I have never once claimed to be the perfect parent.
I raised my kids in a different time, by the rules of that time, and plenty of what was ordinary then would get you a sharp look at the playground now — some of it would get you reported.
I’m not going to stand here and tell you all of it was fine. A good deal of it I’d do differently if I had the years back. But I’m tired of being handed a single word for the whole of it, and the word lately is damage.
So let me tell you what it looked like, the real mechanics of it, and then you can decide whether that’s the right word.
What it looked like up close
When my kids ran into the road without looking, I spanked them. When they were rude to my face, I raised my voice until the house went quiet. There was a stretch where a bad word meant a bar of soap, held in the mouth long enough to make the point, and I believed at the time that the taste would stay with them longer than any lecture could.
I want you to understand the world this happened in.
Nearly every kitchen I knew had a wooden spoon that wasn’t only for cooking. Teachers kept a ruler or a paddle and used it, and no parent I knew phoned the school to complain. The spanking, the raised voice, the soap — none of it was something I dreamed up in a dark mood. It was the water everyone swam in, handed down from the parents who’d done it to us, so ordinary that it never once occurred to me to question it.
I’m not telling you this to shock you. I’m telling you because I think the true version matters more than the comfortable one.
None of it came from wanting to hurt them. It came from a whole world of other parents doing the same things, a generation that had it done to them, a shared and unquestioned sense that this was simply what raising a child required.
That doesn’t make it right. It does make it something other than the cartoon image of a parent swinging in the dark.
The things I’d take back
There’s one afternoon I still go back to.
One of mine — maybe seven at the time — knocked a glass off the counter, and it broke, and I’d had a long day that had nothing to do with them or that glass. I grabbed their arm too hard and yelled into their face over a thing that cost two dollars. They went still and confused, because a broken glass doesn’t earn that, and they knew it before I did. There was no lesson in it. I was just angry, and they were small, and they were there.
And it wasn’t the only time. There were nights I mistook being obeyed for being respected. There were punishments that were about my mood and not their behavior, and they were old enough to feel the difference even when I pretended there wasn’t one.
I’d take those back. If regret is what you came for, I have plenty, and I didn’t need to write this to find it.
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But “damaging” isn’t the word for it
Here’s where I get stubborn. Being told I made mistakes is one thing — I’ll agree before you finish the sentence. Being told I was damaging, that the whole project was harmed from start to finish, is something else, and it isn’t fair, and I think I’m allowed to say so.
That one word does something sneaky. It takes an exasperated swat in a parking lot and genuine, frightening abuse and files them under the same heading — as if there were no difference worth naming between them.
And that difference is the whole story. When a raised voice and a truly harmful home get described with the same word, the word stops meaning anything. It just becomes a way to tell an entire generation that everything they did added up to harm, when most of them were doing the best they knew with what they had.
I’m not asking for the methods to be defended. Some of them shouldn’t be. I’m asking not to be sorted, whole, into a bin marked bad, as if there were nothing in me but the worst things I did.
The part nobody lets me say
My kids turned out well. I’ll say it plainly, because it’s the part I’m apparently not supposed to bring up: they are good, caring people, and they still call, and they still come home, and they seem to want to.
One of them phones most Sundays for no reason at all. One is raising children now and doing it differently than I did — gentler, more patient, no soap, no swats — and here’s what might surprise you: I’m glad. We’ve even talked about it, about how they’ve chosen another way, and it doesn’t come across as an accusation. It comes across as someone who grew up steady enough to make their own choices. A broken person doesn’t usually turn out that whole.
I know how that sounds. I know “they turned out fine” can’t prove the methods were good, and I won’t pretend it does — kids are resilient, and plenty of people turn out well in spite of things, not because of them. Maybe mine are who they are despite the soap and the swats, not on account of them. I’ve turned that over more than you’d guess. I don’t get to know the answer for certain, and I’ve made my peace with not knowing.
Both things are true at once
But this is what I’d like to be heard on, and then I’ll let it rest. Forget for a moment whether the kids prove anything. What I’m asking is smaller and harder than a judgment on my methods.
I loved those children with everything I had. I got some of it wrong — some of it badly wrong, and I carry that. Both of those things live in the same person, at the same time, and they always have. Damage only has room for one of them.
I’m asking to be seen as what I was: not a category, not a warning, just a parent who loved hard and missed sometimes — which is a different thing entirely from a parent who did harm.
Editor’s Note: “As Told to Bolde” stories are inspired by reader submissions, interviews, and accounts shared with our editorial team. Details are often changed, combined, or dramatized, and our editors use AI tools in the writing process. See our Editorial Policy.
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