What are some useful life skills you wish your parents had taught you?
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Anonymous
| I wish they taught me how to find the right person to marry and have kids with. Well, at least they taught me to avoid alcoholics and agressive dudes. |
Anonymous
| Saving money. I mean I obviously get HOW to do it but it does not come naturally at all nor am I really good at it nor is it something I've done my whole life because nobody ever stressed it. I do wish it had been instilled in me more deeply how important it is. |
Anonymous
| Finance - investing and budgeting. |
Anonymous
| How to communicate and how to stand up for myself. |
Anonymous
| Another vote for sewing. And maybe some more typical man jobs, like fixing toilets and installing floor tile and stuff. |
Anonymous
| To stand up for myself rather then being the pushover my mom is |
Anonymous
| "Cross that bridge when you get there." Maybe not a life skill but is something they taught and modeled it has certainly served me well. |
Anonymous
| Exercise and navigating romantic relationships. I wasn't allowed to date or anything and went to college pretty clueless about love, as it were, and had a lot of trial and error that other people sorted out while at home under their parents' watchful eye and guidance. |
Anonymous
| Money management, especially how to use credit and budget. It took me years to get my financial act together. I also wish they'd been more social and involved in the community. I feel like I missed out on a lot of that kind of stuff in my small town because my parents weren't joiners. |
Anonymous
| Parents divorced when I was young. Mom had a big career and we had a nanny/housekeeper before it was "the norm." She cooked and cleaned so I never had "chores" and find it hard to keep my house organized now. Parents also never took me to the dentist. Odd because we had everything and went to DR regularly. No dentist. I have terrible teeth and have spent a fortune on crowns and bridges. |
Anonymous
Yes, this! My mother looks terrible in makeup and never taught me and I'm not someone who can pick things up organically. |
Anonymous
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My parents were paycheck-to-paycheck people who never owned a house and never had a savings for any kind of disaster.
It wasn't until I was much older that I realized my mom was very knowledgeable about money, savings, 401k, insurance, etc. and I just never knew it because we never had money for those things. I pretty much had to figure those things out when I got my first job after college. Also, as dumb as this sounds, one day it just dawned on me that the reason why all of my friends in their late 20s/early 30s were buying homes was so that with a 30 year mortgage, their house would be paid off before retirement. |
Anonymous
| From reading this thread I see that my parents taught me a lot of things, so I am grateful. However the one thing I was never allowed to do was express and argue an opinion, it was seen as disrespectful, it took years for me to get the gumption. |
Anonymous
| IN sometimes wish my parents hadn't taught me to be such a goody two shoes. In some ways I am very naive. |
Anonymous
I wish that my poor parents hadn't been so prideful and had taken the free & reduced dental care available. I only went to the dentist as a kid when something big and bad happened. I actually remember one time the dentist refusing treatment because my parents had taken my brother there months before and hadn't yet paid the bill. I had an abscessed tooth and was dragged all over town while my parents looked for someone to treat me who wouldn't want a large payment up front. I've spent a fortune as an adult on crowns, bridges, and root canals to try to fix my teeth. My parents asked me to pay for their dentures a few years ago. A small, petty part of me wanted to say no as punishment, but I didn't have the heart to do it. |