I wanted to start a thread on this topic, because we often hear about the successful parental outcomes, but we don’t tend to talk about the mistakes made as we are raising our children NO JUDGEMENT PLEASE. Some of these mistakes have been fixed over time while some mistakes are still lingering. It is already hard enough to admit some of these errors in judgement, but I can now laugh at some of the mistakes (while others still make me cringe). With out further adieu…
I have put artificial barriers and stress into my kids life for no apparent reason but to see how they responded. Over time I have learned that life puts enough barriers in your path. That error came from wanting to make sure kids are prepared for anything but you can not force it.
I have had a few arguments with my wife about my kids in front of them early on. They were brilliant enough to then manipulate us like puppets but we figured out that error pretty quickly.
My kids have had several injuries due to my roughhousing or lack of awareness of possible safety issues (I have gotten older and my kids can now beat me up so no more roughhousing for me).
I wish I would have been stricter with yes ma'am , no sir (just didn't have the will to correct them all of the time when we could have ingrained those manners, versus them saying yes and no.
I wish I would have made them get a job (time has always been scarce for them but I believe working a minimum wage job teaches kids something).
My son once got into an argument with me at age 14 and would not move out of my way (blocking a doorway when I tried to leave the room). I am not proud of pushing him out of my way to leave and I will regret that one forever. I know he will too...
I wish I was a better role model. I probably say the right things more than I actually do them, but they have learned in spite of my imperfections.
I wish I would have taken them to see their grandparents more often. (Grandparents have a way of help us kids overcome some of our parental deficiencies). Hope my parents don't see this one.
I need to tell my kids how I feel about them more often (I am always trying to get better at letting my kids know how I feel about them, but it is not always easy for me).
We did not participate in our faith when they where young. They have grown in their love and kindness since we joined our church (when they were in 3rd and 5th grade). That was a big mistake that I am glad we figured out (it was really all my fault because I was the only thing holding up joining a Church).
I think I could write about many more mistakes that my wife and I (mostly I) have made raising our children, but I would like to keep a shred of my self-esteem.
I wish we had been less strict, esp in their younger years. I work best with teens/adults and expected way too much “perfection” out of our lads when they were younger (sigh). H was raised by super strict parents and naturally fell into that mold. We weren’t as “bad” as they were since I found that much appalling, but we could have been better. In my older adult life having seen thousands of kids at school, I know that most turn out just fine - one does not have to be strict expecting perfection with chores, etc, to get a decent adult. Super strictness generally only makes for stressed out kids.
We were able to improve quite a bit with our younger two. Those two remain very close to us now and are superb adults. Oldest doesn’t stay close and makes a point to never say “I love you” or even call. His distance is partially due to another adult in his life who magnified all those mistakes in his mind - even creating new ones that never happened - but part of it was there and that part I wish I could change.
Maybe someday he’ll have kids of his own and realize they don’t come with instruction manuals - we did what we thought was our best at the time - and forgive us for the mistakes we made. If I had a do-over though, that’s what I’d do over - including making sure he never came in contact with that “other” toxic adult. Everything else (wrong) was small stuff and mostly we enjoyed the family time we had together as they grew up - tons of terrific memories.
I think my two biggest mistakes were surrounding food and neatness. I should have been more lenient in insisting she eat as a toddler. Looking back if i had simply left it to letting her eat what she wanted, food would not have become an issue when she was older. I would force her to eat meat because she was an athlete but in all honesty she was vegan from a very early age. And she is vegan now and pretty healthy. In fact I am now a vegetarian and wish I had adopted this sooner.
I wished I had done a much better job of training her to pick up after herself and just being clean. She is much better now then when she was in college but if I had done so earlier it would have been happier for all.
Other than those two missteps we gave her the encouragement to be an independent thinker and she bloomed very nicely.
Not realizing the severity of oldest son’s mental illness soon enough. We should have brought him home the summer after his freshman year in college, but at his insistence we let him stay in Austin to take a CC course.
With second son, not pushing harder when a counselor told he us he did NOT have ADHD. Getting him help in 6th grade would have made a huge difference for him.
With youngest, being too open about what was going on with her big brothers. I didn’t want to keep secrets, but holding back some of the details would have been wiser.
With D1, I wish I was more relaxed as a mom when she was a baby. I was overly protective of her when it came to health issues.
With D2, I regret not have been able to demonstrate to her what a good, loving relationship is. She witnessed the slow decaying of our relationship. I am sure it made her feel insecure and not as trusting of other people. D1 was able to see some of our good times as a couple. I hope D2 will find someone who will make her happy. I often wondered what I could have done differently.
Going along with D1’s desire to stay on the advanced-math track when she was obviously struggling in sixth grade. She survived the math classes but they contributed to much misery in high school.
Not figuring out better ways to mitigate the effects of my ex-husband’s personality and mental health issues. I thought I was doing the best I could at the time, but I probably could have done better, especially to protect our daughters.
With D I wish I had been more assertive with the school when they refused to test her for more advanced work (she was more than capable) especially in math.
With S, I wish I had realized that he was being bullied in middle school. (he didn’t tell us).
Not putting my son in private school in 6th grade (instead of 9th grade.) Could have saved all of us 3 years of aggravation and conflict. Thankfully, it all worked out in the end.
Far from perfect, but I think we did a good job (and I’m sure the rest of you also did the best you could. And still do.)
My username partly reflects trying to anticipate. Sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse. I had two goals: to grow them to function well as young adults, give them the right base to pursue what they later chose (which includes fun, too.) And to ensure a good relationship as we got older.
We really do the best we can. Don’t beat yourselves up.
I wish that I had dealt with middle son’s ODD issues differently and that it had not taken me so long to figure out that they were fueled by anxiety and perfectionism.
I wish that I had been stricter in insisting that the kids do their HW and not just relied on the fact that they were smart since the school counted HW alot more than test grades (side note: that made no sense to me because half the parents helped with the HW, including myself on occasion, but we weren’t there for tests).
I wish that I had not sent D to the school for the gifted. It really destroyed her spirit and she became an underachiever after that until college. It was my ego wanting people to know how smart she really is. She’s fine, now, but she lost so much in her music instruction in particular that she never got back.
I wish that I enjoyed sports, athletics and outdoor activities so that I could have passed that along to my children.
I wish that I had encouraged all of my sons to have my work ethic, instead of their dad’s, but with him as the at home parent, they absorbed his bad habits.
I wish that I had taken the kids on more trips even without H, who refuses to travel, even if I had to divide them up. I did a couple with the 2 oldest and 2 middle, but after #5 was born, I just stopped. My kids have barely been anywhere and It’s a true regret of my life.
The biggest (perhaps the only?) regret I have is that sometimes (or often) I did not spend my time with my kid more engrossed in him, rather than checking at my emails from clients or thinking about other matters. In other words, I did try to spend a lot of time with my kid, but I should have been more engrossed with him and enjoyed it more. If I had those times back, I would try to be more engaged rather than spend time sometimes out of my sense of duty. Other than this, I have no regrets because I consider other mistakes very minor ones compared to this one.
@lookingforward In the similar vein, my wife and I really did try to do A+ job raising our kid, so my regret is not that I screwed up in any way but how I could have done even better and should have ENJOYED it more, especially when our kid was small and cute rather than a kid who’s taller than me.
Although I posted above, after further thought I think that my biggest mistake was not fully advising him on the differences between law school & the practice of law versus earning an MBA & entering the corporate world, and as to the type of person who is better suited for each path.
My ex husband and his family have been problematic figures for my kids. I wish I had protected them sooner but I also wish I didn’t give so many mixed messages about them now. I want my kids to know I’ve always had their back and that some of the behavior is definitely not OK with me. I have done a lot in the background to protect them but I’ve also gone back and forth on how open I am in acknowledging the scariness of their dad’s mental health issues (which came on suddenly). I go back and forth too much mostly out of fear of doing the wrong thing.
I’m prepared for blowback, but as far as I am concerned, parenting involves tons of on the job training (v innate knowledge) on the part of all parents, training which in our case sometimes resulted in questionable/bad/regretted decisions on our part. In retrospect we always tried to do what was best for our S depending on the circumstances at the time. But spending time thinking about could’ve, would’ve, should’ve actions on what we as parents did/did not do 10, 20 years ago with our S seems pointless to me. My S is happy, happily married , we have grandchild, gainfully employed……any “mistakes” on our part just don’t matter at this point. I guess we just live in the now.
I wish we had created the kind of home where our kids enjoyed having their friends over. They do have their friends over on occasion and we actually didn’t live that close to other kids, but we were never had the home where all the kids wanted to be. And sure I did find a few of their friends annoying and in particular didn’t like having mean girls over, but I think now I could have been a bit more welcoming. (I’m sure we made more serious mistakes than this but this is what comes to mind.)