Sometimes my boy is interested to hear “stories from my life” ( as if his mom is a dinosaur) and he asks questions aboutmy childhood or young age. So i tell him a lot of fun stuff, and i mean, im pretty opened about it although i try to make it funny. For example, i told him how my dad caught me drunk and how i smoked cigarettes and ate toothpaste to hide the smell… He asked if i did drugs and i said yes…but not the dangerous ones.
Like, im not trying to present myself as a perfect role model and, i dont know, i think its okay bc people are not to be judged for their flaws…i just hope though that he doesnt talk around like " hey guys my mom has smoked pot"
Im trying to let him have wide but opened views because i know how much i suffered because my family was so conservative.
One thing that i still hide though, is my illness and my meds. He didn’t ask, i dont tell. Still he heard a word “depression” and uses it like " im gonna fall into depression because of school".
Thats funny and also sad.
I usually share some of the bad stuff I did and the bad results that happened cause of it, I think it makes you more of a real person and it helps them open up to you about things that may be going sideways in their life
Hahah I don’t try to do smoke in hiding, I just smoke in shame instead. Also I tend not to smoke as much during school entering hours. I’m a bad role model for impressionable youth. Simply because I do not work.
Of course I wouldn’t tell a 2 year old that I enjoyed smoking… I’d tell him not to smoke to be better than me. Well… only if he asked about smoking. You sound like a fun dinosaur mom Sarad I’m sure your kid will be open minded and that is a good thing in my humble opinion. An open mind is a beating heart.
Whew! You found a tough subject. Kids can sense when you’re patronizing them, but sometimes that is the best thing to do. A lot of the time they take information about their role models and use it as a template for their own lives. It’s hard for them to understand human frailty. If I had kids, which I don’t, I would try to be as sincere and as honest as I could, but I would shelter them from some things. I don’t know how I would handle my drinking problem with my kids. I might try to tell them that I had been an out of control drinker, and it caused me more suffering than I cared to endure. That might make them lose respect for me, but I would let them know that since I am adult, and I have so much more experience than them, they had to heed what I say.
i told my kid somethings that i thought he might understand for the age he was.
I didnt at all mind telling him not to be chatty about it with friends. There is nothing wrong with children learning what is discretion, and when to use it.
As mentioned by another post here, i also let him know the results of something. This can be a good reinforcer to kids that actions and decisions come with consequences.
When I was going through my punk rock phase in life, my parents were pretty against it.
To make a long story short, I consulted with a friend who worked at a record store who was about the same age as my parents. And he told me: “The more parents remember what it was like to be a teen/kid, the cooler they often are.”
And by cool he didn’t mean hip. I think what he really meant was empathetic.
For me, the answer to this question changes depending on the age of the kid. But really, he’s the your son and you should raise him how you see fit.
I wish my relatives would have been more open about their mental health struggles, though. As far as I know, I have no family history of mental health issues, but then three out of four siblings wound up hearing voices, and that didn’t just come from nowhere. We suspect our grandmother also heard voices, and just kept it very hushed up. If she had told my parents, they would have been able to keep an eye out for signs from us kids, and we might all have gotten help earlier.
