Looking for Parents Who Had a Great Childhood - How It's Affected Your Parenting

I had a great childhood.
My parents were & are great parents.
They gave us a safe, loving home to grow up in.
They pased lessons onto us, lead by example & instilled great values.
They were strict but looking back....I see why and am thankful.
They were fun AND funny.
They were not without their challenges but they provided us with the
best they could offer (a home, good schools, clothes for us before them
etc.).
Nice vacations when they could, time spent as a family around the dinner
table & watching family oriented shows together (one of my best
memories).
Dad taught us how to ride bikes, change a tire etc.
Mom taught us how to cook, be kind, make friends etc.
They taught us how to be good with money although mom was better
at that.
They taught us while we had to be responsible citizens we could have
fun on a daily basis.
I love them for it!

I love Brene Brown and this piece profound for me...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bren/wholehearted-parenting...

I had a great childhood.

I had an intact family unit, my mom and dad loved each other and really showed it, and they never fought.

I was loved, I knew I was loved and wanted very badly. I was the only child my mother was able to have and she told me often what a gift I was to her.

They were strict but not unflexible...I could really talk to them about just about anything and they gave great advice.

They supported me in whatever activity I was interested in and let me quit if I found it wasn't for me. Until I found music and then I flourished and lived for band.

We didn't have a lot of money but I never felt like I did without...there were always birthday and Christmas presents.

We lived in the same home, attended the same church, and had gatherings with family and friends often through my whole childhood...it was so stable.

I feel some days it is really hard to live up to my own mother. She was just so good at being a mom. And sense she is no longer alive I can't call her and ask her advice. I try to be just like my own mom because she was great.

My childhood was truly great, I am so blessed. I was a very happy child. My parents were very stable and affectionate. They really wanted to be parents and they waited a long time to adopt. They were very hard-working do-the-right-thing types. An Air Force lawyer and a nurse. This was the early 70's and they fit the mold of typical parenting: Sometimes you got angry and punished your kids, including spanking. This was the norm for all my peers in rural Colorado.

My childhood was happy and full of freedom. Because my brother and I had high expectations bestowed upon us and good behavior, we had lots of privileges and attended lots of classes above our age groups etc. We were well-liked and did well in school. I'm thankful to our discipline base for that. My parents and I have great relationships to this day despite huge personal differences in lifestyles and beliefs that emerged as we got older.

I had my kids later than most of my friends and watched them do the post 80's positive parenting-treat-your-child-as-an-equal thing. It looked good in print and seemed logical and evolved, but WITHOUT EXCEPTION, these kids were terrible toddlers and many were way out of control by kindergarten age, and no fun to be around.

I decided not to re-invent the wheel on parenting. I do what my parents did. I'm more patient and loving and humor-based than my parents were, but I'm absolutely in charge and I do use discipline and my kids are extremely good and happy. We have close, loving relationships and they are very mature and ahead in school and classes..

The best thing you can do is find families who have raised or are raising kids who are happy, confident, and respectful-or whatever the ideal you're seeking is, and talk to them. Do not take parenting advice from strangers or from people who have lots of trouble with their kids.

I have extremely positive memories of my childhood and would love to go re-live it or watch a movie of it if I could!

This does not mean I had perfect parents. However- here is what I remember most:

My best friend up the street- tromping around our neighborhood, going back and forth to play, walking down to the store for snacks, trying to avoid all the boys on our street, playing on my front yard swingset for hours.

My school- I loved school... field trips, special performances, playground shenanigans, crushes, book faire, art show, choir.

My outside activities- girl scouts and all the places we went and unstructured time we had to play "sardines" or "ghost in the graveyard", camping, crafts, going to disneyland. And my youth theater group- spending months to put on a musical with a bunch of other 10-12 year olds, again the crushes and friendships there...

Parties- some of my best childhood memories are from my own birthday parties and others'. Whether it was going to disneyland with one friend, a swim party, a costume party, cookie party, or as we got older, all the sleepovers.

Cousins and family vacations- we never went anywhere fancy or far, but we often went with cousins to a beach house or cabin. The BEST times! Also, at family gatherings, my cousins and I would inevitably end up at one house or another for a few days until one of our parents got around to picking us up. We would sleep in, watch TV, play video games, do elaborate crafts, board game tournaments, or video productions.

So, none of this is really anything my parents did with us. But my parents did give us the opportunity to live in a social friendly community, go to a great school, participate in activities we enjoyed, and have the freedom to spend as much time as we wanted with friends and cousins (and attend every party and field trip and fun event we wanted). That's what I hope to do for my kids :)

I am really enjoying reading the responses.

Despite the fact my father died suddenly when I was 12, leaving my mom the sole breadwinner unexpectedly, I feel I still had a good childhood and especially good teen years. My mother was an intensely private person who was not very demonstrative -- except with me, and she never stinted on hugs, hand-holding and kisses, even when I was an adult. She worked full-time, not just after my dad died, but all her life, so there wasn't a lot of "she taught me to ride a bike, she baked me brownies".....The person who was at home when we came in from school, the one who said "Let's eat this cake while it's warm!" though dinner was an hour away, was my grandmother, who lived with us all my life, until she died when I was in my late 20s. So I had a working mom and an at-home "mom." A cuddly, cake-making adult and a serious, results-oriented adult. I got so lucky.

The best thing my mother did for me was to say yes to opportunities that came along, and to be supportive in a very quiet way. She could have said, "No, I don't want you going to Japan for a summer as an exchange student" but she said "If it's what you want to do, that's fine." She could have said, "No, the college you want is too expensive and too far away" (a lot of my friends' parents said that) but she did not, and I was very happy with my choice. She could have advised me against going to grad school abroad, but she sat me down and told me how much money she had saved for me to have at college graduation, and that I could use it for grad school or anything else I wanted. She never pushed anything on me, and she made me find opportunities for myself, but she also never stood in the way, and quietly found ways to say, "If you want to do X, here is an option for making it happen."

I guess the lesson there is: Don't get in your kids' way and micromanage them, but be clear with your support, both emotional and financial when it's appropriate. And don't tie everything up in strings - I knew so many kids in college with me and young adults after college whose parents had made "deals" about how the kids would go to a specific college (or lose all support), or do the major mom and dad wanted them to do, or "try" the career mom and dad prescribed. And those were almost all really unhappy college kids and young adults.

She also was very good at rewards out of the blue for no special reason. She did things like hand me the car keys and a few bucks, on random days during high school, and say, "Go off campus to lunch today, just pick me up when I'm done with work at the end of the day." And things she knew I liked would appear, rarely but regularly, without any fanfare. I think because I never asked her for anything, she felt free to do those things, and I really appreciated them, and her, so much, and let her know it.

I had a great childhood. My parents were loving and supportive, but still taught me right from wrong and how to be an independent adult. My upbringing (and my husband's, who had a similar experience) inspires me to give my children the types of experiences I had. We strive to help them make memories that they will cherish, as we cherish ours. On another note, growing up as I did, with great role models for parenting, I sometimes feel like I am not living up to the goals I set for myself. I get frustrated, I yell sometimes, I don't always WANT to do those things that I remember my mom doing with me. I then feel guilty, but realistically I know that my mom probably felt the same way with me.

I don't know the secret of life, but I'm curious about the definition of a "great childhood". Unless a child remembers being abused, that is the only thing I can think of that would not make every childhood great. As a parent, I think we should all do the best we can, and realize that nobody's perfect. Have a nice day!

My childhood could be considered pretty crappy, and somewhat traumatizing.... And like you, I feel like it has fueled me to be the best possible parent I can be.

Even with my crappy childhood, I did have an AMAZING dad. He was definitely far from perfect, but there are certain things I learned from him that I definitely use as a model in my parenting. Like the value of hard work, the importance of allowing children to succeed/fail and learn from their mistakes, supporting the child without being afraid to correct the course when needed...

I think a lot more of my parenting comes from knowing the things that happened to me, and making sure my daughter will never feel the way I did. I will never abandon her, I will never manipulate the words of someone she loves to make her feel bad, I will never use her as an emotional weapon against someone else.. Things like that. I work really hard to make sure she knows I love her unconditionally, even when I'm not happy with her.

Mine was great (of course I didn't always recognize that as a teen, but I can clearly see it now LOL).

My parents made sure we know that they loved us, and also loved each other.

We spent a lot of family time just being us. My family is outdoorsy, so for us that meant camping, day trips to go hiking, impromptu picnics, spur of the moment trips to a lake to swim. My parents had little money, but we took a camping vacation for a week every summer to just be a family together.

To apply that to another family, I don't think it would matter what you do, as long as you spend time as a family doing something that you enjoy and having fun together.

it's funny, looking back now i can see a lot of stuff that was fairly horrifying about my childhood. but every kid's childhood seems 'normal' to that kid, and i sure never felt it was 'dysfunctional' at all. my childhood seems endlessly enchanted to me, and i did try to pass that on to my boys.
the huge difference is that my mom, like most moms back then, was a SAHM, even though by today's standards she was shockingly hands-off, and i had freedom that i adored but would seem downright neglectful today. i worked the whole time my boys were little, so they spent more time in daycare than i can bear to think about. and i was more stressed and impatient with them than i wish.
however, when i talk with them about what it was like growing up with us for parents, the boys talk about it in almost all positive tones. and the things i beat myself up about didn't even register on their radar, while some things that i never even realized were an issue really stuck with them.
but taken as a whole, it seems as if they had a pretty happy childhood too. i hope it's something they pass along to their kids, if they choose to have them.
i would be a ROCKIN' grandma!
:) khairete
S.

My parents were great. My mom never ever yelled. She used tone well and set concrete expectations. They went overindulgent and emphasized education and were really into reading all the time. News papers, books, anything.
I'm not as great a parents yet I have to admit. But I'm trying. I lose my cool at times and yell and act too harsh and I hate that I do that. I don't buy my kids a bunch of useless stuff but I do buy them really any books they want. I guess we'll have to wait and see how my kids turn out to find out if Im a good parent.
The one thing I wish my parents were was more social growing up. We didn't have a lot of play dates and they didn't really have friends of their own over to model adult friendships. I'm trying to be a more social adult but for me as well... I think that they missed out in that regard. It's harder for them getting older now and being retired because you know especially my mom is really quite an introvert now. I don't know that she really likes that.

I feel my brother and I had a great childhood overall- some tough times but we were able to travel and see/do so many things that many kids don't. I wouldn't trade it for anything. My mom and stepdad provided a lovely home in the California "countryside" with lots of acreage to run around. Very sheltered, but great.

My cool childhood has actually had a bit of a negative affect on my parenting. I feel very guilty that I can't provide my daughter the kind of home I had. Her father and I are separated, we live in a tiny apartment and she has to go to daycare. Her dad has pretty severe PTSD, I often feel overwhelmed. I work and go to school full-time. So that sucks. But I do what I do in the never-ending pursuit of giving her what I had. Even if it's just a yard to play in and a room she can decorate any way she wants. Some of the little things that stand out to me in my memory.

I try to remember that things weren't easy for my mom in the beginning and that it took time for her to be able to give us what we had. I would say that I am very driven to improve our life in any way I can, but the downside is being overwhelmed and sometimes I lose my patience or am too tired to go to the park/pool, etc.

Well, my childhood was pretty good. My mother was awesome!! I couldn't have asked for a better Mommy! =) She was my hero, champion and my defender. She told me I could do anything and that I was smart. She was supportive and very loving. I have modeled myself after her. I have always said that if I could be 1/2 the mom my mom was, I would be terrific!

My dad traveled all the time. His idea of kids was "they should be seen not heard". My relationship with my dad had been strained until my mother was diagnosed with FTD and Alzheimers. I saw a side of him that I didn't know existed. The love and protectiveness he has shown my mother during her illness has been awe inspiring. I also went back to college several years ago and graduated so to him I have finally lived up to his ideals of me.

We moved a lot so it was always the 4 of us. Well, mostly the three of us (Mom, brother and myself) We traveled a lot when we lived in South America. I have some terrific memories of some of our family vacations. Or educational vacations.

So how has that made me a better parent? Well, I love my kids beyond belief. I am their biggest fan, champion and cheerleader. I told my kids they can do and be anything they want to be. I also see them for all their faults and still love them (most of the time) =) My husband and I have raised productive members of society. I think if you asked them they would say they had a pretty good childhood as well. They were and are loved.

M MIL dediced that her then husband, my FIL, was pretty useless at simple domestic tasks like hemming one's pants, sealing the tub, ironing, etc. She decided that she would raise her boys differently, and did. They can stand on their own two feet, and have the confidence that springs from that.

Best,
F. B.

My husband had a great childhood. However, his relationship with his dad is a bit lacking - not much engagement (it also shows in his relationship with our boys - he's around but that's it he never engages with them). B/c of that I specifically told him he was not going to be like his dad - and he is not! He is a very present, engaged and affectionate father. I on the other hand, had a crappy childhood and I am a much better parent b/c of it.