6 Things I Wish My Parents Told Me and Why

My parents meant well enough.

However, there are several things I wish my parents told me about life, love, and success.

Maybe your parents told you some of these but neglected to tell you about some other life lessons.

Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below.

Some of these might seem like simple lessons.

Yet each of them will help you:

• Grow and develop
• Be authentic to yourself
• Live the life you want
• Cope when times are tough

Things I Wish My Parents Told Me #1: Time Doesn’t Heal Everything

Ah, yes.

The good old slap a bandaid on it saying that my parents applied to every heartbreak and hardship: “Time heals all wounds.”

As a kid, I wanted desperately for this to be true, and sometimes it was.

But, as we all know, time does not heal every wound.

I wish they had simply told me the truth.

Time is, in fact, a great doctor, and it heals many things but not everything.

There is some pain you carry around in your back pocket forever.

On the good days, you forget that it’s there.

And you know what?

Life is pretty beautiful despite the pain you carry.

Sometimes it’s even more beautiful because of it.

It reminds you to appreciate those good days.

Seems unfair and confusing, and it completely is.

But that’s life, kid.

Things I Wish My Parents Told Me #2: Don’t Fall For The First Person You Meet In College

I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have listened to this one, but I suppose stranger things have happened.

My parents were pretty tight-lipped about their personal lives, so they centered most of their college advice around grades and attendance.

Good to know, but at eighteen, with hormones fully charged and racing, I drew my attention to every cute guy within a ten-mile radius.

I wish they had told me to have fun being single and eighteen.

To date people and not get locked in a relationship with the first cute guy that walked my way.

This would have been the best grade-saving advice they could have given me.

Things I Wish My Parents Told Me #3: Your Credit Score Matters

I was in college in the late 1990s, before the student loan bubble became a regular topic of economic discussion.

Credit card companies sent me card after card directly to my dorm room.

And student loan limits… what were those?

What I really needed was someone to sit me down and explain what a credit score actually meant, followed by a lesson on how it not only matters but how it can impact you negatively for many years.

I am not a math-brain type of person, but that shouldn’t have deterred them from discussing my financial future with me.

I wish they had told me all I needed to know to protect myself from predatory lenders and eighteen-year-old thoughts of what happens now doesn’t matter later.

Things I Wish My Parents Told Me #4: How To Manage Your Time

This is something I think my parents assumed I just somehow knew.

They were wrong.

Time management skills were lacking in school and at my first few jobs.

“Just get the job done” or “One task at a time” wasn’t quite the pep talk I needed.

I needed serious direction on time management skills and productivity.

How to prioritize at both school and work.

How to juggle a social life with school and employment when there was nobody there to set a curfew.

Seems like pretty simple common knowledge, but this was knowledge I didn’t have.

I wish they had told me how important time management would be in order to succeed as a human.

Things I Wish My Parents Told Me #5: You Can Be Anything, Regardless Of Gender

Sure, I heard “You can be anything you want to be” enough times growing up.

But even in my twenties, I felt held back by my gender.

Law school, politics, and the IT field all seemed to be dominated by men.

I wish they had told me that my gender didn’t matter.

Plenty of women succeed in politics.

As Nancy Bocskor of George Washington University stated in an interview for the girl-centered Running Start program, “my parents told me there was a great world beyond my backyard – and one where women could achieve great things.”

I know they meant well, but I needed to hear those exact words.

That anything I wanted to be meant exactly that and wasn’t boxed in by gender parameters.

Things I Wish My Parents Told Me #6: Being An Adult Isn’t Easy

Here’s where I really wish they had given it to me straight.

None of this “It will all be easier when you’re older” fairytale.

Hearing that might have been comforting, but it wasn’t the truth.

And it wasn’t very comforting once I became an adult.

I needed to know as an adult that it was normal to feel you don’t know what you’re doing some days or even most days.

Like you’re still a kid trapped in an adult body.

I wish they had told me that being an adult isn’t easy.

It’s hard work and sacrifice.

It’s carrying around the baggage of your past while trying to balance your present and unpack for the future.

All these things and more I wish they had told me as I was growing up.

It’s so easy to look back now and criticize what they said and didn’t say.

But, then again, they were adults trying to comfort and raise a child.

They were the age that I am now… and being an adult isn’t easy.

Life lessons come from many places

Maybe your parents told you some of these.

Maybe they told you all of this and more.

Or, possibly they told you nothing, and you didn’t have a typical ‘family’ growing up.

Regardless of what your upbringing looked like, it taught you something.

Every success and failure you have had in your life has taught you something that you can use for the next stage of life.

Check out these life lessons quotes and leave a comment (in the comment section below) letting us know the greatest lessons your parents told you.