Things my parents taught me............

What types of things such as life skills, etiquette, etc., did your parents teach you (for better or worse)?

My dad taught me never to be in debt, not to take loans, not to buy on credit (or hire purchase as we called it in those days). In his whole life I think the only debt he ever had was the mortgage on our house, which was considered normal in Britain in those days. Everything else we saved up for and only got it when we could buy it outright. I've assiduously followed his advice and example in this regard, and never regretted it. I do have a credit card, as it is a convenient way of shopping without having to carry large quantities of cash, and especially online shopping, but I always pay it off in full at the end of the month and never buy anything which I couldn't afford to pay off immediately.

My father was fond of saying: Never assume anything, except perhaps, a three-and-a-half percent mortgage.
Beyond that, compassion and respect for others; fairness; humor (especially the art of the shaggy dog story); responsibility; friendship ... lots of those important things about being human without being preachy about it; more through example.
Mom, on the other hand: curiosity; debate; survival (how to cook my own meals, considering all the food sensitivities I've got), also how to cook enough to feed a small army; when to and when to not speak my mind; card games and puzzle solving (which set me up to excel at "new math" and spend over 30 years doing root cause analysis and fixing "stupid programmer tricks.").
They collectively taught me, and the rest of my extensive family that being too rigid and inflexible in one's beliefs can destroy everything.
Fortunately, everything they had taught me (and my siblings) was put to good use in their "rehabilitation."
Dad died in 1997; Mom, three years and two days ago. Nothing but love and respect for them both -- plus some awesomely great memories and stories.

From my mom’s example : Always always look for a way to be helpful, kind, generous and loving. Both to those you know and those you don’t know yet. If ancient Mrs. Sprumont was walking home with her arms full of grocery; by golly, you were to carry them for her. If she was just walking, you slow down to her pace and keep her company.

Okay, I’m wiping tears away, and she’s been gone thirteen years.

My mom was/is great (still going strong at age 94).

When I first picked up Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, the casual use of the "N" word caught me off guard. This was around my tender age of 10 or 11. I knew what it meant, but didn't get why it was used in these books so freely. We're not that good at context at this age, right?

So, books in hand, I approached her and asked her. What does this mean? I will never forget how she wheeled around to give me her full attention as she lowered her voice and said, "It's a vicious, cruel, disgusting word used to make other people feel like they don't matter. We don't respect that word, and we never use it. Always remember, you're no better than anyone else, and no one's better than you."

Life lessons inspired by Mark Twain! :)

My parents were both alcoholics. They taught me how to taper someone off a bender to avoid the DTs, how to lie plausibly to concerned relatives and school authorities when I had to stay home and deal with a binge, that people's personalities changed under the influence, that court-ordered AA is useless, and that nobody is going to save you except yourself.

Despite that, my parents could show generosity and empathy, and they were both witty, artistic, and clever. They could tell great stories.

They could never apologize for their lack of responsibility, but they were grateful for the care I provided in their elder years.

I learned to try to find the good in people and to set limits. It took a long time, but I also learned forgiveness.

I'm sure you were looking for inspiration and wisdom, but we didn't all have those parents.

My father took me to his bank to open my first checking account and how to balance it. He also drove me to a special year long weekly activity because it was in a part of the city he didn’t want me to drive in by myself.

My mother and my father’s mother taught me to cook and my mother’s father encouraged my reading by giving me books and my interest in science by giving me a good microscope. Also, we learned how to grow vegetables by going to my grandfather’s small farm at least once a week to harvest whatever was ready. Then, my mother and I made pickles and once there was a freezer we put a lot of beans and corn up. We also had a small garden patch at home and our next door neighbor had a large one so I had a lot of experience with gardening by the time I left home.

My dad taught me how to work. He was a house painter and contractor and brought me along with him to help out.

He taught me (i.e. I deeply internalized) that one didn’t stop working just because the clock had reached a certain time; you stopped when a full part of the job was completed - a wall or ceiling or door, etc. - when returning later to the job wouldn’t affect the quality of the work already done.

He taught me to be professional; work was to be consistent and done as close to perfectly as possible, without exception. I learned to work with full concentration for the entire day, no matter how I was feeling - tiredness, pain, minor illness, lack of desire to work - all were to be disregarded; the show, as it were, must go on.

These habits of being punctual, professional, and focused provided the foundation to get through both schooling and professions, as well as providing the base for coping with life’s travails.

To love God, to love my neighbors as myself, to be kind and soft-spoken as a soft spoken word turns away wrath.(!) The soft-spoken was the thing that was difficult for me, and still is. My mother is 88 and still strong of mind and body.

>6 nohrt4me2:

My parents were not alcoholics, although steady, disciplined, drinkers. A number of their friends, however, were. My parents made sure my sister and I knew early on how dangerous alcohol could be and that we saw up close what an alcoholic's life and death looked like.

What my mother didn't want to teach me:
My mother made fabulous beef-barley soup. When I moved out on my own, and having watched its preparation many times, I tried to make it myself. It wouldn't come out right, even when I checked the ingredients and method with her.

Some years later, probably around Christmas when everyone would be together, I watched her make it once more. At the very end, after all the stewing and simmering had finished, I caught her adding a tablespoon of cider vinegar.

"You never told me to put cider vinegar in at the end!" I exclaimed.

"I shouldn't need to tell you that," she replied. 'Everybody knows that you put a tablespoon of vinegar in beef-barley soup."

Yeah, right. We know that from the womb.

>10 librorumamans: "I shouldn't need to tell you that," she replied. "Everybody knows that..."

A very good comment on our unspoken assumptions. Having lived overseas almost my entire adult life, I learned very early on that a lot of things that we "know" are culturally and geographically specific. As I get older, I'm also learning that many of them are generational. There are many things that I know that everybody knows, but it turns out that younger generations don't know them (like putting cider vinegar in beef-barley soup!). Are we the generation that has seen more and faster change in our lives than any previous generation? Or does every generation think that?

>11 John5918: I think each generation thinks they have undergone (endured) the greatest changes. My parents: invention of TV, (color TV) airline service, flush toilets (although they had them earlier, the rural areas did not have septic systems until well into the 1930's-1940's--- in some areas), computers, aerosol sprays, polio vaccine, telephones (again available before the 1930's, but not so much in rural areas), kidney dialysis, the atomic bomb, cortisone, birth control pills, Slinky!, Mr. Potato Head!, substitutes for those allergic to penicillin, transistor radio, fast food-specifically McDonald's, Barbie Doll, Scotch tape, jukebox/records, drive in movies, photocopier, ball point pen, helicopter

What inventions were "new" to your parents?

P.S. I had help from my mother (aged 87) for this list! She says these were invented from 1930-1950's. The list is only as accurate as her memory; and for the most part she's still pretty much with it!

>12 Tess_W: I think each generation thinks they have undergone (endured) the greatest changes

Yes, that may well be true. I suppose I'm thinking of things such as mass communications, social and political change, social and geographic mobility, the erosion and decline of the class system, globalisation, the ease of international travel, universal suffrage, women's rights, universal access to education, the end of the British and other colonial empires, independence of dozens of new countries, the coming of the National Health Service and other social welfare measures, workers' rights, the explosion of information, the development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction, an awareness of the climate crisis, etc. I'm no historian but I suspect there was much less systemic social change in most of Europe for quite a while before that. There were kings and emperors, there were peasants, few people moved far from their place of birth or their original class/socio-economic status, few people had the opportunity to go to school, life (and death) went on in a socio-economic system which seemed to be basically unchangeable...

I recall a few years back we asked a friend's Irish mother who eventually died aged 102 what was the biggest change she had seen in her life and she immediately said it was the coming of electricity. She could remember the Irish civil war, and it was interesting hearing her first hand experiences of that.

My parents were so different from each other. My mom was a saint. She spent her entire life in waiting on my dad, me and my 4 siblings. What ever we needed always came first. She was kind, friendly, always had an open door for our friends, always had more than enough food cooked to add one more person to the dinner table - she was soft spoken and never yelled. Her biggest threat was ," you better stop it or I'll tell Daddy." Her favorite saying was, "if you don't have something nice to say about someone, don't say anything.

On the other hand my dad was - a hand full. Loved a good party, a good cigar, and a good drink. His laugh was infectious and he was the life of every party. He was a hard worker and taught me a good work ethic, always to be honest - not to lie, cheat, or steal. He was a lady's man - and a man's man - a hunter, and fisherman - a farmer and a had a career at the local steel mill. And by the way, if and when my mom ever did have to report "bad behavior" to my dad, his bark was worse than his bite, so to speak. He talked loud and threw in a few curse words, but he was like a giant teddy bear.