What have you learned about your own upbringing by becoming a parent?

[Anonymous]

One of the surprises of parenting is how much it has made me realize about my own childhood. Just stuff I'd never really thought about before has become so obvious.

I have a toddler, going through the phase of learning how to handle big emotions. Something I learned early on in the process is that when she melts down, one of the best things I can do is stay calm. Some of the parenting resources I look at call this "being their calm." The idea being that they don't know how to manage feelings like frustration or disappointment yet, but if you can model calmness, it helps them process those feelings without always becoming angry or screaming and crying.

This was an epiphany for me. I don't find it hard to model calm for my kid, and it's actually really help deal with the toddler meltdowns. But it's made me realize that no one modeled calm for me as a child. They modeled irritation or rage, or they just ignored me when I was upset. As a result, I've struggled as an adult with managing the same emotions my toddler is now working on, and definitely have bad habits of getting angry, irritable, or simply ignoring my own feelings. Helping my toddler has actually helped me figure this out and I'm sort of amazed I made it through this much of my life without these skills.

Anyone else realized stuff like this via your kids and learning how to parent them? I honestly don't think I would have realized any of this stuff if I hadn't had a kid.

[Anonymous]

Very similar experience. My parents overreacted and were short tempered a lot of the time when I was growing up. I think I repressed a lot of the memories of childhood until I had my own kids and found myself struggling to deal w the day to day challenges of having kids. Then I found myself acting the way my parents did, hated it, couldn’t understand why I was acting that way, had a revelation that that was how I was raised, and now am actively working against those natural tendencies to be a better, calmer parents for my own kids. Reading books about being an adult child of emotionally immature parents has helped. In the moment, trying to see things from my kids’ perspective, focusing on the kids and their feelings and motivations rather than on my own feelings or expectations of the kids has really helped me to empathize with my kids and help them cope with the big emotions they have. it helps me remain calm and patient and really listen to them.

Ive heard so many people comment that having kids made them appreciate their parents much more but it actually had the opposite effect on me. I didn’t even realize how much pain and hurt I had leftover from childhood until I had kids and I never really analyzed my parents’ parenting before but now that I have, I realize how much I want to make sure I do differently as a parent. I try really hard not to be resentful or blame my parents but just to focus on myself and my kids.

[Anonymous]

Read “the book you wish your parents had read (and your children will be glad that you did)” by Philippa perry. It helped me.

[Anonymous]

Not to smother my kids like my parents smothered me.

[Anonymous]

Our family was close, functional and loving. I have learned that my parents were amazing parents. They were patient, loving, non-judgmental and they modeled peace and harmony for all the children. Our home and parents were our safe place and it has continued to be so. More than anything my childhood was very loving, idealistic, moral and generous. We did not have much but by the hard work of my mom and dad we were able to live very well and with dignity.

I realized that I was a child who pushed boundaries and they accepted it with grace. I hope my kids are not as hot-headed as I was. Thankfully, in the end, everything turned out ok. I am close to my parents and siblings still and we are doing a daily video check-in.

I have channeled my parents in my parenting. Interestingly, my DH is very similar to my dad. All of my siblings all gravitated towards people who had the same parenting philosophy as our own. Most of all, I have realized that children will not appreciate parents fully until they become parents themselves.

[Anonymous]

More than ever, being a parent helped me forgive my parents any mistakes they made. Kids are so self-centered; you really don’t realize as a kid all the stuff that your parents have to deal with, that has nothing to do with you. My parents were blue collar and worked every day to provide us a middle class life, but always stressed and fought about money, for example. Now I realize how hard that must have been. I cringe now when I think back to how my parents would come home after working all day, with a long commute, and my brother and I would immediately start complaining about what stupid thing we were bickering about, or not wanting to have chicken yet again, the school supplies we just remembered we needed for the project due tomorrow— how did they not smack the heck out of us, lol.

[Anonymous]

It didn't really manifest for me until my oldest was a tween/upper ES aged. By then, I had been parenting multiple kids for 12 straight years and the fatigue and feeling tapped-out set in causing me to have knee-jerk over reactions to age appropriate things, losing my cool quicker, not rolling with the punches as easily, you get the picture. Not sure if it's typical of other parents of older kids or a reflection of how my parents did it.
Could also be perimenopausal. Moodiness and the like. I'm not the spring chicken i was when my oldest was born.

I try to think about my own youth and take it from that perspective and tweak my parenting from there. I hated and dreaded asking for mayhem homework help bc I got yelled at, cried, got frustrated, didn't understand. Now, I'm doing the same thing to my kid and I'm reeling it back, but there are other examples too I'm catching myself in.

[Anonymous]

I learned that my parents were bad at communicating with me and my siblings as kids. They didn’t talk to us about what was going on in our lives very much at all, didn’t ask us about school, didn’t help us research colleges or figure out what we wanted to do after high school, never talked to us about relationships or had “the talk” about changing bodies/puberty/periods/sex. They just expected us to figure things out for ourselves and gave basically no advice or guidance. I really never contemplated this before. In fact I think when I was a teenager, I was grateful they were so distant bc I didn’t have to have uncomfortable conversations with them but now that I’m a parent, I think their reluctance to talk to us about these things or offer advice was a big mistake and made my young adult life a lot more difficult to navigate than it would have been if I had parents who guided me more. I’m trying to not go too far to the other extreme with my kids (I don’t want to be overbearing or intrusive) but I do want them to feel that they have been adequately supported and counseled through their childhood, particularly the middle-high school and college years.

[Anonymous]

My parents were abusive. All the times they hit me and yelled at me were totally unnecessary. Before I had my own kids I had excused all this as “they must have had a reason at the time” - and indeed, that’s probably what they’d say about it today if I asked them.

[Anonymous]

I'm a single mom to one child and my mom was a single mom to two kids. I have realized how much of a badass she was back in a time when people still shunned women who were divorced. My brother and I weren't allowed to go to Sunday school at our church because my mom was divorced. This was back in the early 80s. Back then, it wasn't a thing to have child support taken out of parent's paychecks so she basically had to beg my dad for the money he owed. She said she had had enough so she went to my dad's father and told him that my dad wasn't paying child support even though he could clearly afford it (he was an accountant). So I learned that you will do anything for your kids, even though it might be embarrassing or something you thought you would never do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very similar experience. My parents overreacted and were short tempered a lot of the time when I was growing up. I think I repressed a lot of the memories of childhood until I had my own kids and found myself struggling to deal w the day to day challenges of having kids. Then I found myself acting the way my parents did, hated it, couldn’t understand why I was acting that way, had a revelation that that was how I was raised, and now am actively working against those natural tendencies to be a better, calmer parents for my own kids. Reading books about being an adult child of emotionally immature parents has helped. In the moment, trying to see things from my kids’ perspective, focusing on the kids and their feelings and motivations rather than on my own feelings or expectations of the kids has really helped me to empathize with my kids and help them cope with the big emotions they have. it helps me remain calm and patient and really listen to them.

Ive heard so many people comment that having kids made them appreciate their parents much more but it actually had the opposite effect on me. I didn’t even realize how much pain and hurt I had leftover from childhood until I had kids and I never really analyzed my parents’ parenting before but now that I have, I realize how much I want to make sure I do differently as a parent. I try really hard not to be resentful or blame my parents but just to focus on myself and my kids.

OP here. I have read those books too! So eye-opening. I recommend them to everyone, even people who didn't experience emotional neglect, because I think they teach you so much about why people are the way they are.

I have the exact same feelings about my parents since having kids. I have worked on trying to be more forgiving/accepting of their behavior because they were very young when they had kids and are both products of traumatic childhoods. They didn't mean to create an abusive family -- they honestly did not know any better. But becoming a parent has exposed all kinds of anger towards them that I didn't even realize I had. It has been challenging to surface that at the exact moment when support from family would probably be most helpful. But yes, my focus is on not repeating those mistakes for my kids. I am very grateful that I had kids at a time in my life when I have the maturity and emotional distance to do that.

Hugs.

[Anonymous]

I’ve realized how selfish my parents were.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I learned that my parents were bad at communicating with me and my siblings as kids. They didn’t talk to us about what was going on in our lives very much at all, didn’t ask us about school, didn’t help us research colleges or figure out what we wanted to do after high school, never talked to us about relationships or had “the talk” about changing bodies/puberty/periods/sex. They just expected us to figure things out for ourselves and gave basically no advice or guidance. I really never contemplated this before. In fact I think when I was a teenager, I was grateful they were so distant bc I didn’t have to have uncomfortable conversations with them but now that I’m a parent, I think their reluctance to talk to us about these things or offer advice was a big mistake and made my young adult life a lot more difficult to navigate than it would have been if I had parents who guided me more. I’m trying to not go too far to the other extreme with my kids (I don’t want to be overbearing or intrusive) but I do want them to feel that they have been adequately supported and counseled through their childhood, particularly the middle-high school and college years.

This. One of the reasons I realized this is because when I had kids, I kind of assumed my parents would be some kind of resource -- that they could provide some guidance because obviously they've done it before. But it was just more of the same. I know some people complain about having overbearing parents who give them too much unsolicited advice and are too involved in their lives. But I honestly just don't think my parents are interested in me as a person. That's had a really powerful impact on me as an adult, as I've realized that my family is not something I can rely on when I experience difficult or disappointment elsewhere. I have had to construct my support system from scratch, and I always envy people who can turn to their parents when they need love and support.

I am definitely working to make sure my kids know that they can turn to us whenever they need help, and to provide them with information and context for the world so they don't have to go it alone like I did. I also don't want to be smothering or overbearing. Since I don't have a good example from my own parents, I actually try to think of it as being a good manager at work. I don't want to micromanage my kids -- I want to facilitate them so they can achieve their goals. It sounds corny and cold but it's really the best way I've come up with to think about it, because while I didn't have supportive parents, I have been lucky to have a couple excellent managers and work mentors.

[Anonymous]

I learned that parenting is hard and that while my parents sucked, maybe that was the best they could do given their own emotional baggage. I’ve tried to do better.

[Anonymous]

Kids really, really need structure and boundaries and rules. When they don't have those they have anxiety because they have too much responsibility. I have an anxiety disorder and I realize now it's because my parents were incredibly lazy and never enforced any rules.