Daughter’s astonishing comment!

everyone has selective memories, mums and grans too.
OP i think your daughter was trying to make a joke;
she'd probably been watching old episodes of from ladette to lady.
i feel sorry for the vegetarian stuck on a beef farm in the middle of nowhere.
youngsters are often overlooked, their preferences and priorities belittled or ignored.
there's bound to be some resentment because of the power dynamic, ie being so often subject to others' decisions.

Smiling at these stories and just thinking of the truth in the old saying:

"A mother's place is in the wrong"!

But we still love them !

I have an elderly neighbour who is frightfully posh, even she didn’t go to finishing school, she went to a Secretarial College in Chelsea where she and her girlfriends lived in a nearby hotel!
She’s lovely, but so posh I’m surprised she speaks to me, she often reminisces about the Balls she went too and says’well you know what is was like’ um, nope, we weren’t invited to many posh Balls on my council estate!
Anyways that’s by the by, kids have selective memories, unless it doesn’t fit with what they are arguing with you about, then they will alter and backtrack on everything they have just said.

Missfoodlove

JaneJudge

Was her other car a Jaguar?

There is nothing worse than swapping the porsche for the lexus

JaneJudge

Was her other car a Jaguar?

sarah1954 Same here both boys out from dawn till dusk, not a care in the world.The biggest compliment I get is they both say they were last generation to have such freedom , and had the best childhood. Makes me feel I did something right .

I can relate to your ham sandwich incident gagagran my daughter went through a vegetarian stage as a teenager as well. We went to stay with relatives in America who had a large beef farm, they had meat at every meal. I can still remember the tears and tantrums and she is 44 now. The American family could not comprehend a meat free meal,

I know one person and I wouldn't have said she was posh but she was from Harpenden

Are you or your daughter very posh missfoodlove? I don’t know anybody who went to finishing school.

Both my husband and I had the most basic of educations, his childhood was happy, mine wasn’t. But we were determined to do better for our children, they were all well educated, we supported them in everything they wanted to do, with the youngest, my life was completely taken over by her passion, and we would spend weekends driving all over the country to various events.
Their friends were always welcome at our home, we had some lovely holidays, it wasn’t perfect, we worked hard, so they were often taken to work with us, but we did our best.
I guess you can never really tell if you’re doing the right thing.

My eldest son blames us for sending him to the wrong school at 11. That is why he never worked at school and did badly he says. He worked in reception class but by year 1 he had no interest in school work and did the minimum all through school. We were always getting called in because he was underachieving. We moved when he was 13. We let him chose the school. He enjoyed it socially but did no work. All our fault he feels!!

A few weeks ago my younger DD now 48 was looking over my shoulder at old photographs - including some of her with her teenage hairstyles. I was asked why I let her walk around looking like that

Nanna
How I agree with that, we lived next door to a farm, and they had three boys, the children would be out from dawn till dusk, in all weathers.
When my son reminisces now, he says I left them to it, and I never had any idea where they were or what they were doing, don’t want to spoil his childhood memories, but I was in and out like a yo-yo checking on them.

We sent our 3 DDs to an independent school from the ages of 10, 9 and 7. DD2 didn’t want to go for the same reasons as OP’s daughter. What a fuss and palaver, I hate it, it’s not fair etc. Fast forward 25 years said daughter is married in Australia with 4 children, bewailing the fact that they can’t afford to educate the children privately as ‘it’s so much better’. I gave her ‘the Look’ and she was modest enough to admit that we’d done the right thing for her. I made sure she realised that if we’d sent her elsewhere she would have probably in later life said it was unfair she’d been treated differently. She actually agreed ?. Oh, the benefit of hindsight.
DD3 suddenly became vegetarian 4 years ago and was furious that I didn’t know. ‘I told you’ erm no you didn’t! This a week after a huge family Christmas holiday including the Oz family, where a vast amount of turkey, beef, ham, pheasant and more had been consumed by absolutely everyone. As a parent you just have to suck it up apparently.

I think some people have to blame someone else if they are unhappy, have regrets etc. I certainly blame my parents for my horrendous childhood. Most on here seem to have given their children the best childhood they could.

My three don't seem to begrudge anything that they were made to do or stopped from doing that they wanted. In fact, apart from DS3 not learning a musical instrument (we didn't think he had the staying power to justify the outlay), I don't think there were any cases of this.

I do remember asking my mother why she didn't send me to ballet lessons, as I was always badly coordinated and gangly and they would have been good for me. She said "You didn't want to go". I don't remember being asked.

So it's not only millennials who have selective memories...

Hmmm, my children seem to have gone the other way. Now that they want me to be looking after their children while they work, I seem to have turned into the perfect mother. Worrying because I never felt I was that good at it!! I actually think I am better with grandchildren then I ever was with my own

Are you kidding me! They ALL have selective memories. And they bring up that ONE time that you smacked, chastised, ignored, laughed at them etc etc at EVERY opportunity. Get used to it. It’s called being a parent.

Some of mine have a totally different view of their childhood from the others even though they were all brought up in the same way. Strange, isn’t it? Have to say they all remember the freedom they had to wander around and visit friends unlike today’s kids who seem to be ferried round in cars. They always walked to school in primary school though they had to catch buses/trains for high school.

According to our sons, it seems we could never do right for doing wrong.... Even so, they have turned out to be good husbands and fathers, both with good jobs and lovely wives and families. We must have got something right, surely

EllanVannin

Mainly in those who were born in the early to mid 80's. Unusual for such behaviour in those born before.

Not always! My DS is very cross she didn’t have tennis lessons.
Two of us did and she could have had them if she had wanted them.
She is certain she would have been Wimbledon champion if she hadn’t been deprived ?

My 46yr old daughter said I should have made her work harder in school, she forgets the times I caught her watching tv in her room instead of studying and grounding her for not studying.

My two D's were born in the early 60's---no complaints, things were tough at times but everyone coped. However they went throughout their adult lives was down to them. I'd guided them through childhood and they learned from that and never to expect anything without working hard for it.

They've all been working and continue to do so, apart from StepD who's retired, but their values were in the right place.

2 stepchildren too, so 4 children in all. I didn't push any of them to do anything that they didn't want to do and what they all did was under their own volition without expectations. It's their offsprings who expect the moon. Changeing times

My mum " tried " pushing me but I wasn't having any

We're all close as a family, big as it now is, and to my mind nobody has ever commented in a negative way at all. They were all grateful for what they had, which is fine by me.

Perhaps worth remembering that we were teenagers too. In fact, wasn't the word coined for our generation?

So glad I’m not alone.
Our oldest daughter makes us sound like the most evil of parents.
I don’t know where these recollections come from, some are loosely based on fact, some are pure fantasy.
She went to an independent school, which has apparently made her life difficult because when she went to university she was ill prepared for the lifestyle.
She says within our friendship group, she was the oldest child, do always had to look after them all, absolutely not true, we were aware she was probably a bit old to play with all the others, so we always included one of her friends.
She had endless chores to do, I think with her brother they were on dishwasher duty, and if they wanted extra money they were expected to work.
Oh, and she was banned from reading in bed, maybe I’d say sometimes, it was time to turn the light off and go to sleep.
I just don’t know where it all comes from!