What I Wish My Parents Did When I Was Little: Practical Parenting Lessons I Learned As An Adult
Last Saturday, I was folding laundry at the coffee table when my 8-year-old knocked his full glass of chocolate milk straight into the cushion of the thrifted couch I’d spent three months hunting for. Milk pooled between the cracks, dripped onto the hardwood, and he froze, eyes wide, shoulders hunched up to his ears before I even said anything. In that split second, I was 7 years old again, standing in my parents’ kitchen surrounded by broken ceramic and water from a cracked vase I’d just knocked over, waiting for the yelling to start.
I’d climbed up on the counter to fill my watering can for the marigolds I’d planted in the backyard, and my foot slipped. The vase, which held my mom’s high school graduation roses, toppled right off the windowsill and cracked down the middle. I was already shaking when I grabbed a roll of paper towels to sop up the water, and by the time my dad walked in, I’d cleaned up most of the glass. I just didn’t think to tell him what happened. When he found the water stain on the wooden table an hour later, I got grounded for a week for breaking the vase and hiding it. No one asked me if I was hurt, or if I’d gotten scared when I fell. They just asked how I could be so careless.
When I became a parent, those small, unremarkable moments are the ones that stuck with me, more than any big fight or big disappointment. It’s not that my parents were bad people—they worked hard, put food on the table, did the best they could with what they’d been taught. But these are the small things I wish they’d done differently, the shifts I try to remember every day with my own kids.
That day with the chocolate milk, I didn’t look at the couch first. I walked over, knelt down to his level, and asked if any milk had gotten on his shirt or his shoes. His shoulders dropped instantly, and he shook his head, already rambling about how he’d tripped over the dog’s toy. We grabbed a stack of old towels together, soaked up the milk, and he helped me flip the cushion over to dry. He apologized three times while we worked, and I just told him accidents happen, and we fix things together. The cushion still smells a little like vanilla after we cleaned it, and it’s fine. Checking on him first took 10 extra seconds, and it changed everything. It’s the first thing I wish my parents had done: pause to care about the kid before caring about the thing.
The next thing I wish they’d done is give me space for mess, instead of expecting me to keep everything neat all the time. When I was 10, I drew a whole 12-page comic about a cat that was a detective, on the back of my dad’s old unused work notebook. When he found it, he threw the whole thing away, told me I was wasting paper and ruining good stuff that could have been used for something important. I cried for an hour after that, and I stopped leaving my drawing out where anyone could see it. Now, I keep a $10 roll of butcher paper taped to the wall of our mudroom. I tell my son he can draw on it any time, any size, no rules. Once a month, we cut off whatever’s on it and toss it, and roll out a new sheet. We have a bin of scrap paper from work and old mail next to the dinner table, so he can doodle while we wait for food to cook, no one fusses about it getting messy. If he draws on the wall by accident, we wipe it off. It’s not a big fight, and he gets to make whatever he wants, no hiding required.
I also wish they’d had my back with other people when I was shy. I hated ordering food at restaurants, hated calling people on the phone, hated having to say hello and hug relatives I only saw once a year. My parents would laugh and tell people “she’s just so shy, isn’t that silly?” and then push me to do it anyway, saying if I didn’t order my own fries I didn’t get any. I still get a little flutter in my stomach when I have to order food at a new place, 30 years later. Now, when my son hides behind my leg at the grocery store and won’t say thank you to the cashier, I don’t make him. I just smile at the cashier and say “thank you so much, have a good day” and that’s it. If a relative asks for a hug and he shakes his head, I say “he’s not feeling up to a hug right now—want a wave instead?” I don’t label him as shy or rude to other people, and I don’t lecture him later about being polite. He’ll talk to people when he’s ready, and that’s okay.
The last small thing I wish they’d done is take my small feelings seriously. When I was 6, my favorite stuffed bear lost an eye, and I cried for 45 minutes. My parents kept telling me “it’s just a toy, it’s not that big of a deal, stop crying.” I stopped coming to them with small hurts after that, because I knew they’d tell me my feelings didn’t matter. Now, when my son cries because his sandwich got cut the wrong way, or the block tower he spent 20 minutes building fell down, I don’t tell him it’s no big deal. I sit down next to him, and I say “that’s really disappointing, I’d be upset too.” I let him cry for a minute, and then we fix it if we can. It doesn’t spoil him, or make him more sensitive. It just lets him know his feelings matter, even when they’re small.
I don’t do this perfectly. Some nights when I’m tired after work, I snap before I think, I brush off his feelings, I fuss about a mess I shouldn’t fuss about. But most days, I just remember what it felt like to be a small kid, with small problems that felt huge. Last week, he colored a blue crayon all over the bathroom wall. I sighed, got the magic eraser, and we cleaned it off together. After that, I taped a new big sheet of butcher paper to the mudroom wall, and he drew a dinosaur that takes up the whole thing. It’s half colored in, and it’s still there. I walk past it every day on the way to the laundry room, and that’s enough for me right now.
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