I asked my adult children what they remember most about growing up—these 10 answers surprised me more than anything else

I asked the question on a whim, at the end of a long dinner.

We’d been talking about nothing in particular—the kind of easy, circling conversation that happens when everyone is full and no one is in a hurry to leave. And something made me ask it. What do you actually remember? From growing up. What stuck?

I expected the big things. The vacations we’d saved for. The birthday parties I’d spent weeks organizing. The Christmas mornings I’d worked hard to make memorable.

That’s not what they said.

What came back across the table was so specific, so ordinary, so far from what I’d been trying to give them, that I sat there for a moment not quite knowing what to do with it. A little humbled. A little relieved. Mostly just surprised by how differently a childhood looks from the inside of it.

I’ve been thinking about their answers ever since. About what they tell me—not just about my kids, but about what actually lands when you’re raising someone. What gets kept. What gets carried.

Here are the ten things they remembered most.

1. The smell of dinner cooking when they came home from school

Not the meal itself. The smell of it.

My youngest described it so specifically I could almost place myself back in that kitchen—the particular combination of whatever was on the stove, the warmth of the house after the cold outside, the way it hit them the moment the door opened. She said it meant: someone is here. Someone knew you were coming.

I hadn’t thought of cooking dinner as a form of communication. To her, apparently, it had been saying something every single day.

The sensory details of childhood run deeper than the events. They become emotional shorthand for something larger—safety, predictability, the feeling of being held by a place and a person without anyone having to say a word.

2. The times I stopped what I was doing to watch them do something

My son brought this one up and I didn’t immediately know what he meant.

He clarified: the times I put down what I was doing—not at a recital or a game, but just randomly, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon—to watch him show me something. A trick he’d learned. A drawing he’d made. Something he was proud of that didn’t have an audience yet.

He remembered that I stopped. That I actually looked.

I remember those moments differently—as interruptions, mostly, to whatever I was trying to finish. He remembers them as the thing itself. As evidence that what he was doing mattered enough to pause for. That’s a different view of the same moment, and his is probably the more accurate one.

3. The car conversations

All three of them mentioned this independently, which surprised me.

Something about being in the car—side by side, not face to face, both of you looking forward at the road—made certain conversations possible that wouldn’t have happened any other way. They told me things in the car they wouldn’t have told me at the dinner table. And I said things, apparently, that stayed with them.

I’d never thought of driving carpool as a communication strategy. It turns out the lack of eye contact was doing something important. It lowered the stakes. It made the hard things easier to say.

My middle one said the car was where she learned how I actually thought about things. Not the things I told her to do or believe—the things I said out loud when I was just thinking, just driving, just being a person in her presence.

4. The way I handled it when things went wrong

Not the times things went right—the times they went wrong. The burned dinner. The flat tire on the way to something important. The plans that fell apart at the last minute. They were watching, apparently, for how I responded when life didn’t cooperate.

My oldest said she learned more about how to handle disappointment from watching me handle mine than from anything I ever told her about resilience. The moments when I stayed calm, or recovered quickly, or laughed at something that could have been a disaster—those were the lessons she actually absorbed.

And the moments I didn’t handle it well, she remembered those too. Gently. Without accusation. Just as part of the full picture.

5. The specific phrases I used that became part of how they think

Each of them had one.

Things I apparently said so often they became internal voices—the words that show up in their heads now when they’re making a decision or trying to talk themselves through something hard. Small phrases I had no idea were landing with that kind of permanence.

One of them was something I said about apologies—that a real one doesn’t include the word “but.” I don’t remember saying it. My son quotes it to his own friends now.

Another was something about not borrowing worry from the future. I vaguely remember saying that once, maybe twice. My daughter said she hears it in my voice when she’s anxious.

You don’t know which things you say are going to stick. Apparently, some of them really do.

6. The Saturday mornings with no plan

This one genuinely surprised me, because I’d always felt faintly guilty about the unstructured weekends.

I’d compare myself to parents who organized activities and enriching experiences, and feel like I was falling short. The Saturdays where we just existed. Where someone made pancakes, and everyone drifted in and out of the same few rooms without any particular agenda.

Those are what they remember. The aimlessness of it. The fact that nobody had to be anywhere. The specific quality of a morning that belonged entirely to itself.

My youngest called it “the feeling that time wasn’t running out.” I’ve been sitting with that phrase since she said it.

7. The moments I admitted I didn’t know something

I was surprised this made the list.

I’d always worried that admitting uncertainty in front of my children undermined something—some necessary confidence they needed from me. So I said “I don’t know” reluctantly, as a last resort, when I’d run out of everything else.

They remember it as a gift.

My oldest said those were the moments she understood that not knowing things was survivable. That you could be a whole, functioning adult and still be genuinely uncertain. That the not-knowing didn’t have to be hidden.

She said watching me sit with uncertainty—without panicking, without pretending—was the thing that taught her it was okay to do the same.

8. The friends I made feel welcome

Not just tolerated. Actually welcome.

They remembered which of their friends I’d learned something about and asked after. The ones I’d remembered had a game on Saturday, or was going through something hard at home, or had a particular interest I’d taken five minutes to understand.

My son said his friends used to want to come to our house. I’d never thought to ask why. He said it was because they felt seen here. Because I talked to them like they were people worth talking to.

I think about the small effort that took—just paying a little attention, just treating a fourteen-year-old like their life mattered—and how disproportionate the return apparently was.

9. The times I apologized to them

This one I didn’t see coming.

Not the times I got things right—the times I got things wrong and said so. Directly, without softening it into something easier. The times I came back after a hard moment and said: I handled that badly. I’m sorry.

My middle one said those moments were when she learned what accountability actually looked like. Not as a concept she was taught—as a behavior she watched. She said she knew I meant it because I didn’t make it about me. I just said what happened and that I was sorry.

I’d spent those moments feeling like I was failing. She’d spent them learning something she still uses.

10. The ordinary weeknights

Not the holidays. Not the birthdays. The regular evenings when nothing particular was happening.

Dinner at the usual time. Someone doing homework at the kitchen table. The television on in the background. The specific, unremarkable texture of a night that wasn’t trying to be anything.

All three of them, in different ways, mentioned versions of this. The ordinary nights when the house was just running, when everyone was just present, when nothing needed to be made memorable because nothing was trying to be.

I spent so much energy on the occasions. Trying to create the moments that would matter.

It turns out the moments that mattered most were the ones I wasn’t trying to make at all. The Tuesday nights I was only half-present for, thinking about what else needed doing, not realizing I was already exactly where I needed to be.

Editor’s Note: This piece is part of our “As Told to Bolde” series where we share personal stories from individuals we have interviewed or surveyed. For more information on how we create content, please review our Editorial Policy.