Parental kindnesses you recall...

[retiredgoth2]

When I was about 10, I'd been out playing with friends. And had had an argument the substance of which escapes me 20 30 ok 37 years later.

Came home in tears. This was unusual. Mum figured she couldn't make things better, but plainly so wanted to.

So she went to the Music Centre and put on a record (I don't recall her ever doing this ever in any other circumstance). It was my Wurzels LP. Which I loved. She was just trying to do something that made me happy..

Anyone else have comparable memories? I really hope in X years my kids will have their own versions...

A disclaimer.

I'm out in Covent Garden, and two drinks down, and inclined to mawkish reminiscence...

When I was a child my dad used to sing and play there was an old lady on his guitar. He stopped playing for years, but when they sold the family house, I'd gone back to pack up my stuff, I was in bath and dad found his old guitar and started strumming. I asked him to play there was an old lady and after some persuasion he sat outside the bathroom and did it for me.

I was 22!

Not thought of that for years, but I was so touched, a really lovely memory

For my tenth birthday my darling dad gave me a dozen long stemmed red roses. He said he wanted the first man who ever gave me flowers to be the one who would love me all their life.

One day at school my bag that I had scrimped and saved to buy got stolen while we were in school assembly. My mum who hated fashion and couldn't understand why you just couldn't take your things around in a plastic container bought me a replacement that she gave me the day I left on an overseas trip that SHE had already scrimped and saved to send me on.

My Dad used to sing there was an old lady too plus the doh rey me song from the Sound of Music before I went to bed.

Just knowing I Was loved every single day. They went without a lot for me And my brother.

In the school holidays going every day for a week by two trains and a long walk to Bognor because we liked it so much... Getting up early , getting home tired and very late and then doing it all again the very next day just for us. Hope I turn out half as good a Parent.

I must have been about 10, and came down with a nasty cold. I hated staying off school (nerd) so was pretty miserable and wouldn't eat. Anyway I must have been on the mend eventually as my Mum did a first and took me to the pasty shop round the corner and I did my usual staring-at-the-lovely-cream-cakes-in-the-display-counter thing, knowing there was no way I'd ever get one (never enough money for such frivolities!)

That particular day, my Mum said pick one.

We walked out with a biiig chocolate cream cake that I never did eat much of and every time I opened the fridge to poke admire it, my Mum would say 'eat me!' in a really funny voice.

Now it's our private joke that anything as tasty-looking as that cake is 'eat me' food.

That's a ridiculously meaningless story and she has done way more obvious examples born out of love but for some reason it's always stuck with me as an example of how nurturing and caring she is :)

My best friends mum took me under her wing too. I owe her a great debt of gratitude. She had a lot on her plate as it was but she took me on holidays, outings and tolerated me being at her house every day. She was more of a mum to me than my own.

Another one I've remembered. My mum used to do an Easter egg hunt for us every year. She'd write little clues for each egg :)

My mum used to draw smiley faces on fruit in my lunch box with marker pen. Dad always built us sand cars on the beach. And many more memories beside. Nice thread :-)

Ah. My dad used to take me and my dsis swimming in the sea whenever he could. He had a daily round trip commute of over four hours and he must have just wanted to sleep on weekends but instead would get his surfboard and paddle us out to beyond the breakwaters and let us two swim about for hours.

I remember once he made us go back in after only half an hour or so. Once we were on the beach he pointed out the shark that was merrily chomping at the seaweed . I will always remember how calm he was and didn't let us know at all that there was something to be scared about.

the four of us would have afternoons where we would all read on my parents huge bed and eventually fall asleep. My parents would then leave me and dsis and wake us up only when the braai was ready.

Ah this thread has made me all nostalgic (off to ring parents now)

I was lucky enough to grow up in cornwall, on dads days off in the hot weather, they used tp pick me and my siister up from school with a loaded cool box and go to the beach for tea, we'd build a fire, dad would go off fishing for mackerel and bring them back fresh to cook over the fire. with hot potatoes and dough twists for pudding. ( basic cinnamon dough wrapped around sticks and baked in the fire dipped in honey )

When I was about 9 or 10 my parents bought a video player. We all gathered round the TV in the living room while Dad set it up and then he pulled out a video. He said oh you get a blank video with the player, shall we watch it? My sister and I were like noooooooooooo that's not how it works but he played up the 'old man' role and proceeded to put in the 'blank' video. All of a sudden the opening scene to 'Grease', my ultimate favourite film, came on the screen... 'Love is a Many Splendoured Thing'! I bawled my eyes out with happiness for the duration of the film. Best day ever.

I had a car accident whilst visiting a friend miles from home and broke my pelvis and other bones. My wonderful, wonderful dad drove to see me in hospital every night - it was a four hour round trip and I was in hospital for six weeks. He will have been dead for three years this Saturday. I miss him so much.

When I still lived at home, I had 2 jobs, a FT and PT, which meant on a Saturday, I would work from 10 am to 6pm at one job, and then go straight to my second and work 6.30 pm till 2-3 am....and be on my feet all day.

Without fail, when I got home, my Dad would have waited up for me, have a cup of tea, a bacon sandwich, and my foot spa ready.

My Dad is a typical Northern ex miner bloke. HE would not say anything, just wait for me to get in, give me my tea and sarnie, grunt at me and go to bed. I love my Dad!

Even now when he and my Mam visit, they always bring me tea bags and bacon and usually fill up my freezer too!

Or the time he drove 200 miles to help me move half a mile down the road!

My parents were strict and distant. I never felt loved but when I was 9 my father brought home a puppy who was my best friend for 15 years.

My dad did lots of kind things, but the only one I can remember now is playing with my friends in the garden on a hot day. Dad came out with some drinks - bitter lemon in highball glasses with the rims frosted with egg white and sugar and tinkly little ice cubes. On a tray.

The other kindness I remember was when I was very homesick on an exchange to France, age 12 or 13. He mum ran a deep bath for me in their huge bathroom and pulled up a rocking chair, rattling on in French. THen she sprinkled her perfume on my pillow. Lovely woman.

I was working on my birthday in my first job and the fax machine started to whirr. My mum had drawn a cake, a bottle of champagne and two paracetamol for the hangover and faxed it to me.

My dad is not one for emotion but in my first term at university he sent me a £100 cheque two weeks before the end of term with a note saying 'I used to have run out of money by now' (I had). Then in my second year he took a quick look at the house I intended living in, went to the nearest hardware store and came back with a length of rope that he tied to the leg of the table by the window, and a large lump hammer, so I could get out if there was a fire.

Oh I should also thank a schoolfriend's father (I never met him) as he was the only reason I passed Maths A/S level! Every night he would patiently explain the homework to his DD and she would then explain it to me.

This thread has made me feel all emotional. My mum and dad are a bit odd sometimes but we were and are loved. My dad knew how much I loved books and would sometimes come home with something he had loved as a child and would write in the front. I treasure them and do the same when I give books.

I just remembered something my grandad did. He bawled me out hugely for something I'd done, he was right but a huge over reaction in my mind. I was really really upset as I'd always seemed hi approval.

I went out that night and came back late (was a family thing that grandad didn't go to), when I got back, going to bed, and grandad had made my bed ready for me and turned on my lamp. I think it was his was of apologising.

I'm loving this thread and all the memories. Funny how so many seem to be about dads!

With my mum, I've always known that I'm the most important thing in her life, she would do anything for me, even now. I adore her, even though she annoys the hell out of me at times but she's simply the best.

This is really inspirational. I feel resolved to be better to my children! What stands out is where parents have prioritised patience, kindness and a sense of fun above the 'duty' aspects of parenting that I tend to be overwhelmed by (do this, don't do that, stop that, don't argue etc). And how children whose parents demonstrated this sort of love for them felt confident.

When we were 6 or 7 and our baby teeth were coming out, when we put one under our pillow we would get a 20p piece but also a letter on a teeny tiny piece of paper in teeny tiny writing from the tooth fairy (I can't remember now which of our parents wrote them). I also remember one Christmas my sister and I got a wendy house for our Christmas present. My parents had somehow managed to assemble the whole thing (it had all those plastic interlocking tubes as a framework) in our bedroom in the dark while we were asleep.

Pimpf - yeah, most of my really heart melting memories or of my Dad.

My Mam was always there....she looked after us when we were sick etc...but was always there...

My Dad used to be a miner...so had long shifts, or we had to be quiet when he was asleep. And he is a quiet man not given to expressing emotions....so, while my Mam told me she loved me, and certainly showed me many little ways..it was all about the actions with my Dad.

My mum, who is very much a "just deal with it and stop crying" type person, sat with me in hospital after I'd had a squint correction age 14. I was in more pain than I'd ever experienced before, and couldn't open my eyes. I was crying and she just let me, and reassured me that my eyes would open again, and did other things, simple things, like help me to have a drink or go to the toilet. She even went to the nurses to ask to remove the eye patch to see if that would help me open them - which it did. She's a nurse too so she wasn't just guessing.

I was terrified of having to stay overnight, and when the doctors and nurses saw how much pain I was in they offered me morphine. Mum was so good, she said, "You can have it LV, but it might make you hallucinate and feel weird, and you'll definitely be in overnight." She just told me straight, and let me decide. I chose to tough it out, and went home later that evening.

I love her for how she was that day, nearly 10 years later. She also made me have the anaesthetic by cannula and not mask as she said it might scare me to have something over my face - she knows me so well! She also made sure, with the help of the staff, that she was the last thing I saw when I went under, and the first when I came round.

I love my whole family so much :)

I was 23 and living with a friend. Mine night, I was alone and I spotted an enormous spider running underneath my bed. It was huge and I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. So what did I do? I rang my dad of course.

He was 70 and suffering from early dementia. He had had his driving license removed from him on account of his condition. He jumped on his bike, came around, it was about midnight, scooped up the spider, turfed it out, and then went home.

He died three years ago. My precious, loving, kind father. As straight as a rod of iron, such a wonderful gent. Goodness, I miss him.

Well my parents always made a big deal of holidays - even the little holidays we did something. My mom would do crafts with us in the weeks leading up and we'd watch theme movies and decorate the house. Baking and outings, homemade chocolates, hand-sewn costumes...a pile of presents at Christmas.

Its really important to me to make occasions special for my kids now. Some people think that its over the top but I think of that part of my childhood with such fondness...

Not when I a child but when I was grown up. I'd just ended an abusive relationship and was living on my own with my DCs. I had a little gardening job and I decided I needed to go to college for a day a week to learn more about my trade so it could become my living.

My dear dad would drive 100 miles on a Monday night, stay over night so that I could leave early the next morning to get to college. He would then get my DCs ready for school and take them in, do some shopping for me (always including an unasked for big cake), go into school and hear the little ones do some reading, come home with mine and have dinner ready (well a pizza) for when I walked in the door. He would watch me eat, then wash up and head up the motorway for another 100 mile drive.

He did this every week for three years while I gained my qualifications. I could never have had a career without him. He said that he had helped my older sister pay for university so this was his way of helping me.

This from the man who had never so much as changed a nappy or looked after us on his own when we were kids. He was in fact known for being a bit of a pisshead and a hands-off parent.

What a generation can do.

The other thing my parents did well was we always went on family vacations. We never had much money so they would be driving to this or that museum in a car vacations and staying at motels on the way.

At the time my brother and I argued like cats and dogs. I'm sure we drove them nuts BUT that time together as a family trapped like rats in a hot car, playing eye spy and annoying each other is like a family glue - it brings you together in a special way...and you cant get time like that back.