Do your parents lie about your childhood achievements?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My mom claims she never did a thing to potty train me; I just spontaneously started using the potty. Who would believe that?! She also remembers confiscating a Kiss album from me due to questionable content...even though I’ve never owned a Kiss album and would have been around 5 years old when the album came out.

That happened with my second. I believe it because some kids do that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As a scientist, and the parent of a special needs child, I just want to point out that lies or non-disclosure about health or childhood development can really come back to haunt you. Actually, they can kill, if the older generation is a carrier of a heritable disease, which modern medicine can catch with additional screening in the course of a patient's life. Like cancer! Hopefully in this day and age there is less taboo about it and we won't lie to our kids when they ask.

Seriously? This is not lying, it’s fondly misremembering.

You need to understand that if you're "fondly mis-remembering" something that is medically critical, it will have the same negative consequence. I can guarantee that if people understood the stakes better, their memory would recover!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
As a scientist, and the parent of a special needs child, I just want to point out that lies or non-disclosure about health or childhood development can really come back to haunt you. Actually, they can kill, if the older generation is a carrier of a heritable disease, which modern medicine can catch with additional screening in the course of a patient's life. Like cancer! Hopefully in this day and age there is less taboo about it and we won't lie to our kids when they ask.

Seriously? This is not lying, it’s fondly misremembering.

You need to understand that if you're "fondly mis-remembering" something that is medically critical, it will have the same negative consequence. I can guarantee that if people understood the stakes better, their memory would recover!

DP. Really? Parents don't remember. I don't remember. You don't remember, and your memory won't "recover."

People lose track of family members and forget all sorts of family history. As a scientist, you should know that already.

[Anonymous]

Yes my mom says I was talking at like 11 months - in full sentences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes my mom says I was talking at like 11 months - in full sentences.

^^I have a speech delayed child btw.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:By the way, I wouldn't call this lying. I think their memories are just not realistic anymore.

My parents don’t remember any bad things that happened to me.

I made an offhand about the time I almost drowned at a lake and the lifeguard had to drag me out of the water.

This was easily the scariest event in my life at the time. After that happened I went to daily swim lessons and it was the summer I learned to swim. So, it was a very impressionable time. I made an offhand comment about the lake where I almost drowned and my mom was like “WHAT?” She had zero memory of it. She forgot that was the reason they put me in daily swim lessons.

Age either highlights or fades bad memories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My son has a few speech delays and part of the process is filling out paperwork and mentioning if any family members were late talkers. It can sometimes run in families.

A few things they remember:
- Potty trained fully at 10 months
- Could identify and say all colors at 15 months
- Could identify all music notes at 9 months on flash cards.. MIL would say bring me the a half note and my DH would crawl and get it for her

It is a real mystery my husband didn’t end up at Juilliard!

Potty training at 10 months is outright impossible. Sorry. The kid isn’t even walking in order to get to the toilet.

He must have crawled there, and fast!
Unless, of course, he learned to walk at 4 months!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the way, I wouldn't call this lying. I think their memories are just not realistic anymore.

My parents don’t remember any bad things that happened to me.

I made an offhand about the time I almost drowned at a lake and the lifeguard had to drag me out of the water.

This was easily the scariest event in my life at the time. After that happened I went to daily swim lessons and it was the summer I learned to swim. So, it was a very impressionable time. I made an offhand comment about the lake where I almost drowned and my mom was like “WHAT?” She had zero memory of it. She forgot that was the reason they put me in daily swim lessons.

Age either highlights or fades bad memories.

It's not just about age, necessarily. People of all ages tend to adjust their memories accordingly, so to speak; there's a whole lot of studies out there for anyone interested. That's why eye witness testimony is not considered 100% reliable.

[Anonymous]

I honestly just brush off things my parents say. They have mentioned a few times about paying for college and what a struggle it was. WTF. I had a full scholarship and then had a small loan. My parents are very well off too.

I had a much more precocious sister, so anything good I did as a child get qualified. "Larla was reading at Kindergarten but that's nothing because her sister was reading at 3." There's this huge joke about how they were trying to teach me how to ride a bike at the park (I was 7) and my sister got on the bike and rode it at 18 months.

Parents memories are terrible

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My son has a few speech delays and part of the process is filling out paperwork and mentioning if any family members were late talkers. It can sometimes run in families.

A few things they remember:
- Potty trained fully at 10 months
- Could identify and say all colors at 15 months
- Could identify all music notes at 9 months on flash cards.. MIL would say bring me the a half note and my DH would crawl and get it for her

It is a real mystery my husband didn’t end up at Juilliard!

Potty training at 10 months is outright impossible. Sorry. The kid isn’t even walking in order to get to the toilet.

He must have crawled there, and fast!
Unless, of course, he learned to walk at 4 months!

My kid walked at 8 months. Doubt she could have taken herself to the potty consistently at 10 months, though.

Maybe by potty trained, they mean out of diapers but someone still needs to put them on the potty.

[Anonymous]

My MIL is very....indulgent when it comes to DH and says some crazy things about his athletic abilities as a child. Which is fine, except DH believes her and sometimes gets a little delusional about his athletic abilities, then gets upset that he didn't become a pro athlete.

[Anonymous]

Ha! My parents also say I was talking in sentences before I was one.

Also. For YEARS my parents claimed I miraculously started sleeping through the night at 3 months sharp with no intervention from them. Eventually, right around when I had my second child, my dad remembered he actually sleep trained me around 4 months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My son has a few speech delays and part of the process is filling out paperwork and mentioning if any family members were late talkers. It can sometimes run in families.

A few things they remember:
- Potty trained fully at 10 months
- Could identify and say all colors at 15 months
- Could identify all music notes at 9 months on flash cards.. MIL would say bring me the a half note and my DH would crawl and get it for her

It is a real mystery my husband didn’t end up at Juilliard!

Potty training at 10 months is outright impossible. Sorry. The kid isn’t even walking in order to get to the toilet.

He must have crawled there, and fast!
Unless, of course, he learned to walk at 4 months!

My kid walked at 8 months. Doubt she could have taken herself to the potty consistently at 10 months, though.

Maybe by potty trained, they mean out of diapers but someone still needs to put them on the potty.

Different poster - I'm from Eastern Europe and my parents used Elimination Communication to "potty train" me and my siblings before we were one. I have a Chinese friend who's done the same with one of her kids! It's not exactly potty training but her oldest was out of diapers and signaling to go at 10ish months.

[Anonymous]

oh yes. My MIL claims that my DH was potty trained at 12 months but couldn’t walk until 18 months.

[Anonymous]

My mother does this along w/ snide judgments. "Oh, you were reading by 3, it's probably because I didn't allow screen time and there was only 1 of you." "Oh, you could write basically anything by 4, it's probably because the private preschool we had you in was just so excellent." In case you couldn't guess, we allowed DD 1 20-30 minute show starting at 2... because I needed time to put DS to sleep.. and we can't afford private school for our 3 kids. We are obviously horrible parents stunting all of our kids' development enormously. It's so freakin' annoying.