11 Signs You Were Raised By Parents Who Actually Did A Great Job
If these experiences and behaviors sound familiar, your parents did an excellent job.
fizkes / Shutterstock There’s no such thing as a perfect parent, and there’s no such thing as a perfect childhood. Raising kids involves making mistakes. When parents give themselves grace, they can show up for their kids in the moment, exactly as they are, instead of aiming for impossible standards. For kids, feeling connected to their parents is more important than anything else.
Being part of a family isn’t always a smooth ride. Keeping open hearts and open minds brings parents and kids closer together. If your family centered compassion, communication, and repair, those are all signs you were raised by parents who actually did a great job.
Here are 11 signs you were raised by parents who actually did a great job
1. You were safe to express your feelings
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A healthy family life is based on honesty, unconditional acceptance, and safety. Part of a parent’s role is protecting their kids from harm which includes emotional injuries. Kids need their parents to create a safe container for all their feelings, even the ones that are hard to hold.
If you were allowed to express your feelings without being shamed or blamed, you were raised by parents who actually did a great job. As Therapist April Eldimire revealed, emotional intelligence doesn’t just appear; it’s something that parents have to help their kids cultivate.
She shared the framework for a parenting technique called Emotion Coaching, developed by psychologist Dr. John Gottman, which acts as “a roadmap for how to raise well-balanced, higher-achieving, and emotionally intelligent kids.”
Research from Dr. Gottman shows that “emotional awareness and the ability to manage feelings will determine how successful and happy our children are throughout life.”
When parents dismiss or diminish the big feelings their kids have, they’re “sending the message that their feelings are bad, [and] in effect sending the message that they are bad. This damaging perception can stay with them throughout adulthood.”
Punishing kids for how they feel is essentially punishing them for being human.
“Use your child’s negative emotions as an opportunity to connect, heal, and grow,” she advised. “Help your child put words and meaning to how they’re feeling.”
By approaching you and your emotions with love, your parents taught you how to understand your experience and express yourself.
2. You walk away from relationships where you’re not valued
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Your solid sense of self-worth guides you through life, which is a sign you were raised by parents who actually did a great job. You enter relationships with people who recognize and respect your self-worth. You don’t stay where you’re not wanted. You walk away from people who don’t see your value, even when it hurts.
Our relationships reflect how we truly feel about ourselves, deep within. If you don’t love yourself, you’ll gravitate toward people who prove to you how unworthy you are. You settle for what you think you deserve, which isn’t much. Learning to love yourself more is hard work, but it’s the kind of hard work that will transform your life.
According to SelfWorks therapy practice, self-compassion starts with recognizing that you’re worthy of loving, healthy relationships.
“Once you have internalized your inherent worth, you will no longer tolerate behaviors you may have once considered acceptable,” they explained. “You will know what a healthy relationship looks and feels like, and you will begin to attract people into your life whose values align more with your own.”
“As difficult and as painful as it may be, sometimes walking away may be the greatest gift of self-compassion you can offer yourself,” they revealed.
3. You own your triggers and work through them
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Our actions are rooted in our emotions, but we still have to take accountability for how we behave, no matter how hurt or activated we feel. Having triggers is part of human nature, yet how you handle them makes a big difference.
Dr. Judith Orloff described emotional triggers as “super-reactive places inside you that become activated by someone else’s behaviors or comments.”
“Your emotional triggers are wounds that need to heal,” she explained. “Your reaction is so intense because you’re defending against a painful feeling that has surfaced.”
Recognizing your triggers is the right place to start, but it’s only the first step. Holding yourself responsible for your own healing is a sign you were raised by parents who actually did a great job. Paying attention to your triggers takes patience and emotional awareness. As Dr. Orloff pointed out, “knowing where your triggers come from allows you to know yourself better.”
4. You want other people to win
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There’s a thin line between pride and arrogance, and you fall on the side of having a healthy, balanced ego. You celebrate your successes with humility and grace, and you genuinely want everyone around you to be successful, too.
People who only have false confidence are competitive in a way that cuts others down, instead of lifting them up and letting them shine. Your ambition isn’t about beating another person to the finish line. It’s about doing your best for yourself and no one else.
You keep your eyes on the prize and you want to win, but you know that you can’t take first place every time. If you can comfortably hold space for other people’s wins without feeling threatened, you were raised by parents who actually did a great job.
5. You were allowed to fail
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When parents jump into action at the slightest sign of distress, they do their kids a disservice. Your parents did a great job letting you face challenges on your own. They wanted you to see yourself as strong and capable. They wanted you to grow into a resilient adult.
“By allowing kids their small failures, we inadvertently give them the gift of learning how to become capable of handling their affairs themselves,” Life coach Leslie Ferris revealed.
As parents, as we may think if they fail, they will feel incapable. However, it is in learning from the mistake and getting it right the next time that strength is gained,” she shared. “Kids become more resilient when they have failed, learned, and have become capable and confident from it.”
When you struggled, your parents were supportive and sympathetic, but they didn’t always step in to save you. It wasn’t easy for them to sit on the sidelines as you stumbled, but they loved you enough to let you fail.
6. You trust your instincts
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As scary and overwhelming as our world can be, you trust yourself to find your way through. The choices you make are aligned with what you value most. You follow your instincts without hesitation, because they come from a place of deep self-knowledge. You believe in yourself because your parents believed in you, which is a sign they actually did a great job.
In order to trust your own instincts, you have to tune out the background noise and shift the way you think about thinking.
“Normally, we make decisions by constructing mental arguments,” YourTango experts explained. “We compare and contrast, and we analyze. But, when it comes to instinct, it’s not about arguing, it’s about knowing.”
They shared that “one of the hardest parts about listening to your instincts is simply opening yourself up to the experience,” but you were raised by parents who encouraged you to stay open-minded and build your self-trust.
7. You accept that life won’t always go your way
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Adulthood means making peace with things you learned as a kid that turned out not to be true. Some parents tell their kids that their hard work will always be rewarded. They say that their kids can be anything they dream of. These messages come from a good place. They’re meant to be inspiring, but they set kids up to be disappointed, once they come to understand how the world really works.
You know you were raised by parents who actually did a great job because you accept that things won’t always play out the way you want. They inspired you to work hard, no matter what the outcome was. They encouraged you to follow your dreams yet they also prepared you to handle disappointment.
Your parents helped you understand that life is unpredictable and often unfair. They taught you that wanting something doesn’t mean you’ll get it, and they showed you how to find fulfillment in what you already have. You know that your life is worthwhile, even when it looks different than you expected.
8. You’re grateful for the little things
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You walk through the world with a deep sense of gratitude, which is a sign you were raised by parents who actually did a great job. They taught you the basics of being grateful: Saying “please” and “thank you,” treating others how you want to be treated. They instilled gratitude in you from a young age, and that lesson never left you.
You became an adult who’s grateful for the little things in your life. You appreciate the sunlight that streams through your window every morning to wake you up. You appreciate how trees shed their leaves every winter. You appreciate the first buds of spring. You take notice of the small, quiet moments you share with people you love, because that’s what gives your life meaning.
9. You know how to sit with discomfort
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You can handle hard things because your parents actually did a great job raising you. They helped you build the foundation of emotional resilience that you stand on now. They showed you how to sit with discomfort, which led you toward a practice of acceptance.
As counterintuitive as it seems, accepting hardship is the only way to get to the other side of it. According to The American Institute of Cognitive Therapy, acceptance comes from a mindset of willingness.
“Willingness is the way one thinks and acts in each situation,” they shared. “Willingness is about participating in life.” In contrast, “a lack of willingness means a refusal to do the minimum necessary to cope.”
To cultivate willingness, you have to “do just what is needed, accept the situation for what it is, even if the situation is unfair, resist pointing it out to prove the side.”
10. You release past versions of yourself
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You are not the same person you were as a kid; you’re not even the same person you were last year. You know how to release past versions of yourself, especially the ones that hold you back from being your truest self. This is because your parents did a great job raising you to stay open to being transformed.
Learning to let go of deeply-rooted habits is a hard lesson, and it’s one we continue to learn over the course of our lives. In moments when you lose your way, you speak to yourself with loving compassion and acknowledge that healing is never linear. You are gentle with yourself, holding yourself the same way your parents did when you were still young.
11. You feel fulfilled
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You know how to locate a sense of fulfillment, even in troubled times. Your parents did a great job raising you to feel all your feelings. They didn’t expect you to be happy every day. They didn’t try to fix you when you were upset.
Instead, they helped you understand that no emotion lasts forever. They showed you that it’s possible to hold two different feelings at one time. Now that you’re grown, you see beauty in grief. You see opportunity in sorrow. No matter how far out to sea you are, you know you’ll reach the shoreline. Your life is far from perfect, but you revel in all of it, because that’s what makes you whole.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
