Your Parents Did A Good Job Raising You If You Have These 11 Daily Habits
Raising kids who turn into well-rounded adults is about much more than providing stability.
fizkes | Shutterstock Our childhood experiences lay a foundation for the lives we create for ourselves as adults. Some people establish their independence in contrast to how they were raised, as though their parents provided a blueprint for what not to do.
Other people find meaning in the routines their parents raised them with and base their own lives off the lessons they learned as kids. Their family life was defined by emotional security, love, and validation. They gained confidence from the responsibilities their parents bestowed on them. They fostered deep human connection by putting relationships first. If you have these daily habits, your parents did a good job raising you.
Your parents did a good job raising you if you have these 11 daily habits
1. You set affirmations
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It's not easy to push back against the narrative your inner critic sets for you, but keeping up a daily practice of affirmations paves the way for you to believe in yourself and continue believing in your worth and capabilities. Affirmations are a way to take stock of your life and create an action plan for transforming what no longer serves you.
Neuroscientist James Doty discussed the power of affirmations with YourTango CEO Andrea Miller on the "Getting Open" podcast. "I am worthy, I deserve love, it is possible, I can. These are very important statements to make," Doty explained.
Speaking to yourself with loving kindness is a way to reprogram your neural pathways. Giving voice to that love lets you believe in your own worth. Like any muscle, practicing affirmations builds up strength over time. They shift not only how you see yourself, but how you interpret the world around you.
Dr. Doty noted that the powerful ripple effect of affirmations goes beyond your internal world. The love and compassion you show yourself allows you to offer that same compassion to others. He shared that affirmations are a tool for "Changing that negative self-talk, understanding that you deserve love, but also, once you're able to do that, you realize everyone is suffering in a different way, and you're much more sympathetic and kind."
If your parents raised you with unconditional support and love, they gave you the tools you needed to hold tight to their love and transfer it directly into how you see yourself as an adult.
2. You reach out to loved ones
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By making time for you as a kid, your parents instilled in you how valuable relationships are. They asked about your day and told you they loved you, just because. They insisted on having family dinners as a way to reconnect after spending the day at school and work.
Your parents showed you how to make time for each other amidst the mundane chaos of everyday life. You learned how important it was to spend uninterrupted time with people you love, and that lesson was as nourishing as the meal itself.
As an adult, you still put your people first. You might not be able to talk for hours on end, but you find free moments to touch base with your family and friends. You have quick conversations while you're walking the dog. You text photos of flowers in bloom with a note that just says, "Thinking of you."
Your parents passed along the invaluable wisdom that our connections sustain us, through good and bad. You know that relationships will wither if they're not given tender, loving care. You're committed to kinship, and you make it a daily habit to stay in touch with the people you love most.
3. You resolve conflicts calmly
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Your parents did a good job raising you if you resolve conflicts calmly and without reacting. You're able to stay centered so that you can show people respect, even during major disagreements.
You're able to stay aware of your emotions and express them in healthy ways, because your family home was a safe space for expressing big feelings, and your parents taught you how to self-regulate and enter conflict with the end-goal of finding solutions to benefit everyone involved.
According to The Child Mind Institute, parents can teach their children practical skills to diffuse conflict before it becomes catastrophic. The first step to guiding kids through conflict management is to help them identify and process how they feel.
Having intense emotions is more than okay, but it's not a good starting point to resolve the conflict itself. Parents can equip their kids with tools to calm down, like deep breathing, splashing their faces with cool water, taking a break, or snuggling a pet.
Communicating their feelings in a calmer setting is the starting point to working through conflict. Parents who model effective conflict resolution in their own lives offer kids real-time examples of what to do.
When parents give their kids a container to safely express their emotions, they learn not to be scared of how they feel. Then, resolving conflicts can be a conversation, as opposed to an argument, where both people feel heard and held.
4. You have a balanced approach to work
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If you have a balanced approach to work, your parents did a good job raising you. You know that your work ethic is only as good as your ability to set boundaries and take care of yourself, even when the demands of your job are high.
According to a study from Human Relations, children are witnesses to the way their parents work, which informs their own relationship to work as they enter adulthood. The study focused on habits, which the researchers defined as "historically constituted and embodied dispositions" and the way those learned habits structure people's outlook on work-life balance.
The study found that childhood experiences shape the decisions people make around how they work, noting that the "dispositions embodied during one's upbringing can largely transcend time and space... [holding] powerful sway" on people's adult lives.
If you watched your parents work themselves into the ground, you might grow up to believe that giving everything to your job is the right approach, or you might make the active decision to take a different path. If your parents placed equal emphasis on work and family, you likely learned from a young age how to find balance between those two things.
You know the value of channeling your energy to do good work, yet you understand that you can't be "on" all the time. Going too hard, too fast will send you up in flames. You take breaks and honor your limits, which puts you in the best position to be a rock-solid employee and find fulfillment off the clock, too.
Your balanced approach to work means you're committed to your role, but you don't allow that drive to overtake you. Your job provides you with a sense of purpose, but it's not the only thing that fuels you. You're equally as committed to taking time for family and letting yourself decompress. Your parents showed you that balance brings both stability and long-term success.
5. You process emotions mindfully
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When young kids have big feelings, it's easy for even the most well-meaning parents to brush those feelings aside. In saying that everything's okay or that it's not a big deal, parents inadvertently dismiss their kids' emotional experiences, which sends the message that having those emotions isn't okay. In contrast, creating a secure environment for kids to work out their harder feelings teaches them to process and self-regulate without falling apart.
Positive psychology is a useful framework for positive parenting, which can be defined as "the continual relationship of parents and children that includes caring, teaching, leading, communicating, and providing for the needs of a child consistently and unconditionally."
As part of that framework, The Gottman Institute outlined a 5-step "emotional coaching" program to build kids' confidence and promote healthy psychosocial and intellectual development. Parents guide their kids to be aware of their emotions by connecting with their kids, listening to them, naming their emotions, and finding solutions.
As emotional coaches, parents teach their kids emotional regulation, which can be defined as "effortful control enabling children to focus attention in a way that promotes emotion modulation and expression."
Research has shown that parental warmth and expressiveness significantly impact children's long-term emotional regulation. Loving caregivers empower their children on both a spiritual and practical level. By nurturing their spirit, parents reinforce their kids' innate self-worth.
Teaching kids to process emotions sets them up to navigate life's inevitable roadblocks with self-compassion and grace.Parents who guide their children through storms, without pretending the weather is fine, prepare their kids to be emotionally resilient adults.
6. You devote time to having fun
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Because your parents raised you in an environment where fun was encouraged, as an adult you carry that same mentality with you. Your parents understood the power of play for your social and emotional development.
They didn't put undue pressure on you to grow up too fast. They carved out time for you to build LEGO castles and make Play-Doh spaghetti and paint a portfolio of abstract masterpieces, and they celebrated the creative genius in everything you did.
Prioritizing fun doesn't mean ignoring your responsibilities or breaking your commitments to other people. But it does mean you do at least one thing each day that makes you undeniably happy, just because.
Being an adult feels like swimming upstream. We're fighting the currents of everyday life, trying to stay afloat. We have endless to-do lists of non-negotiable tasks. If we're lucky, we cross one or two things off before collapsing into bed at night. For most adults, having fun seems like a luxury, one they can't actually afford. Yet finding moments of wonder and awe is essential for our survival.
Science journalist Catherine Price shared that the secret to living a healthier life comes down to having more fun. "Do everything you can to fill your life with more moments of playfulness, connection, and flow," she said. "When we're having fun, our guard is down, and we're not taking ourselves too seriously."
Price advised people to "increase playfulness by finding opportunities to rebel... finding ways to break the rules of responsible adulthood and give yourself permission to get a kick out of your own life."
Letting yourself access joy is an act of self-love. It's a message to the side of you that thinks you're too busy to laugh so hard that you cry a little. Having fun helps you relocate your truest self, the you who pulls off the highway to pick wildflowers, who's always searching for the perfect pebble, who loves watching sunlight filter through the branches of trees.
Finding those glimmers is a way to hold onto hope in an increasingly tumultuous world. Giving yourself permission to have fun is a practice worth investing in.
7. Your home is well-maintained
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When your parents raised you right, as an adult you don't make yourself crazy trying to reach impossible standards of cleanliness, but you still understand that caring for your space makes your life better. You might not dust every single corner of every room, but you make your bed and do the dishes before they get moldy, and that is absolutely enough.
You know that your external surroundings reflect your inner world. Staying organized reduces your stress and helps you stay focused. You can sit at your desk and actually get work done, instead of feeling overwhelmed by stacks of paper and all your unopened mail.
From an early age, your parents impressed upon you the importance of pitching in around the house. They expected you to pick up your toys and keep your room marginally clean. They taught you how to do laundry, fold laundry and actually put that laundry away.
Those life skills and sense of responsibility carried over, paving the way for you to become the kind of adult your parents hoped you would be. Caring for yourself in small, tangible ways is a true marker of being successful.
8. You manage stress in healthy ways
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If you can manage stress with healthy coping mechanisms, your parents did a good job raising you. When life feels like it's spinning out of control, it's easy to fall into self-destructive patterns. While quick fixes might work for a moment, they eventually push you farther down a dark hole, without a clear way out.
No one is immune to stress. Everyone has their own stress threshold, and being able to recognize the signs is the first step to managing stress effectively. The Mental Health Foundation described being stressed like carrying a heavy backpack. At first, we can carry its contents and keep pushing forward. But as stress builds, the backpack gets heavier and harder to manage, until we collapse under the weight.
Having a consistent routine is a proactive way to manage stress. In times of extreme stress, it's easy to get trapped in a negative feedback loop, listening to your inner critic tell you how terrible you are at adulting. The only way to quiet that cruel voice is to treat yourself with kindness and take care of your basic needs.
Think of yourself like a tender sprout that needs to be gently nurtured. Keep your routine simple: Drink water. Eat food that makes you feel good. Rest when you're tired. Seek out sunshine and fresh air. By practicing meaningful self-care, you're building up your reserves, so that you can bloom.
9. You eat nourishing meals
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In the extended chaos of navigating adulthood, it's easy to put off the essential lesson we learned as kids: We need balanced, nutritious meals to fuel us. You might not have time to make three-course gourmet meals, but you keep your pantry stocked with staples, so you can throw together a nourishing dinner without thinking too hard.
You know there will be nights where making a grilled cheese sandwich and eating over the sink is the best you can do, and that's more than okay. Listening to your body and paying attention to your hunger cues is half the battle. You take time to feed yourself because you care about yourself, and that in itself means your parents raised you right.
10. You take responsibility for your own life
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There's a lot about adulthood that we can't control. We have to pay rent, bills, and taxes. We have to attend morning work meetings and sit in traffic and go grocery shopping. So much of being a grown-up is doing things we don't want to do, but blaming those challenges on everything but ourselves keeps us stuck in the mire of being miserable.
When you claim agency for your life, you put yourself in the position to change the parts you don't like. As relationship coach Jordan Gray pointed out, "The most important (and challenging) thing you could ever do for yourself is to take full responsibility for your life." He further explained, "If you ever find yourself blaming someone else/your location/circumstances beyond your control, that's a surefire sign that you aren't taking responsibility for something in your life."
According to Gray, self-responsibility is the driving force for "taking action on the things that you know matter to you," concluding, "It's impossible to be happy if you aren't honoring yourself. And you honor yourself by taking responsibility for your life and doing what you know that your heart wants you to do."
11. You practice self-trust
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Part of being human means grappling with self-doubt, but you work hard to make sure that your doubts don't wash you away completely. You check in with yourself, reflecting on your beliefs and actions, which allows you to stay aligned with who you really are.
Stephanie Harrison, author of the book "The New Happy," shared accessible tools to boost your sense of self-trust. "When you make a promise to yourself, keep it," she said. "If you struggle with this, you need to make smaller promises that are achievable. Some of us have a habit of overcommitting, even to ourselves."
Harrison's next step to build self-trust is acknowledging what you feel, when you feel it. Maintaining a practice of recognizing and naming your emotions keeps you in touch with your inner landscape, which is an essential part of knowing yourself.
Her last piece of advice to bolster self-trust is to "identify your values and live by them." She said, "Your values should serve as your compass in life. They help you move toward what matters most to you... When you're making your choices, come back to your values and say, 'Which choice will help me to embody my values?'"
Trusting yourself means meeting yourself where you're at and not putting pressure on yourself to be anywhere other than where you are. Self-trust lets you celebrate all the small wins that lead you closer to your most authentic, whole-hearted life.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.