Are you becoming like one of your parents?

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Fyrefox

Well-known Member
There’s a rather clever series of Progressive insurance commercials where a therapist, Dr. Rick, specializes in counseling people who find themselves behaviorally turning into their parents. They may be doing things like hoarding items, giving unwanted advice, or maintaining a bag…of bags!
I find increasingly that I’m becoming more and more like my father, whose heyday was in the 1940’s, 1950’s, and earlier 1960’s. I like the clothes that men of his generation wore, the fedoras, jackets and ties, and overcoats. Sometimes I catch myself sitting the way that he did, or seeing things as he was likely to have seen them. Channeling a good parent is not altogether a bad thing…

How about you? Are you becoming like one of your parents, and in what ways? 🤔

 

No..not really. I mean I've caught myself making expressions like my father.. but only very occasionally, and then I'm not so sure that it's learned behaviour, rather that millions of other people probably have the same or similar expressions..

if anything because I had poor parentage I actively try to do the opposite ...
 
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Yes, a few years ago when walking through the village where
I was born, I went into a pub and a man came running in after
me, "excuse me, your father will never be dead as long as you
are alive", he was correct, I look like, my father and his older
brother, so the cousins are all weepy when they see me.

I will never be as good a man as my father was.

Mike.
 
Mike said:
Yes, a few years ago when walking through the village where
I was born, I went into a pub and a man came running in after
me, "excuse me, your father will never be dead as long as you
are alive", he was correct, I look like, my father and his older
brother, so the cousins are all weepy when they see me.

I will never be as good a man as my father was.

Mike.
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that's like the paternal side of my family as well.

My father and his brother older than him were the image of their father my grandfather.. and my 2 brothers look just like my father... the elder even more so...
 
jujube said:
I sure hope I am. My parents were the best!
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Amen ! Feel exactly the same way. Still live in the house where I was born. My grandparents lived here, passed it to my folks who passed to us back in the 60's

Spent our lifetime here and share it with our youngest daughter and family. We gave them the home back in the 90's (with the blessing of our other kids) and it's been wonderful.

I only hope that I've left our kids with similar memories as my folks left me.
 
DaveA said:
Amen ! Feel exactly the same way. Still live in the house where I was born. My grandparents lived here, passed it to my folks who passed to us back in the 60's

Spent our lifetime here and share it with our youngest daughter and family. We gave them the home back in the 90's (with the blessing of our other kids) and it's been wonderful.

I only hope that I've left our kids with similar memories as my folks left me.
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Wow. I so envy that kind of stability.
That said, for better or worse, I am not much like either of my parents. I am more like my maternal grandmother who was a force to be reckoned with. I loved her so much. We had a perfect relationship. :giggle:
 
I'm nothing like my parents...nothing critical about that statement, were just different.

I focused more on my children and my father thought I spent too much on them. I have no regrets. I met all their their needs and it paid off for them. We often said "I love you" and hugged. None of that with my parents.

To my parents credit, they took us with them to experience the world and made sure we kept up appearances. They had tried for a boy but only got 3 girls...never-the-less they kept us :giggle:
 
dilettante said:
They grind on me. It feels like one more Gen Xer lecturing that Millennials and Boomer parents are fools for not embracing conspicuous consumption and walking though life head down never speaking to other people (as they do).
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Me, too. Not so much this one, (although I have a bag of bags I use as waste basket liners), but there've been ones where he throws all the couch pillows on the floor and ridicules other things that are harmless. I particularly disliked the one where the older person was telling the store manager what a great job one of the clerks was doing. The subtext was "Nobody cares what you think, Boomer."
 
I thought that my father was a square back in the hippie 1960’s, even an embarrassment. He wasn’t “with it,” wearing a dress hat, jacket, and tie to and from his office even in August heat and humidity in the days before air conditioning! Now I see him as a classy dude who had style, and I’m glad I grew up enough to appreciate him… he just should have divorced my toxic mother, but people back then tended to stay together to a larger extent than today, regardless of how miserable they were…
 
I try to be like them in some ways. My mom was an avid reader and a wiz at crosswords. My dad was a great craftsman. I tend to hang on to too much junk as they did, probably because they experienced the great depression. I appreciate them more as time goes by but still value our differences.
 
My father unfortunately suffered from PTSD and had to have complete quiet in the house. He also lashed out physically toward my mother and older half-siblings. We kids, all left, one by one. This was very sad for our mother. In later years, they moved to my city .. it was bitter-sweet, as Mom had inoperable breast cancer. She only lived a few short years.

I strive to be like my mother, and still have difficulty forgiving my father.
 
My eldest son is so much like my dear Dad. I have a photo of my dad when he was 14 years old, and my son is the spitting image of him. He also sits like Dad with one foot resting on the other. My other son has his father's sense of humour and work ethics, always helping someone out.
 

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