Reply to If you have a great relationship with your mom, how was your childhood?

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[quote=Anonymous]I could not imagine loving my mom more than I do. I am very close with her and confide everything to her. However, I don't think she's perfect and I admit she has flaws, but overall she is one of the best people I have ever met. I'm trying to be like her in my parenting (of DD and DS).

Some of the biggest things I think affected our relationship growing up:

1. She was tough (a good disciplinarian) but fair (never punished without letting us know why).
2. She rarely lost her temper, even when we were testing her. She was able to be calm and rational about our actions.
3. She let us deal with the consequences of our actions from an early age.
4. She was extremely affectionate and loving, and told us every day (and showed us through her actions!) how much she loved us.
5. She spent a LOT of time with us. As a working mom, she probably had like 5 minutes to herself the whole day. But she never made us feel like she wanted to be anywhere else but with us -- she never complained about not having "me time" and she always did fun, educational things with us (like teaching us how to cook, or change a light fixture, or to identify native plants). 
6. She had confidence in us and let us try (and fail) on our own. 
7. She supported our dreams and let us try things as long as we stuck with them for a year or more (piano, dance, karate, etc).
8. She was frugal and showed her love through attention and experiences rather than objects and toys.
9. She trusted us and our judgment and we repaid that trust over and over because we couldn't bear to disappoint someone who obviously worked so hard and loved us so much.

Honestly, I love my dad, too, but I don't have as close a relationship with him because he was sometimes verbally abusive and yelled quite a bit when angry (which would upset my mom, even though he was yelling at us (not her) and OH BOY you did not upset my mom in front of me and my siblings, we did NOT take kindly to someone upsetting our absolute favorite person in the world!). He did a lot of the same things as my mom in the "good" column, but I really think losing your temper and acting irrationally affects your relationship with your kids a lot.

I was not BFFs with my mom growing up, I don't even think that was a "thing" then -- she punished us when we were bad and what she said, went (she didn't listen to whining or manipulation), but I always, always felt a tremendous love from and for her, no matter what. I am actually tearing up because I am thinking about what a special part of my life that is -- the fact that she so unconditionally loves me, while still doing the hard work of disciplining and parenting for so many years (and especially staying calm through all the trying moments) has given me a deep feeling of happiness and peace I have carried with me through life.[/quote]

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