As a dad, I think about this fact so much.
I still feel just like a kid with no clue about everything, but I still have to do stuff, because I’m responsible for my own kids now.
I feel the same way often. And the kids look up to me with the absolute confidence and trust that their dad knows what he’s doing and will know what to do when they have trouble. I know that’s how it should be so they can be children. But at the same time I know it’s just not true and I’m just winging it.
my kids have a pretty good grasp that i’m also just finding my way in the world, and that it’s okay.
i feel like, anyone who comes across as though they have it all figured out are likely just unaware that the catalyst that brings it all crashing down is never really THAT far away.
Yeah, there’s a balance of “I’m not perfect, but I will always be here to look out for you” that has to be struck. Too far one way and the moment you break, the kids are gonna be scared and confused at what’s happening. And too far the other puts the responsibility on the child to take on a parent role (and believe me when I say that fucks you up)
You need to be a little more generous to yourself, friend. Compared to a kid, you do know what you’re doing, and thankfully kid troubles are mostly not a big deal, so you probably will know what to do. From a certain point of view.
Do you think there is value in teaching kids, from a young age, that their parents are not infallible? If not, why? If so, how would you teach that to a kid in a way they would understand and incorporate?
My parents failed me a lot. My childhood sucked, and because of that I go through life numb.
I couldn’t even start to heal until I realized my parents are people. Flawed people. The first time my mom came to me for reassurance, I understood the insecure woman that was doing her best and putting up a strong front.
The time my dad opened up and almost apologized for what was so obviously the wrong thing, I saw a man who isn’t unwilling to acknowledge his failings, he’s fundamentally unable to recognize them.
There are no adults, we’re all just children putting up a front. It makes you feel safe to think the people in control of us are competent… If you like how things are. Otherwise, it’s like living under a cruel god
Understanding they’re people doing the best they can makes you feel a hell of a lot less alone when things aren’t good
Believing your parents are infallible is good for one thing - equating belief in authority with safety. It doesn’t make them happier or better equipped to actually handle the world - it only makes them feel safe under very specific circumstances
Don’t tell your children everything, but don’t lie to them. You’re responsible for teaching them how the world works - lie to them about your own competence, and they’ll be crippled in understanding until they see through your lies
I think kids come to learn this on their own. But at the same time, normalizing being open about emotions is a good thing, to help promote an environment where saying “I’m okay, I’m just having a rough day today” is something that’s just normal.
But there’s a sense of security to parents being infallible that can be dangerous to break. I lost that feeling with my mother when I was five, in a pretty major way to be fair, and for the next few years I had nightmares about everyone I loved dying and I wouldn’t be able to stop them. Kids are powerless to the world around them in a lot of ways, and rely on adults to protect them and teach them how to protect themselves. So by seeing your parents as able to get through anything, you have a sense of safety at home.
So basically, normalize small challenges and openings to not be perfect, but be trying your best. Allow being human. But make sure the kid knows that no matter what, you will make sure both you and them are okay. Normalize the bumps in the road, and always reaching the end alright.
Not the person above, but I think it’s very important to teach that parents aren’t infallible or all-knowing. Everyone makes mistakes, even the people we base ourselves off so much. Admitting mistakes and saying you’re sorry to your kid when you’re actually wrong can help build their humility
Besides, kids tend to repeat and emulate their parents’ styles when they have their own kids
With the still-developing prefrontal, good luck.
Ngl wing it with confidence and reassurance and when they grow up it’ll be even more impressive
Was out with my daughter and her friend, and we found a wallet on the ground. The friend picked it up and immediately handed it to me, and now I’m ‘what am I meant to do with it?’. But only in my head, because I’m the grown up who just can deal with everything.
Try to find an address in the wallet and mail it. Otherwise, hand it to the police.
It felt wrong to put it in my bag, so I held it out in front of me like a dirty nappy, and took it to the nearby shopping centre’s concierge.
Yep: you gotta hold it so that it’s clearly visible as not in your pocket and thus claimed by you.
This, oddly, seems to be The Way.
That’s why I think people shouldn’t have kids until they have at least a couple of hundred years of life experience.
People should have 10 years of experience with having a kid before they’re allowed to have a kid
And at least two related certs.
You’ll doom humanity like that.
I realize that’s a joke, but we waited until our 30s to have a kid specifically so we could have life experience and more financial stability before taking on that responsibility. I think that’s the best way to do it. Being 46 with a 13-year-old is a lot easier than it would have been for me 13 years ago.
The other side of that is worth considering too. Being 46 with a 23 year old would be great.
I’m a mom whose kids are all grown, and I still feel it to this day. 😂
Lmao I’m a grown kid who’s helping teach my dad a lot and it’s so funny to see the back and forth, to see him excited about his work softball team or messing something up. He’s one of those “always need to look fully in control” types so it’s refreshing to see him actually be human sometimes
I’m glad to read that!
I’m almost 40 and still feel this way. My kids are 15 and 7.
Oh my god this is so true.
I recently heard “Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Collins, which I hadn’t heard since the 80s when I was a kid. It immediately brought back memories of being at home and Mom playing that song a lot, with just the two of us in the house, after Dad left.
Looking back at those memories through my adult eyes (I have a nearly-photographic memory and can vividly remember even ancient memories as if I’m still there), I can see my mom’s sadness and loneliness.
And then I realize she was my age. She had a little five year old boy. She was alone, unsure what to do. Putting on a smiling face not just for me but for herself too, cleaning the house with that song blasting. Like, I can watch the memories like video and I can see the heartache I couldn’t see back then.
I just want to go back in time, wrap my arms around her, and hold her tight.
These are the comments that make Lemmy great.
OP has posted some actually a showerthought and hence we are getting great responses as well. I am seeing a lot of communities not sticking to their true usage, hopefully this is a start towards it.
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I can relate to this in a way.
My ex died last year from breast cancer. She was 33.
Our relationship came to an end 4 years before she died and 2 years before her diagnosis.
She did horrible, horrible things to me for the last 3ish years of our relationship. She’d cheat, lie, gaslight, convince me our family was going back to normal and then smack me again with something.
We were horrible for each other. I knew we would be when we were still kids. We were great friends, but our personalities weren’t right for building a life together.
She moved in with me as soon as she turned 18. She was my closest friend and my roommate. We slept in the same bed for months without touching each other, and once we did, we were inseparable for years.
I ended up developing a drug problem. She had to deal with that. She never got her license and wouldn’t help around the house. I drove her everywhere she had to go. We worked at the same place and she worked on my days off. I couldn’t move forward in any way because she refused to get her license and pull herself together. She would fake sick and I’d have to go work in her place, clocked in as her because overtime wasn’t allowed and they’d send someone else in if I didn’t. We needed the money so I did.
I resented her so much. I’d get drunk and occasionally let her know it too. “I can’t do shit because I’m responsible for everything in this house. Get your license for the love of god!” She resented me, and she let me know it.
When I finally got myself together, her resentment had already reached a boiling point. I was ready to just forget everything and focus on my family and doing the right thing. She was cheating and looking for a way out.
When I first caught her I knew I was partly to blame. I went into overdrive trying to fix things. After catching her about the 5th time, I was done trying. I left.
She lost her shit. Stalked me, threatened me, you name it. She ended up getting committed by her mom for a week stay in a hospital when I started seeing someone else. She wanted to fix it then, but it was too late. Timing and circumstances. I was in love with someone else. She got diagnosed with BPD, started getting treatment and making changes.
The last guy I caught her with ended up with her. He’s a really great guy and she was lucky to find him. He still goes out of his way to spend time with my daughter because he genuinely loves her. I’m so thankful that she found him. With BPD she really did get lucky finding the guy.
Both of us got our lives together. I don’t take the girl I’m with for granted at all. My ex got her license, a job she loved, a house, a car. Then, cancer.
It eats me alive that she had a terrible childhood where she was abused and treated like no one, then we had the misfortune of meeting each other and dragging each other down. She spent all of her life living in misery and hell, finally had two good years, suffered horribly and died.
I deserve to feel guilt. I really do. I couldn’t have known that we could do so much better if we just got away from each other. I had to experience something else to know it. I had to see her experience something else to know it.
If she had left me when her mother came to try to get her to come home when she was 18, she could have had a decent life. She could have been the person she dreamed of being and I could have been the person I dreamed of being.
Instead she sat in misery for the only shot she had, for the entirety of her one life, and I was a source of that misery.
I’m here, living a wonderful life with a great woman and beautiful family. I have everything a person could ever want.
We were both shit to each other. That girl never got a chance.
If I could go back in time, I would have walked away when our daughter was an infant.
I can’t do that. All I can do is be as kind as I can be to the people I love and do my best to never live a life like that again. Her words echo in my head though sometimes, “You made my life hell and now you’re just gonna walk away and be a goddamn prince for someone else? For someone who didn’t stay up all night making sure you didn’t fucking overdose and die? She’ll never know what a monster you truly are because I got the pleasure of being some big goddamn life lesson for you? Well horrah! Treat her good then. I hope you both die. I really do.”
It sucks we can’t be born knowing how to treat people.
The worst thing is growing up and seeing them less and less to the point where once you do end up seeing them, they look WAY older than your mental image of them. Cherish your parents while you have them
My mom will be 89 in a couple of months and it’s so hard to watch her get so frail when her mind is still so sharp. I recently started recording her stories, like how she became a Univac programmer in the 60’s. I cherish every minute because I hear the clock ticking and it’s SO loud and never goes away. I’m going to miss my mom so much. It’s like my heart’s already breaking under the weight of losing her.
Sounds like you’re kind of grieving in advance, which is natural and healthy so long as you channel it into something constructive like you are.
Everyone’s parents will leave, yours is the best case scenario.
Your mum was a programmer in the 60s? She must be incredibly in so many ways!
My dad had cancer last year and though he’s got through it it’s aged him so much… gotta hold on to the good memories
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When you are a grown up you don’t realize you are watching your parents die.
I definitely started to see my parents decline in my early 20s. They’re still going, but age is coming for them fast.
Even when my mother was in a hospital bed we’d brought into the house, thin like a toothpick, I was still wondering what her odds of survival were. It’s so easy to be in denial. Then one moment she just stopped breathing and that was it.
My daughter had to experience this at 13.
She and her mom didn’t get along at all, and so she’s got that to deal with. She’s a kid so she probably would have done things differently if she could have managed to actually believe it was the end. It wasn’t her fault, her mom was mean, but she still has to carry on with that thought.
Life would be great if it wasn’t for the end being so unpredictable. It really gets to you when you think about it.
I seen a picture of my mom in her 20s when I was about 25 and it just slammed me for like a month. We rarely talk and there isn’t much I can do about it and time just keeps slipping away. I look at my fiancé’s family and they’re up in the morning calling each other right away. Every morning either she calls her mom or her mom calls her. Our children sit down with her and talk to grandma. Her sister calls not long after that.
I know that we should do our best to stay close with the people we love, but personalities are what they are and my people are extreme introverts. We call each other when we need something and we never say no, but that’s about it.
I’m sorry about your mom.
When my grandfather was dying, there was a moment I will never forget. He was a very religious man and raised very religious children. I was the only atheist in the room. We had been told that it was over, there was no hope, it was the end. He had survived heart attacks and cancers, and he believed that he survived those things because god renewed him.
Any way. He was laying there on that bed, surrounded by his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.
My aunt was drinking a tea. Out of nowhere he sat up in the bed, took off the oxygen mask, smiled from ear to ear, grabbed her tea and took a drink. He got up on his feet, took another drink, started to walk forward and then fell back on the bed looking like he’d just been completely defeated.
Being religious, my family interpreted this as something divine.
I seen a man who believed that god would save him jump up with a rush of faith only to be knocked down by reality. He believed with all of his heart in that moment that god had “delivered” him. All he had to do was get up and make it so.
He didn’t put the mask back on and took his last breaths shortly after that.
He was a great man, and he died surrounded by almost all of the life he created. I’m glad he got that. I hope I get something like that.
The last thing he ever said to me I couldn’t understand through the mask and I pretended to hear him because of how hard he was struggling to say it. I’ll probably be wishing I knew what that was at the end of my own life if I have time to think about it.
I hope you’re doing well. Take care bud.
Thank you for telling me. That was beautiful. I’m crying at McDonalds.
I had a Peruvian GF for a while and she spoke with her mother back in Peru every single day.
That inspired me to contact my father a little more. I live in the same city as him. I should reach out so much more. His wife tells me he loves when I’m there.
I did get him an xbox for christmas a few years ago, and we play world of tanks together. He’s nearing 80, and knows the specs and history of like every tank. Like which battles it was deployed it, what engineering challenges they had to design it, etc. He was a mechanic in the army and he’s a geek.
He’s rather inhibited in many ways. Same template as me, but less lucky with the psychedelics, yoga, parties, ceremony, festivals that helped draw me out and teach me to be social.
He’s got social skills of course. He’s wise. He overcomes that introversion, and his wife helps push him out and connect him. He loves to tell stories of technical problems he solved in the forest service. Seems to have an eidetic memory for all things mechanical.
But if he’s not exercising, he starts to fade. Luckily he does exercise. I also have to hold back my own desire to push him on health stuff. What I keep running into is that it’s not really my right to extend his life if he doesn’t want to. I’m conflicted about how selfish I’m being when I’m encouraging him to take care of himself.
He keeps mentioning that his father died around his age. Finally I was like “Dad, Grandpa died in an industrial accident. It wasn’t his natural death”.
I dunno. It’s a weird thing, but he seems a little too resigned to death. Or I’m in denial again. I don’t want to lose him, but I will.
At his age you definitely have came to terms with loss.
One of my closest friends was in a horrible relationship for 24 years. All she wanted was for him to marry her and give her the life he promised over and over again. She was so scared to lose him. He’d cheat, she’d forgive him. He’d do it again, she’d forgive him.
He was the only man she had ever slept with. She never even thought about being with anyone else. She just sat there and suffered. He was 15 years older than her and a very prominent member of the community. He started preaching and he stopped having sex with her to “be right with the lord”.
In less than two years her whole world collapsed. First her baby brother died, then her mother, then her father, then her older brother. Her only other sibling tried to rob her older brother’s daughter of her inheritance. She helped the daughter win in court.
So in less than two years she lost her ENTIRE family.
One day she called me, like she had done a hundred times before, “I’m leaving him.”
I said to her, “You ain’t gonna break it off with him. You’re just upset with him because he’s the same jerk he’s always been.”
She replied, “angryseal, I have lost. I have lost and lost and lost, and you know what? Life goes on. It’ll keep going on until I die too. I have learned that I can survive loss, that I will always be facing loss. It’s just around the corner. I’m not scared to lose him. I’m not scared to die, and you know what? This won’t kill me. I’m going to forget the whole relationship and find someone and just have sex. No strings. I swear to god.”
She’s had a friend with benefits for over a year now. She’s totally flipped into this person who is 100% in control of what she can be in control of.
She’s 51 years old, looks 35, and she’s having the time of her life.
I thought this related somehow but my toddler is crying in my lap and I can’t remember my point. I can’t focus enough to go back and try. Sorry if this don’t connect and sorry for any mistakes. I can’t proofread at the moment. :p
Man you didn’t have to say that… :(
Life is short. Time moves quicker and quicker and you always think you have more… It just occurred to me last month that my mom will turn 70 next year and just how little time I have left with my parents.
Yeesh that’s a dark hard truth I’ve begun living. All three parents on their own glide slope and it’s just one mild crisis after another.
It was really weird for me to have some honest talks with my parents once I was well into adulthood. It took me way too long to realize they are people with their own problems to solve and a life and preferences, a personal history and all that. It’s weird how you tend to see your parents differently from other people until they deem you old enough to open up.
My parents died when I was young. Seeing other people’s adult relationships with their parents is so foreign to me. My parents are frozen in time in my memories, and I can’t imagine what their lives were really like or what kind of People they were.
Same. My mother died when I was 26. My step mother is now 70, and her mother just died a couple months ago.
I can’t imagine my mother still being here, and still being here until I’m old.
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I always thought the universe did a nasty by making the ideal breeding age for humans to be when it really is one of the worst times mentally/emotionally. 20 or so yrs later when more experience (and hopefully wisdom) has been gained, the eggs are shrivelling and the bullets are misfiring.
This makes me sad. I just realized that I could be part of it but I spent most time away drinking, partying or playing vidya, and not caring
If you really feel like getting sentimental, check out this Wait But Why, specifically the “Relationships” section. There’s also this awesome Kurzgesagt video which was inspired by it.
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Don’t forget about the time wasted on social media or other useless stuff on the internet.
Don’t watch that video if you have to focus on something else in the next hour. That shit fucked me up.
Imagine that first strand of DNA trying to replicate in the young Earth against all the odds. Successfully changing and growing more complex, gradually improving over billions of years. All that toil and struggle will end with you unless you spaff into a fertile hole.
Such elegant wording
Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans
It’s never too late mate. Maybe you could still do something about it.
Please don’t just start posting the top 100 shower thoughts from reddit.
Just came here to say I swear I’ve seen this at least once on reddit before smh
I’ve never seen it before
My dad didn’t grow up. He just got older.
felt this
It was weird for me when I was finally older than my parents when they had me, and I was still a barely functioning human being. Props to you, mom and dad. You did the best you could and I appreciate that you brought me into this world (most days).
It’s hitting me kind of hard watching my folks in their mid-60s. Their health is starting to slip a little bit in small but noticeable ways. I never really saw it until recently
I just spent the last 2 hours before bed playing Minecraft with my 7 and 5 year old and I ate chicken nuggets for dinner… I may never grow up…
Mate, that sounds like an awesome night. I’d call that a win!
So is this community just going through Reddit and verbatim reposting old threads?
This place needs content, can’t have your cake and eat it too. Just unfollow the reddit sub if you don’t want to see it.
What do you mean with the cake thing in this context?
I beleive they mean you can’t expect there to be content and also expect it to be fresh and new.
I think “have your cake and eat it too” is a little ill fitting but its the general gist of wanting something and then wanting it in another way which is not compatible with the first way.
That is honestly such a pathetic content goblin retort.
Just wait until the bots get here, hoo boy.
Followed by ad companies making shower thoughts about their products.
Followed by Propaganda accounts having shower thoughts not about Tiannamen Square.
I’m hoping bots won’t be too much of a thing, because farming account karma isn’t a thing. There will be some, but hopefully it’s not literally everything like Reddit was by the end.
Let me make it feel like home: “triscuits are just savory shredded wheat” ™
Followed by Propaganda accounts having shower thoughts not about Tiannamen Square.
Lemmygrad seems to be full of tankies and has been here for a long time…
Reddit front page was also a bunch of old Reddit threads/memes getting reposted. Feels just like home.
What do you think the name is? (I have already) red it!
Yeah
Fine with me. The posts are new.
This one hits home. One day you just start seeing your parent/guardian as a frail old person who needs your assistance and love (obvs if it was a positive relationship). It makes me feel important but it also scare me knowing we’re reaching the end. I know, no one has life guaranteed but you know, growing older just pushes you towards that end anyway.
I hit me hard when i did the math and realized how old my grandparents were when I was a kid.
