us were going to live with her.

I'm 14 years nc with her now, and what I can't understand is that she has never tried to see her 3 wonderful grandchildren who she had chosen to blank. Her loss, tho.