They were not nice. They were good parents and they were and are good people. My failings are on my account; any good I have or have done is on them.
If you’ve seen “That '70s Show,” you’ve met my parents.
My father was very nice. People took to him. Unfortunately, he had a heart attack (I have some reason to think both he and I reacted especially badly to smoking) at 41 and a second one at 63 did him in.
My mother was a bit more complicated. Mostly nice, except she had no self-esteem and often resorted to exaggeration to boost her ego (like saying she had some college, when she actually dropped out of HS). Since her mother constantly put her down, I can understand it.
That said, I had a very happy childhood and I think they were wonderful parents.
Ditto. Honestly, sometimes I don’t understand how my father can just handle so much. Handle so much without ever letting it effect how he treats others. I don’t know what I’ll do when he’s gone and the idea of being such an amazing anchor in the lives of the ones I love even when life is a monsoon seems overwhelming-to-impossible to me.
Nice yes but parents first, and never tried to be friends till we each were 25 or so and established. Growing up there were rules around the house. You got up brushed your teeth and made your bed and only then could you come down for breakfast. The rest of the day and seasons of the year all had their own rules I won’t get into. As parents they were definitely into these are the things you need to know points, always that.
Dad could be a drill sergeant when it was necessary but otherwise was the strong quiet easy going type. I was the youngest and by the time I was 15 or so and merited my father’s disapproval he would look me over and quietly say “Consider yourself spoken to” and leave it at that.
My father married a woman that his mother definitely did not want him to marry. Social status thing. He married the daughter of a poor widow, and his mother wanted him to marry into a more wealthy family. She even had the girl picked out for him but he refused. I was not old enough to be aware of this since my grandmother died when I was 10. However my older siblings tell me it was tense and ice cold between my mother and her and we only lived 3 houses apart.
I have to ask; what do you mean when you say “parents as friends/not friends”? I trusted (and still trust) my parents implicitly, teenage wangst aside. They were my rocks. But, my buddies were different. I would never go for instance on a late night pub crawl with the 'rents (I would have a stroke just thinking about it), but do it all the time with friends, as I am sure my parents did.
For the most part my mom was nice. She was depressed since before I was born, though, and there were times when that and/or medication issues made her less so. I have far more memories of her being nice than not, though. My mom was one of my favorite people, and AK84, I’d have no issues with calling her a friend. We had a lot in common, and as an adult there were few people I’d prefer to spend the day hanging out with. I miss her terribly.
My dad…He’s biopolar, and even when he’s reasonably well medicated is irritable. He spent most of my childhood yelling at my brother and me, and now he’s more likely to yell at the TV or rant about politics but he’s just as grouchy as he’s always been. He tries, but he’s not really all that nice.
I can’t speak for the poster but often times it’s when a parent is more concerned with being “liked” and thought of as cool by their child(ren) than with being a good parent. I think such dynamics at times get conflated in the minds of well-meaning parents.
Where my parents nice? Yes.
Yeah, in my day parents didn’t go to concerts with their kids. They didn’t play sports with their kids. They didn’t really do anything with their kids.
Kids were kids, and adults were adults, and the only time we came together was meal time, or when we were employed as cheap labour. I’m not kidding. I never did anything with my parents, ever. But they were nice people. We never even went to movies together. It sounds weird to think of it now.
Well, for example, I just got back from a 12 day vacation with my mom and my son. Now, it’s worth noting that this was a 12 day “tour the southwest in a tiny RV” vacation, no pub crawling. My mom is my friend, but I have lots of friends and she’s not my preferred partner for everything. But I’d rather tour state parks with her than with anyone I know: we like he same sorts of things for the same amount of time. We know a lot of the same things, so we can talk about birds and geology and history easily.
In fact, we left my husband and my dad at home because my mom and I enjoy hanging out and we would have been less friendly with each other if we’d both had to be focused on our husband’s happiness/wishes as well as our own. Mum mom is not my only friend, and she’s not just my friend, but "friend is part of our relationship. And while she was more a “boss” when I was a kid, we’ve always enjoyed shared interests . . .books, history, talking about human nature and ethics. I hope to have the same sort of friendship with my son.
One of the benefits of growing older is getting to know your parents as real people.
I was in my forties before that happened. Once in awhile they’d throw in some parental advice. But we mostly could spend time together as adults.
It’s quite nice talking casually as adults.
So true. But the flip side of getting to know your parents as real people is to recognize their human failings. Depending on a person’s childhood and the person themselves, that can be somewhat of a difficult thing to come to terms with.
I think some posters are conflating the relationship they had with their parents when they became adults (like Manda JO) with what was the case when they were children. I have a lot of similar interests with bth my parents, my mother and I both love reading, we go to literary festivals, she and I (and my father for that matter) love theater and the Opera. My father and I share similar interests in history and politics.
The fact that a person shares similar interests as their parents is not surprising, after all they influence you more than anyone. However, when you are a child, the relationship is different.
I never went to concerts with my parents(my teenage self would be mortified at the thought) or at least go as “friends”. When we did (and my parents love music so we did so often) it was basically understood to be a family event out. Be it a musical function, a movie or a literary festival. A significant portion of the time, we went because one or both of them thought it would be “educational” (though I would not be surprised if that was at times just an excuse).
My father played a lot of sports with me. But when I was a kid, there was an absolute teacher-student vibe in it. Be it cricket in the backyard, or tennis or swimming at the club, he was teaching me. When I played, I played with my friends. When I grew older, we started playing squash and golf together and still do on occasion.
A long way of saying; I don’t think the relationship you have as an adult, is germane to what you had as a child or teen.
How could you possibly believe this? I think it’s very germane to the relationship you have as an teen/adult. The relationship, particularly the early relationship, or lack thereof, that you form with you parents-mother especially-is a hugely formative time that greatly influences and help form the bonds and relationships that you have with them as adults and growing young people.
I have a story, which is not exactly of my Dad being nice, but is probably the most illustrative one I have.
It was early 2000’s . My Nan, dad’s mum, had recently died, and dad and his brother, my uncle, were sorting out all the stuff, as you do. Via email, since Dad lives in England. As it happens, Mum was visiting me at the time, and was being cc’d in on all the various correspondence, and often reading it at my house, though not taking much part in the discussions since - not really her decisions to be making.
At the other end of the conversation… Uncle and Aunty share an email - a thing I can’t really wrap my head around when people do it - Privacy Fail! - but whatever works for them. In this case, what this meant was that Dad was constantly trying to ask questions of his brother and getting back answers from his sister-in-law - not what was wanted!
I don’t even remember what the issue was now, but he’d asked a “what should we do about…” question and Aunt had barged in with a “oh, we should definitely…”.whatever. And Dad replied “No, that’s a silly idea.”
Mum’s reading this mail at my house. I’m reading over her shoulder. When we get to this point we stop.
She looks at me.
I look at her.
“Wow.” says Mum. “He’s really cross, isn’t he?”
So yeah - that’s what my dad looks like when really cross. A person calmly and firmly telling another person that their idea is silly. This is My Dad at Maximum Snark.
He’s nice.
(My mother on the other hand, is perfectly capable of getting actually cross with people who deserve it. She basically functions as the ambition and drive end of the partnership- my dad is incredibly intelligent, but I think regards ambition as a bit of a waste of time that could be better devoted to acquiring interesting knowledge. I’m very like my dad)
Without going into details: not nice.
I wouldn’t word it the way AK84 said. But I get what he is saying.
As I said upthread, my father was kind of a dick growing up. His Fun Dad routine was great, but most of the time he was kind of scary to me–a figure I avoided at all costs. I can’t think of any conversation we had between the ages of 8 and 20 that wasn’t awkward and fraught with anxiety in some way.
But that’s not the case today. He’s not the first person I call when I’m going through something, mind you, but if he happens to call me at the right time, we can talk for a good long time. And he’s actually better at being a compassionate listener than my mother–who prides herself on being the “comforting” one between the two. She’s always ready to jump in with unhelpful advice and belittling commentary, whereas he’s great at validating and offering up sympathy. You would have never thought that he would have this advantage over my mother based on how he interacted with me when I was a kid.
Every time I visit them, I try to spend one-on-one time with both parents. I liked being around my mother better when I was a kid because she tolerated my presence more, and we would bond over the same TV shows and movies, stuff like that. But now I tend to gravitate towards my father. Now that he isn’t such a powder keg, I can see the similarities in our personalities. And I’m sure that he can see stuff about me that he couldn’t see when I was an irritating little kid in a house full of other irritating kids.
That’s not to say I didn’t bond with him in childhood. But his negativity during my childhood did a serious number on those bonds. I really believe that if my father had died during my adolescence, it would have registered as a big “meh” for me, even though he was a stand-up father in almost every measurable way. But I know I would be pained if he died today.
My father was, and still is, very nice and helpful to me and my sister, and fun to hang out with. I see him often.
My mother was nice some of the time, and not always nice at other times (yelling at me, hitting me, and wrecking my art projects when she was mad at me.) She’s still around, but is awkward to be around because she’s “not all there.” I do love her, but I have an awkward relationship with her now, and I don’t see her often.
I think you’re defining “friend” very narrowly. Obviously, my relationship with my mom is different now that I’m an adult, but it’s part of a spectrum–even when I was little, I felt like my mom genuinely liked me as a person and enjoyed spending time with me for its own sake, not just to satisfy her responsibility to shape and educate me. That element was there, too, but it didn’t overwhelm the other (possibly because I was a pretty open to being molded/educated).
My mom had a life apart from me, then and now, and I certainly had a life apart from her starting at some age. But there has always been an element of friendship in our relationship, unless you are going to define friendship as narrowly as “people your own age”. I feel like the friendship we have now was built on and developed out of those elements laid down when I was young, and they really didn’t compromise my parent’s ability to effectively mold/educate me.