Every time my mom visits, I love hearing stories about what it was like when she raised me and my brother. I think raising kids is much more complicated now, but just because it was simpler back then, I’m not sure that it was any easier! I thought it’d be interesting to share how differently my parents did things back in the day, compared to what the norm is now.
– I never slept in a crib. My mom coslept with us.
– I’ve never been in a car seat. I don’t know if they even sold car seats back in Korea when I was a baby. But even when my brother and I came to America as toddlers, we never sat in a car seat.
– My mom fed us water in bottles as infants. In America, only breastmilk or formula is suggested for the first 6 months of a baby’s life.
– We slept with blankets from birth. Nowadays you’re supposed to wait until a year.
– My mom didn’t burp us.
– My mom didn’t swaddle us.
– My mom boiled our cloth diapers and then hung them to dry in the sun.
– My mom sterilized our bottles by boiling them on the stovetop until we stopped drinking milk.
– Babywearing may be a relatively recent trend in America, but its been practiced elsewhere in the world since as long as we’ve been having babies. My mom wore us on her back all day with a podaegi (traditional Korean baby wrap), from 2 months of age and up so she could get work done around the house.
– There was no such thing as sleep training because my mom nursed us to sleep, coslept, and wore us on her back the entire day.
– Children didn’t have as many allergies back then (especially to peanuts) as they do now. From 6 months+, one of my favorite meals was a broth made of rice, carrot, spinach, and a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter all boiled together.
– My mom potty trained me by 14 months when my brother was born. No way was she going to have two babies under two in cloth diapers. But they also just potty train a lot earlier in Korea.
– Forget music classes, soccer, ballet and all the other parent led organized activities we enroll our children in nowadays. We didn’t even attend preschool, and first attended school when we went to kindergarten!
– While my parents didn’t hit us, that was definitely not the norm amongst my friends. My parents did utilize a form a physical punishment where we had to kneel on our knees and hold both our arms up high in the air, until they were so sore they felt like they were going to fall off. And of course they were very liberal with yelling at us whenever we were in trouble. Nowadays many parents want to be friends with their kids, most don’t believe in corporal punishment, and many don’t believe in yelling.
– Back then kids worked for their parents at the family store, farm, etc. I remember working at my parents’ office when I was in elementary school. Nowadays parents work for their kids chauffering them from activity to activity. I’m not sure how Charlie or Olive could even help us with our jobs.
– Back then you took the word of your doctor and didn’t worry about every possible thing that could be wrong with your child. Nowadays you self-diagnose with Dr. Google. After all, Mr. Bee cured Charlie’s recent nursemaid’s elbow using Youtube. Of course the internet has also turned us into anxiety-ridden hypochondriacs!
– My dad was not involved at all with childcare when we were babies. When my dad babysat me at 6 months of age, he gave me a sheet of newspaper to play with. My mom returned to find me covered head to toe in newspaper ink. Another time he took me to a public bathtub (common back in the day in Korea). It was winter so my mom dressed me in four layers. It was too complicated for my dad to figure out, so tucked me under his arm and carried me home naked!
My dad drew glasses and tears on my face and wrote my name on my legs in blue ballpoint pen.
– When my parents moved to America and my brother and I went to live with my grandmother temporarily, we were left home alone while she worked. When we got hungry, I would hold my brother’s hand, cross a busy street, and go to my grandmother’s shop. Then she would give us some money to go buy a snack at a local store. I was 3 1/2 years old and my brother was 2.
– My grandparents weren’t the only ones who left us unsupervised. I remember waking up in the middle of the night once when I was 5 years old and my parents weren’t home. They went to the market and left my brother and I home alone.
– I played outside without any supervision when I was 5 and my brother was 4. All the neighborhood kids did it!
What things did your parents do that you’ll do differently as a parent?
hostess / wonderful honeydew / 32460 posts
yep. all of the above sounds familiar! except the walking in the winter with us naked! haha.
my parents co-slept with all 3 of us.. newborn, 3 year old, 6 year old. all in one room!
amazing. i’ve picked up some of my parents’ parenting style.. i didn’t swaddle, no crib, i co-sleep sometimes.
sometimes I wanna hold her in my arms while DH drive, but don’t want anyone to call CPS on me!
oh, the good ole days.
hostess / eggplant / 11068 posts
– When I was 3 years old I used to play outside by myself with no supervision – I would walk around to different places and it was fine.
When I hear stories from when my brother and I were babies, I want to cry…It all sounded so…I don’t know. Like, our parents just did what they knew and what they could manage and that was that. Now, it seems like there are ten thousand ways to do one thing and no one ever does it the same way…
GOLD / wonderful coffee bean / 18478 posts
I don’t know why our generation is all about over-parenting. Is this because there are more laws and regulations in place nowadays? Like the car seat law? I wish we could all go back to chilling out more. My DH commented today that I actually don’t stress all that much so that made me happy. I really don’t want to sweat the small stuff although I can’t imagine letting a 3 year old be home alone. I am not quite that relaxed!
guest
Sounds very similar– I’m from Eastern Europe, and much of what applied to you applied to me as a child. My parents did, however, swaddle us. Swaddling was big (and still is in my family, whether or not it’s ‘in’).
My father didn’t see me until a week about after I was born. His first glimpse of me was from a hospital window. I can’t imagine not having my husband with me!
blogger / wonderful cherry / 21628 posts
I wonder if your parents version of physical punishment would make the neighbors call cps nowadays.
I’m interested in hearing my parent’s stories once I have a baby.
pear / 1861 posts
My parents had my sister when I turned two. I was potty trained by the time she was born because my mom refused to have 2 in diapers too.LOL
I try to be lax like my parents, but it’s hard sometimes. I do plan to potty train her early.
I do wonder about the peanut allergies. Wha’s up with that?
pomegranate / 3053 posts
Yeah, I remember having to stay home alone before while my parents were downstairs at their store. One time I almost burned down our apartment b/c my sister and I were lighting up toothpicks and running into the bathroom to see it glow. I think I lit mine kind of close to a tissue and then I dropped it on the carpet. Yeah. Thankfully I poured water over it before it caused any damage; but my sister ran downstairs with a super pale face and that’s how I got the spanking of my life that night.
I’m not sure what I would do differently. My parents were pretty strict and I think I’m starting to see some of that in me as well, but I’m trying to be more relaxed about things that are “not a big deal.” My husband is more strict than me, I think. He’s always telling my son he can’t do this or that b/c he’s pretty wild now…but I look at the situation and if it’s “not a big deal” to let him do something that’s not harming himself or anyone else then I’ll let him do it. I stay at home with him so I sometimes let him do more than my husband b/c if it keeps me sane and it won’t hurt anyone then why not.
Yeah, allergies…so trivial! Must be all the chemicals that we consume these days, I think! Probably environmental as well. Who knows… I’m so thankful that, so far, my son doesn’t have any allergies to anything now. He did have dairy and soy protein allergies from 2 to 15 months but he outgrew it b/c I did total elimination for him through my eating and, after bf’ing, through what I fed him.
GOLD / olive / 65 posts
Wow, The fact they left you home alone at that age surprises me. Yet it doesn’t. Times have changed for sure! We were all definitely allowed a lot more “roaming” freedom back then. I remember being around 7 years old and walking all the way to the store with a friend to buy hot balls. LOL.
kiwi / 729 posts
Bee, this is what it was like for me and my sister as well! Boy, do I remember having to sit on my knees and raise my arms in the air. Sometimes my parents would have us hold a pot too.
honeydew / 7968 posts
haha, i think it’s a generational thing but also a cultural thing. and i agree with the above posts – there are a lot more laws nowadays. no one wants to be the “bad” parent and get CPS on your butts.
pomelo / 5331 posts
Awesome post! My mom smoked ALL THE TIME around me. My dad, too. There’s a picture of little baby me sitting on the table in my little carrier, with an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes not even a foot from me. I also slept with blankets. My parents were super overprotective, so I couldn’t stay at home or go around by myself, but I agree — parents were so much more relaxed!
GOLD / apricot / 337 posts
All very familiar! I still boil LM’s bottles to sterilize them a la my mom’s advice!
kiwi / 718 posts
I love reading about how people grew up & what was done differently. I think people now a days are way too uptight about what might happen & I agree with wanting to be their kids’ friends, too, instead of being parents. I hope not to be that way.