Parenting styles change with each generation. Our generation is all about gentle parenting and letting kids express their emotions freely. Our parents had a different style: some were a tad bit overprotective, others, on the contrary, only saw their kids in the morning and at night. Baby boomers, people say, were the worst. Either extremely strict or borderline neglectful.
But what exactly did they do wrong? People in these two threads shone some light on the questionable parenting practices of boomers. Gen Xers, Millennials, and even some Gen Zers chimed in to share their experiences about the most laughable and some unforgivable parenting practices they experienced as children. What parenting mistakes did you witness your folks make? Share with fellow Pandas in the comments!
#1
My mom would send me to the nearby 7-11 with a hand-written note giving me permission to buy cigarettes for her…..and the clerk would accept it!
Image credits: Calvinfan69
#2
My boomer mother thought it was hilarious to mercilessly mock anything I liked, no matter how harmless – not just to me but to anybody around. She basically embarrassed me out of liking so many things until I finally developed a “f*** you I won’t let you spoil this for me” attitude about it. And no, before anyone says it, she wasn’t doing me any favors. To this day I’m reticent to tell people about things I like because I’m half-expecting to be mocked.
Image credits: Roguefem-76
#3
My stepmom used to record my mental breakdowns and threaten to post them on Facebook. One time she actually did…all of her friends and family commented how awful it was that she would post it, and she deleted it, but the harm was already done. Every single time I saw family for the next few months, it was just, ‘Are you okay? I saw what happened; are you alright?’ It was so embarrassing.
Image credits: ItzSurgeBruh
#4
I was born in 76 and saw poltergeist in the theatre (82). Who the f**k let’s that happen?
Image credits: ShoNuff3121
#5
Stay married ‘for the kids.’ … I never grew up knowing what a healthy normal relationship should be like and am only learning now in my mid-30s.
Image credits: LakeaShea
#6
The silent treatment. I hated this method they both used as a form of punishment, so I swore I would never do this to my own kids, and I haven’t. My kids are all grown now, and we might have disagreements, but I will always talk through and communicate with them. The worst part of my parents’ silent treatment is that I would often not even know what offense I had committed. It’s a great way to really sever any attempts for having a close and loving relationship.
Image credits: wise_owl68
#7
Remember how there used to be half-size cans of beer? My dad would give me a mini-Budweiser to ‘settle me down.’ This was ages three–four. I tell people I quit drinking when I started kindergarten and didn’t begin again ’til college.
Image credits: shatterly
#8
According to my dad, I have Pepsi in my bottles in pics because they thought keeping me caffeinated all day meant I’d sleep better at night. A lot more questionable decisions followed.
Image credits: IDKHow2UseThisApp
#9
One uppers. ‘I feel…’ ‘Well at least [you don’t have to…]’ It’s crushing. My kids are 21 and 18. 2020 affected their senior and freshman years, respectively. I got so much s**t from older people when I would say it made me sad they had to go through this, etc. ‘KIDS THEIR AGE WERE GOING TO WAR,’ blah blah. Like, yeah, and that really sucked for them. I’m not comparing the circumstances; I am just acknowledging my kids’ feelings because it sucks?
Image credits: TinyGreenTurtles
#10
jdans10:
Ignoring the awkward conversations.
reginafelangi123:
This also includes the sex and birth control conversations. My mom to this day still gets really uncomfortable.
Image credits: jdans10
#11
My mom beat the c**p out of me anytime she felt like it and my dad was too busy visiting old people in nursing homes to care.
Image credits: labtech89
#12
My Dad used to pull my sled with a rope behind the car. Same car was diesel and my Dad would drive ahead of me with about 5-10 feet of clearance while helping me train for cross country. Yep, my Dad was rolling coal on me from high school to college. Thanks 1983 Datsun 810 wagon.
#13
OMG, I remember my dad occasionally taking me and my brother to smoky pool halls on Saturdays so he could play a few games and have a couple of beers before he did the errands he was running for my mom. I guess she never questioned why we all smelled like smoke when we came home hours later because my dad smoked with us in the truck anyway.
Image credits: Mindless-Employment
#14
My mom was actually the previous generation (silent) but my Dad was a boomer. Both of them smoked in the house, the car, made me sit in smoking sections. I have always HATED smoking so it was extra s****y.
Image credits: TheGirlwThePinkHair
#15
Telling [kids] that their dreams/hopes/aspirations are ‘really f**king stupid’ because ‘no one makes money doing ____’… Like, sometimes fulfillment is more important that being super wealthy, ya doink.
Image credits: floofenutter
#16
Using humiliation as a form of punishment.
Image credits: TowardsTheInevitable
#17
Drove three kids around in a car with a hole in the floor large enough for us to fall through.
Image credits: GenXChefVeg
#18
hollyjazzy: Criticizing child’s weight.
114631: My dad used to make a pig oink sound every time I went for seconds or went to eat bread or any sort of sweets/dessert. I am so lucky I never developed an eating disorder from that.
Kazoua1: My parents sent me to a terrible dietitian when I was 8. I was put on a calorie counting diet as an 8-YEAR-OLD CHILD. My parents and sisters did not even support me while I was on this diet. They just kept eating all the things I couldn’t eat in front of me. … It is the reason why I keep contact with my family to a minimum.
RunnerInterrupted: I love my mom, and we have a great relationship, but I didn’t realize how toxic her relationship with her weight was and how it affected me as a child until well into adulthood. She urged me to count calories and watch my weight before I even hit middle school. I lost 15 lbs this summer due to a relapse of my depression, and she has been showering me with compliments ever since. Does not feel great
Image credits: hollyjazzy
#19
After breakfast Mom would kick me outside and tell me not to come home until the street lights came on.
Image credits: Boopadoopeedo
#20
She never had time for me. Now that I’m older, she wants all of my undivided attention, but when I was little, she could only take me in small doses. She acted like going to my school events was a chore. Driving me places was a chore. Anything that had to do with me was a chore. I want my kids to feel loved all the time. So I will do my best to give them my undivided attention when they need me, to happily show up to all performances and school events, and to always be there for them.
Image credits: lucidmined
#21
Oh s**t. We had absolutely free rein on anything on tv. They tried to say don’t watch that one! Which of course made us immediately watch it. While they went and did whatever non parenting they did.
All the GenX born in the early 70s had this same experience. That’s why we are tv babies, and jaded. Halloween was our favorite movie. I was like 8.
Image credits: Whateveryousaydude7
#22
My Dad worked nights and my Mom worked days, so Dad was supposed to watch me during the day. Instead, he dragged me to his favorite bars with him to hang out with him and the creepy drunk old men where this drunk old lady would take men in the bathroom and measure their “package”. I’m sure other stuff went on that as a kid didn’t make sense to me, but that stood out as a life long memory. My Mom was always mad about it, but didn’t stop him.
Image credits: Friendless_and_happy
#23
lucidmined: Touching me when I didn’t want to be touched. Forcing hugs and kisses. Tickling me and getting mad when my body reacted and I hurt her. When my kids tell me stop, I will stop. When they say they don’t want any physical touch, then we won’t have physical touch (unless explicitly necessary — running in traffic or something else dangerous). She did the best with what she knew, but she didn’t know much. I’ll just do better when my time comes.
half-blood-: My parents were pretty great, but I hated how we were forced to greet our extended family members with a hug and kiss ‘Give aunt Huan a hug and kiss.’ How about no since I don’t know aunt Huan and don’t think I’ve even met her before. How about you let me just say hi and not be uncomfortable as f**k? Our kids only had to say hi to be polite. No forced physical contact.
Image credits: lucidmined
#24
I was taught to tap a keg and pour dad a beer with “little foam” by the time I was 5. Spent weekends at the yacht club running around the bar area or playing outside. I sold kisses for a quarter so I could buy candy out of the vending machine. This was not an uptight yacht club but a gathering place to race sailboats and then drink and talk about the races that day (lawn sailing).
#25
rowenaravenclaw0: Forcing [kids] to be a pseudo parent to younger family members. My aunt had 13 babies in 13 years, so during my childhood, she was nearly always pregnant, or post natal. Being the only girl in the family, I was expected to help her wrangle her football team of boys. From the age of 7, I was expected to spend the majority of my time doing chores for them. By 12, I was expected to miss school some days.
imthe1nonlyD: I routinely have told my oldest daughter (7) to let me be the parent, and in turn, she gets to be the kid. Let me worry about the parent stuff; that’s not your concern. Focus on being a kid.
#26
To use ‘ I will pull down your pants and spank you in front of everyone’ as a behaviour modification technique.
It sounds soo wrong now
Needless to say the old witch will be going into a home.
#27
When I was 5 (1980), The Shining came out and was on HBO for its cable premiere. Wanting to spend time with my dad, I asked him if I could watch it with him. Arguably one of the most psychologically disturbing movies of its time and He was totally cool with it. Ended up watching 90% of it, peeking from behind his La-Z-Boy. The kicker is knowing how badly it scared me — for a few days after — my father thought it would be funny to stand at the foot of my bed, with dead eyes, waking me up asking if wanted to ‘come play with him… forever.’ That combo of my father and that movie scared me so bad that I slept with my Fozzie Bear doll until I was about 11 or 12.
#28
aroaceautistic: That s**t where you aren’t allowed to be angry. If I’m gonna make you do some s**t you don’t wanna do, then I’m at least gonna let you be pissed.
PepurrPotts: My mom gave allll the lip service to ‘it’s okay to be angry,’ but any actual display of it was immediately shut down and punished. Somehow, that left me a bit emotionally stunted in that area by the time I had grown up.
#29
My parents had really terrible ideas about safety… We’d take big family vacations in the station wagon and I’d have to sit on the flat part in the back wedged by the suitcases. I’d spend most of the trip throwing up because there was no cushioning or seating, so I’d feel every vibration and bump in the road. No seatbelt. Nothing. Just me, wedged next to a suitcase.
#30
At bedtime, my father would come into my brothers and my bedroom and make patterns in the dark with a lit cigarette. Oh, happy memories.
#31
Fighting in front of us and slamming doors, complaining about the other parent to their kids behind another parent’s back. Then consistently having the gall to literally tell us this is normal behavior in a relationship.
#32
Ever be really excited about something you’ve done, tell someone about it, and have them give a half-hearted ‘That’s nice’ before going back to what they were doing, as if just politely acknowledging you exist is the same as being supportive? I’m going to try my hardest not to do that.
#33
As an undiagnosed ADHD kid with two diagnosed ADHD kids of my own, I will NEVER use boredom as a punishment. I remember getting put in my room with no stimuli, the time felt like I was in Inception, where one minute of punishment equaled an hour of IRL time. So yeah, my kids are probably a little less ‘disciplined’ than others, but I’m sorry, I can’t inflict the same torture knowing what it felt like. That’s why it’s so hard for me to understand how those that are abused continue the cycle. It definitely sent me completely in the opposite direction.
#34
Freedom_fam: Being ‘midwest nice.’
VagueSoul: Midwest nice is basically doing everything in your power to not ‘make waves.’ You don’t want to challenge anything, you don’t want to highlight anything ‘bad,’ and you downplay everything so that everyone gets along. 0chazz0: For example: “‘Oh sweetie, let’s talk about this later, we don’t want to make a fuss on Thanksgiving.
Seagyspy: This was my life! ‘What will neighbors think,’ and ‘you’ll regret trying that.’ I never fit in and knew my children wouldn’t either. I moved many states away to a ‘live and let live’ environment. … I recently went ‘home.’ I picked up the newspaper and saw all the gossip, and it triggered me. Everyone plays ‘nice’ while gossiping and taking joy in people’s pain.
#35
Acting like my very existence is burdening them. Both of my parents, though excellent parents for the most part, were guilty of this. I get it, life can be frustrating especially as a single parent (my parents divorced when I was 6), but your kid doesn’t understand any of that. They’re not gonna know why you groaned or muttered ‘goddammit’ when they ask to be fed or say they don’t feel well, and they’re just going to think it’s because of them. I’m 24 now, and to this day, I still have trouble asking anyone for help or expressing my needs, whether it’s a friend or a coworker or my S.O. I’d rather just sit in discomfort or put my own needs aside so as to not ‘bother’ the people I’m with.
#36
Forcing kids to eat, finish their plate, etc…. My mom had a terrible, abusive boyfriend that we lived with when I was 4 to 7. He would force me to eat all the food on my plate, and if I didn’t, I was beat. The food was so disgusting, I just couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I preferred his MRE’s [military ready-to-eat meals] to the food he cooked. A few years later, I went to live with family friends. (They never knew about the abuse.) They ALWAYS joked and commented about what a good eater I was. I’ve always been severely underweight, so I’ve always been able to impress people with how much I can eat. … I promised myself I would NEVER force my kids to eat, and I never did. When I cooked something new, my only rule was that everyone had to try one bite. That’s it. If you don’t like it, cool, but you can’t turn your nose up to it without even tasting it.
#37
My mom would get tired of my brother and I fighting and make us go into the back yard and fist fight until she felt we had enough. We were under ten years old and this happened several times. My brother and I would both be crying and asking if we could stop but she’d make us keep going. Kids that age shouldn’t have to deal with physically hurting each other.
Image credits: BerryLanky
#38
Summer vacations at the cottage on the lake. The whole family would go bar hoping in a pontoon boat with us kids. They’d give us some coinage to play pinball, video games, or that bowling game with the puck while the adults drank at the bar. Then at night when grandparents, aunts, uncles, patents are all drunk from day drinking all day, us kids would drive them back in the pontoon, in the dark. Through no wake zones, several lakes, under bridges, etc. I was a designated driver at 10.
#39
My father believed that the best way to learn to ride a horse was to fall off. He’d put me on the back of horses that were even too much for him to handle, and laugh as I was thrown around like a rag doll. I hit the dirt so often I should be an Olympic gold medalist. (Spoiler. I’m not!).
#40
We had to be 7 years old to get our own lighter for lighting off fireworks unsupervised for the weeks leading up to the 4th of July. (If you were younger, you only got a punk.).
#41
My mom loved to tell the story of how, when I was an infant, they stuck me and my car seat between their golf clubs in the back of the golf cart. Me and my car seat popped out on a fairway and they didn’t notice until the next hole. If I remember correctly, this story is an extension about what a good baby I was. I guess I was just luck to have a car seat they actually buckled me into.
#42
This might be more of a country thing, but we used to ride around on the back of a truck with the tailgate down. I mean, we’d sit ON the tailgate. If we ever got rear ended we’d have lost our legs. Was fun back in the day though.
Image credits: donstermu
#43
Mother and father knew my uncle had severe untreated schizophrenia and my grandmother I believe had some sort of untreated mental disorder (maybe bipolar and severe depression) but they still sent us to stay with him and my grandparents for months at a time. It was terrifying at times. I remember crying and begging them not to take us there.
#44
My dad broke my brothers twisted sister vinyl album over his knee which was like watching life imitate art.
Image credits: anon
#45
When I was really little, mom would send us out the front door of our trailer to play in the yard. It didn’t have a fence. So I was three and playing in the street while she was watching General Hospital. When my parents were in the process of a divorce, my mother tried to commit s*icide and put me (six years old) to the task of calling my dad to tell him at work that mom was in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and vodka. He called for an ambulance to meet him at the house and shipped us off to the neighbors for a few days. She got her stomach pumped, and then came home about three days later, and life went on as if that never happened. And then she got custody and he got visitation. When she would send us off to Dad‘s for two weeks at the beginning of summer and two weeks at the end of summer, dad and stepmom just continued to go to work every day like they didn’t have a six-year-old and an eight-year-old at home, with HER two kids who were about the same age. Of course the older kids eventually got into the liquor. And we snuck next-door to go swimming at the neighbors house while nobody was home. We had no adult supervision 90% of our childhood.
Image credits: GrumpyBitchInBoots
#46
Alltheprettydresses: Complaining about how hard or expensive it is to be a parent. That was all I heard and grew up thinking I was a burden to everyone. Yeah, it’s hard and costly, but I made the choice to bring them into the world.
silentsaturn91: This is reminding me of when I was 17 and the crash of ’08 was unfolding all over the news. I remember sitting on the top of the basement steps listening to the TV that dad was watching and hearing about how people were losing their money, their homes, everything. I knew my dad had some money invested at the time, and that’s what he was using to keep us going since he didn’t have a job. I remember asking him if our money was ok, and he said to me, ‘Nope! We’re broke now.’ I remember feeling myself curl up into a ball and start panicking, thinking about what I could sell of my things to help pay the bills. Thinking, ‘Okay, I can forget about Christmas this year. Just ask for only the necessary things like clothes and toiletries.’ We came out of the crash just fine without having to sell a single thing. I’m 32 now, and it took me YEARS to get comfortable enough to open up my own retirement plan last month. Financial abuse toward a child is fucking cruel, and I will never forgive my father for doing that to me.
#47
This is kind of dark. My parents would buy this hideous smelling flea poison at the vet for our Rottweiler. It had to be diluted with water, I guess. My mother whipped up a gallon of this concoction in a milk gallon. It was a white liquid. She put it in the refrigerator, in the milk gallon. She did not mark the container in any way in order to differentiate it from an ordinary gallon of milk. I ate cereal every morning for breakfast. I am guessing you can figure out easily what happened next, but unbelievably, my mother did not foresee that I would pour this flea poison on my cereal and eat it. I was told that I was pretty silly, because it has a smell! Didn’t I notice the smell? Boy, what a dumb kid! She sent my off to day camp with a box of Tic Tacs to help mellow the terrible aftertaste in my mouth. I think of this often. It always seemed very f****d up, even more so now that I am a parent.
#48
My parents were fundie Southern Baptists who thought rules and restrictions would earn them spiritual merit badges in heaven from James Dobson Himself.
Even their fellow church members thought they were ridiculous.
I was in the sixth grade at a Christian school before I met kids whose parents were as strict as mine.
They were Mennonites.
#49
Keeping [kids] from television almost entirely. Often we had no TV — sometimes we had a TV that was purely for screening BBC programs like I, Claudius and films like the The Seventh Seal (they did have kid’s films for us, just not many). That was way back in the ’80s and ’90s — my parents are both neurologists, and they had concerns about screen time way back then. I understand why. I hate seeing my kid watch screens; he just gapes at the screen like a stunned fish. Honestly, there is not much to be said in favor of screens when it comes to child development; screen time is not correlated with good outcomes. But pretty early on, kids start use pop culture as a means of bonding. The kids at my kid’s nursery are all playing at being Spider-Man, and if I kept him away from the Lego Spider-Man videos that all the kids in his clique watch, he might miss out on this bonding opportunities. FWIW, I think my parents had good intentions. But the end result was a teen who didn’t understand pop culture references, and an adult who watches screens too much to this day (which is my own fault, I admit).
#50
Being passive aggressive. I was in a college communications course when I learned the phrase ‘passive aggressive,’ and a light bulb went off in my head. I finally had a term to describe my family’s dysfunction. I thought we were a perfect family because we didn’t yell. Sometimes I think the yelling might have been preferable because at least it would’ve been honest.
#51
Mom took me on a way out of the way & deserted beach trip with her friends, I was like 8. Lots of food, lots of beer but minimal water. First time I got drunk.
#52
Telling [me] they regret being a parent or lamenting when they need to be strict as a parent. While I was loved, these kinds of things are not things you should say to your children ever, even if you believe it in your heart of hearts. Like, of course, I knew what they meant by it, but the surface level interpretation still hurts, even when I know it’s not true.
#53
My parents had really terrible ideas about safety.
I broke my collarbone as a toddler because they didn’t get any sort of safety gate on my twin bed so the first night I slept in it, I fell out. I thought for years that they just didn’t make safety gates back then and I was like “Oh yeah, I broke my collarbone, there were no safety gates” and my mom was like “oh they made them but they were so expensive!” OK, well, hope all of those hospital bills from my fractured collarbone were cheap?
And then we’d take big family vacations in the station wagon and I’d have to sit on the flat part in the back wedged by the suitcases. I’d spend most of the trip throwing up because there was no cushioning or seating so I’d feel every vibration and bump in the road. No seatbelt. Nothing. Just me, wedged next to a suitcase.
Oh! I also had a weird health problem when I was little. Tiny little seizures. My mom took me to the pediatrician twice about it and he was like “Hmm, no idea!” and that was that. No further medical visits or doctors. I didn’t learn what it was until I was an adult and there was a medication that could have eliminated them had it been diagnosed.
#54
Completely shutting down at the slightest display of any ‘bad’ emotion. … There’s people out there who think that any display of emotion is equal to ‘being out of control.
#55
Nitpicking. If I got a B, I was asked why wasn’t it an A. When I got an A, I was asked why it wasn’t it 100%. When I got 100%, I was asked why my handwriting was terrible.
#56
Making promises they know they won’t keep.
#57
Found this out in therapy but my mom knew that my grandpa had been in jail before for molesting little girls…. but still left me alone with him.
#58
Being jealous that [kids] have life easier than [they] did.
#59
The lack of any car safety. Letting us ride in the truck bed, loading 8 people in the front of the truck, stuffing as many people as you can in any vehicle, sleeping on the back window ledge of cars. Toddlers standing on and walking back and forth on the front seat while driving, holding babies while driving. Things like that.
#60
Exposed me to very unsavory characters. I had alot of “uncles” one of which held me down tickling me and then licked my face.
#61
We had a weapons collection at 6/7 years old that included throwing stars, swords, leather whips, firecrackers + lighters, knives etc.
#62
We raised beef cattle. Got a trip to the slaughterhouse around 7 or 8 years old (in fairness, I did get to wait in the truck… Visuals were minimal. Olfactory though will haunt me forever).
#63
I had an aunt that would stop by the Alton’s restaurant and have me run in and buy her a pack out of the cigarette vending machine — I still can’t believe they ever had those!
#64
Satanic Panic victim here. My parents let my church exorcise my cabbage patch doll in front of me, in our living room. I was 6.
They burned Cabby in a stew pot on a stack of dictionaries with rubbing alcohol. I’m 43 and I can still smell him.
#65
My mom would take me with her to bingo but leave me in the conversion van to read while she played a set. I must’ve been about 7 or so.
#66
On the flip side there’s being very enthusiastic about your interest because you could make money from it someday. So stop playing and focus because you’re doing it wrong, you’ll never make any money doing it that way, sit down and learn how to do it right, playtime’s over.
#67
Not recognizing some weird s**t I was exposed to at our evangelical church when I was a teenager.
#68
My mom, rest her soul, let me just run wild . As long as I was out of her hair so she could go party she could’ve cared less. I would literally disappear from my house on Friday evening, sometimes Thursday evening my junior and senior year if nothing interesting was going on at school on Friday , and I would party till late Sunday night then head home . Sometimes it would be Monday morning when I’d drag a*s in, oh lawd this is when my substance enjoyment kicked in. Tried a little of everything other than those oral sex inducing d***s like crack and thank goodness meth wasn’t around ?♂️?♂️?♂️. But long story short I was left to my own demise as long as I didn’t interfere with my moms good times.
#69
Guys half of these are just child abuse.
Bad parenting is leaving me and my 10 year-old sister home alone for a few hours with 6th month old twins.
#70
Its not really laughable, since it’s actually quite serious and a pretty severe form of emotional abuse, but I’d have to say the worst part of their parenting — even worse than all the drinking, drunk driving, d***s, adultery, fighting, etc. — was all the Parentification and emotional incest. My childhood is mired in it, and I got it severely from both parents because they were both immature, dysfunctional people that had no business ever having children. And my ability to ever be carefree was stolen by it.
#71
During a trip to Jamaica, they took me to The Playboy Club with them. ?.
#72
When I was ten my family traveled with another family cross country in a rented RV from Maryland to California and back. One night I woke up and everyone was asleep except my dad and the other dad who were taking turns driving. I joined them and saw that they were passing back and forth a “cigarette.” My dad handed to me when I asked why they were sharing and said take a puff. Years later I realized that it was NOT a cigarette! I was ten!
#73
I always had a knack for playing guitar and I picked it up later but when I first wanted to play my dad said “your fingers are too small, you’ll never be any good”. If I had started playing at 10 instead of f*****g around in college, I feel like I would have been a great guitarist. Looking back, the fact that he would discourage me from doing anything positive for no good reason, I probably would have turned out a lot better.
Plus, he took me to see Full Metal Jacket when it came out. I was 10.
#74
jester51: Ignoring how [kids] feel because of how [they] feel.
HeyItsNotMeIPromise: My parents did this. They had feelings, and the way I interacted with them made them have feelings. But they couldn’t comprehend that their actions informed my feelings, too. It was like I wasn’t a full person to them. If I was disappointed or upset with them for things they did, or were supposed to do and didn’t, they would get angry with me for making them have to feel guilt or regret. They literally couldn’t handle the uncomfortable feelings associated with the idea that they had parented poorly and would re-direct those uncomfortable feelings into anger at me for causing it. It was a wild ride, let me tell you. Their feelings trumped mine, all day long. I’ll never do that to my kids.
#75
Not as much of a childhood thing, but an adult thing… Investing in kids’ adult lives as well. My parents were all around good parents. But once they had an empty nest, they absolutely loaded their lives with other social obligations, and feel like distant extended family now. My wife and I are suffering from a lack of any support system. Our marriage is suffering because we get alone time, like, two weekends a year. When my kids were babies, the tone for visits was ALWAYS ‘bring the boys over to see us. But you know, stick around so you can handle them, and take them with you when you leave.’ They’re fantastic during the couple times a year I bring the kids there. Hiking, crafts, they buried treasure in the yard and made treasure maps…like, really cool stuff to interact with them. But the day to day ‘it takes a community’ shit doesn’t exist. I will not do that to them. I will support their adult relationships by not waiting for them to beg for help. I’m not going to be intrusive (I know some grandparents who are way too involved). But I will be available. I will insist that the kids spend overnights, weekends, summer weeks, with me. Because I know how valuable breaks, and vacations, and mental health are. And not just babysitting. I want to stay close to my boys into adulthood. Let’s catch a game, have a drink, come on over, and I’ll grill some steaks.