<< back to Parenting/Family Issues

If I Could Do It All Over Again As A Parent, I Would

• “...not buy every new baby item that comes on the market, thinking that it makes me a more prepared mom.” -Mother of three, ages 8, 8 & 4

• “...worry less about lost sleep. You catch up eventually.” - Mother of three elementary school kids

• “...not stress out about picky eating habits. Everything seems to be sorting itself out now.” - Mother of two, ages 4 & 2

• “...not stress so much about what they would or would not eat. They are now healthy young adults and all that worry was for nothing.” - Mother of an adult son and daughter

• “...have relaxed when I was on the playground with them. I was too concerned about them getting hurt to let them feel free to explore. They picked up on my apprehension and as a result were hesitant to take risks until well into elementary school. I also would have let them get really dirty with reckless abandon when they played outside.” - Mother of two college-age kids

• “...let them dress themselves and I wouldn’t have worried about the result.” - Mother of three grown kids and a 7th grader

• “...not sweat how clean my house was (or not).” - Mother of three adult children

• “...let my kids wear all those ‘fancy’ clothes instead of saving them for that special event, only to find they had outgrown them.” - Mother of 8-year-old twin sons and a preschool daughter

• “...do more silly, ‘let's break the rules’ things like suggesting we have ice cream only for dinner or wearing old Halloween costumes just because or writing all over the windows with wax crayons or blowing bubbles in our kitchen instead of outside. Kids remember this fun, offbeat stuff.” - Mother of a son and daughter in middle school

• “...spend more time sitting on the floor playing and less time worrying about how we are going to clean all these toys up.” - Mother of three young children and a teenager

• “...not been so busy to come home and have dinner with my kids when they were young, as, now that they are teenagers, they are often too busy to be home to have dinner with us!” - Father of two teenagers

• “...have started chores much earlier!” -Mother of four, ages 13, 6, 4, & 2

• “... make the time to snuggle and read to each of them every day.” - Mother of three, ages 10, 8 & 5

• “...take more time each day to ‘smell the flowers’ and do less rushing from one activity to another. I would also try to see the world through my children's unadulterated eyes more often, as they are keenly intuitive about people and the world around them.” - Mother of a daughter, 15 and a son, 10

• “...give myself a break and realize that I was doing a pretty good job!” - Mother of two sons, 6 & 2 and a daughter, 7 months

• “...have had more children.”- Mother of three college-age children

• “...not have been so hard on myself, expecting myself to be perfect and to produce perfect children. Children are not (and are not supposed to be) perfect.” - Mother of three adult daughters and four young grandchildren

• “...believed the old advice of ‘This too shall pass’ when I got upset about some behavior or worried about a situation that seemed insurmountable at the time.” - Mother of five adult children and grandmother of 13

Parents and grandparents contributed to this article. This article was first published in the Spring-Summer 2008 issue of Early Childhood.