Your Parents Did A Great Job Raising You If You Were Taught These 11 Old-Fashioned Life Lessons
Arguably the best way to know if someone did a great job raising their kids is to observe how they behave as adults.
Rido via Canva There’s no official guidebook on how to be a good parent. Providing safety, love, and support is fundamental to raising kids, yet every family has different ideas as to what that actually looks like. Some parents rely on strict schedules and rigid structures, while others have a more free-flowing approach. Regardless of which parenting techniques they used, you'll know your parents did a great job raising you if you were taught some specific old-fashioned lessons.
Parents guide their children into adulthood, setting them up with the practical and emotional skills they need to flourish. They play multiple roles: such as caregiver, short-order cook, mender of scraped knees and broken hearts. Parents model what it means to be affectionate, respectful, and responsible through their everyday actions, and if you were taught these lessons along the way, your parents should be congratulated.
Your parents did a great job raising you if you were taught these 11 old-fashioned life lessons
1. Apologize like you mean it
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Learning how to take accountability for our behavior starts at home. Parents teach their kids that actions have consequences. When kids throw their toys or hit their little sister, parents insist they say sorry. While the underlying meaning of those words might get lost on younger kids, the act of apologizing teaches them to treat people with respect and kindness. If your parents taught you the value of a meaningful, genuine apology, they did a great job raising you.
In their book “Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies,” Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy outlined the key steps to apologizing in a full-hearted way, starting with saying “I’m sorry.” Those two words are the baseline for an apology, but people often use language that lets them off the hook for whatever harm they’ve caused. They say that they regret what happened or that they feel devastated, but they don’t actually say “I’m sorry.”
“Regret is about how I feel,” Ingall explained. “We're all regretful. ‘Sorry’ is about how the other person feels. And when you apologize, you have to keep the other person's feelings at top of mind.”
But just saying sorry isn’t enough to repair a wrong. You have to mention the specific incident, showing that you understand what you’re sorry for and why it hurt the other person, without any excuses. Then, you have to share how you plan to change in the future, so that you won’t cause that same harm again.
When it’s done correctly, saying sorry can rebuild trust that’s been broken and bring two people closer.
“A good apology is a really, really potent thing,” Ingall concluded.
2. Respect your elders
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Respecting your elders is a classic old-fashioned life lesson. If your parents taught you to treat older people with common courtesy and encouraged you not to minimize their experiences, they did a great job raising you. You learned the value of having compassion and patience while holding true to the belief that respect isn’t given away freely, even to a person who’s decades older than you are.
In every relationship, true respect is interdependent — a give and take process. Your parents expected you to show the world that you were raised with good manners, but they also made it clear that you didn’t have to accept anyone who made you feel unsafe or inferior.
As psychotherapist Robin Hornstein explained, “Respect is honoring a person's thoughts, feelings, and ways of being. An older person who is shaming, hurtful, or rude to everyone is hardly a role model, nor someone who has garnered respect.”
“We should know our elders have lived a long life, but if they have something to teach us, how it is done makes all the difference,” she concluded.
Your parents not only taught you to respect your elders, they also taught you the flip side of that important old-fashioned life lesson: how to set boundaries and respect yourself.
3. Save for a rainy day
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Of all the ways parents set their kids up for success, teaching them financial literacy is one of the most important old-fashioned life lessons they can offer. Kids absorb all of the conscious and subconscious money beliefs their parents carry. Financial anxiety is easily passed down through generations, but parents can break that cycle by teaching their kids money management in age-appropriate ways.
If you were taught the importance of having a financial safety net, your parents did a great job preparing you for adulthood. You got a weekly allowance, but your parents made you put some of those precious dollars away for future use. They taught you the difference between wants and needs, and not to rely on instant gratification.
Talking about money is often framed as a taboo subject, but your parents did a great job raising you by having conversations about money in a direct and open way. While their strict rules seemed unfair at the time, as an adult, you understand that every dollar you saved was a present for your future self.
4. Lose graciously
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Learning to accept failure without letting it define you is crucial to building up emotional resilience. When parents teach their kids that winning isn’t everything, they help them channel self-compassion and see themselves in a positive light, even when they don’t get first place.
While throwing tantrums every time they lose a board game is part of a child’s developmental journey, as they get older, they need to manage those big feelings without melting down. As sports journalist Sam Weinman pointed out, “How we deal with success and failure in sports or other childhood activities early on can be a precursor to how we might navigate other obstacles later in life.”
When someone reacts poorly to losing, it shows that they’re not “willing to take ownership of their own fallibility.”
It’s totally okay to feel hurt when things don’t go your way, but you have to process that disappointment with compassion and grace in order to move forward. Imperfection is part of the human experience. We can’t be winners all the time, which is why learning the old-fashioned lesson of how to be a gracious loser is so essential to becoming a successful adult.
5. Think before you speak
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If you learned the old-fashioned lesson to think before you speak, your parents raised you to be thoughtful and sympathetic to other people’s feelings. You believe in being truthful, but you know that weaponizing your words is a cruel way to communicate. You validate perspectives that don’t align with yours by being mindful of your impact, along with your intent.
You approach every conversation you’re a part of with humility and an open mind. You aim to understand the other person, even if their lived experience is vastly different from your own. You took the underlying message of the old-fashioned lesson your parents taught you to heart.
You know that what you say can uplift people or it can tear them down, and you’re mindful of how much power your words hold.
6. Share what you have
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Kids aren’t known for their innate generosity, which is why parents put so much focus on teaching them to share. While sharing isn’t easy, especially when you’re young, this old-fashioned lesson ultimately makes your life so much richer. If your parents raised you to believe abundance isn’t a finite resource, they did a great job molding you into an adult who cares deeply about their community.
You might not have disposable income to give to charity, but you donate what you can, when you can. You volunteer for causes that are important to you. You go on grocery runs for friends when they have the flu. You extend yourself to the people you love, yet you set boundaries to protect your peace and meet your own needs, too.
Your generous spirit strengthens the bonds you have with other people and keeps you connected to what’s most important in this world: showing up for one another.
7. Do the right thing, even when no one’s watching
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Your parents did a great job raising you to live an authentic life because they taught you to do the right thing, even when you’re alone. They cultivated your sense of integrity and instilled you with fair values, which are the guiding forces in your life. You know exactly who you are and your everyday actions reflect the strength of your self-assurance and conviction.
Having integrity can be defined as “maintaining an integrated, whole self [and] bringing oneself ‘wholeheartedly’ to a situation.” You make decisions based on your moral compass, as opposed to any external pressure from other people.
Your deep sense of integrity makes you trustworthy, reliable, and honest. Above all, your ability to act according to your values strengthens your sense of inner balance, which allows you to keep entering the world as your truest self.
8. Dress for success
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The clothes we wear do more than keep us warm and cover us up: they capture the deeper essence of who we are. Your parents let you express your individuality with your fashion choices, but they also taught you the old-fashioned yet valuable life lesson to dress for success.
You took their wisdom and incorporated it into the rest of your life. You know what outfit to wear to a job interview as opposed to a girls’ night out. You take care of yourself, not because you’re vain, but because you know that the way you feel on the inside impacts how you present yourself on the outside.
9. Know how to cook one good meal
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Your parents helped you become an independent, self-reliant adult by teaching you to cook at least one meal really well. Maybe you watched your mom make the recipes her mom passed down, then feasted together as a family. Maybe you played sous-chef every time your dad made his world-famous, never-fail, Sunday-night roast chicken, and you carried that cooking lesson with you when you made your own home.
You might not be at the same level as Julia Child, but you know your way around the kitchen. You keep your pantry well-stocked and you invite friends over to share what you’ve whipped up because you know that the food we make is an expression of love.
10. Practice what you preach
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Your parents raised you to be consistent and follow through on what you say you’ll do. They taught you to put your money where your mouth is, which is how you learned not to make promises you can’t keep. You know that trust takes a long time to build, but it can break apart in an instant.
You fully absorbed the old-fashioned lesson to practice what you preach. You put your beliefs into action, building your daily routine around your core values. Your parents were a source of light in an often dark and confusing world.
By teaching you that it’s not enough to talk the talk, you know how to walk the walk. You’re a reliable presence in your own life and the lives of people you love, because of how your parents raised you.
11. Listen more, talk less
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You learned to communicate in a clear, direct way from your parents. You speak your mind and advocate for yourself, but you also put the lesser-known side of that old-fashioned lesson into action by listening in an attentive and fully focused way.
As psychologist Nick Wignall explained, "The best conversations are about connection, not information."
You know that the more you listen, the more you understand about the world around you and the people you love, and that lesson is worth its weight in gold.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.