Underneath
What's going on underneath #
Three things that tend to sit under the words.
Comparisons with a memory are hard to answer, because memories tend to keep the neat parts and lose the rest.
Some parents hear “in my day” and find themselves, for a second, back in their own early years, being told how to be a good child in somebody else's room.
Underneath, a belief can form: “I must never get this wrong,” or “My view on my own home doesn't count for much.”
Reactions
What people often do #
- Hurry the child along so the moment ends faster
- Explain the whole week to someone who saw one minute of it
- Laugh along in the room, then replay it in the car
- Act more formal with your child whenever that person is watching
- Go quiet and let the comparison stand
The deck
The story in 6 cards #
Six short cards, from the moment to letting go.
A tantrum at the family lunch
Your child is having a tantrum at a family lunch. You kneel down and talk calmly, the way you've decided to parent. An elder at the table shakes their head and says, “In my day, kids listened.” Others nod. Your face goes warm. You keep going, but you feel watched and judged, and you wonder if you are doing it all wrong.
Questioned means getting it wrong
The words land on a rule that may already be there: 'If my parenting is questioned, I must be getting it wrong.' It sounds careful and humble. But look at what it does: it hands your confidence as a parent to whoever has an opinion. Your sense of doing well now depends on approval from people raised in another time.
Why doing right by them matters
We hold it because we want to do right by our children. Maybe you've thought hard about how you want to raise them, sometimes differently from how you were raised. Maybe you respect your elders and want their approval. Either way, the rule isn't silly. It comes from love for your child. Maybe you want to try something new for your own family. That deserves kindness, not blame.
Parenting for the audience
Every comment like this makes you doubt yourself. You start parenting for the audience instead of your child. You avoid family gatherings. You replay what was said at night. You second-guess choices you made carefully. You feel like a student at your own table, waiting for marks. Slowly the confidence you need as a parent starts to wear thin, and you lose the calm your child needs from you most.
Is their approval worth it?
Ask yourself honestly: has letting every remark judge your parenting ever made you a better parent? Or has it mostly made you more tense? Their words were theirs to choose, from another time and place. Either way, a comment at lunch isn't the measure of your parenting. Many ways of raising children can be loving. Holding this rule so tightly costs you more than it gives you.
Knowing your child and your reasons
Letting go doesn't mean you ignore every bit of advice. It means your confidence no longer depends on everyone's approval. You know your child and your reasons. You can keep parenting your way, calmly. Your way can be a loving way. That's where some peace comes back: your child gets the calm parent they need, and the remark stays with the person who made it.
Basic respect and safety at home are never too much to expect; being threatened, hurt or frightened by anyone is something else, and worth taking seriously.
The flip
The old rule, and a new one to try #
The old ruleIf my parenting is questioned, I must be getting it wrong.
A new rule to tryI know my child and my reasons.
For next time
Try it next time #
- Step 1
Name one thing you did well as a parent this week
- Step 2
When a comment comes, take one slow breath
- Step 3
Enjoy one calm moment with your child today
Want to talk it through?
“What was your child in the middle of when someone said “in my day, kids listened”?”
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Everything this deck knows
Go deeper #
What it sounds like, where it comes from, what it costs, and other ways to see it. Every question opens a chat on it.
How it lands
What was said
A sentence about a time you weren't part of #
An uncle on a video call from Pune, a neighbour on the stairs of a Sharjah building, a grandmother at a birthday party watching a four-year-old ask “but why?” for the third time. “In my day, kids listened,” and the conversation moves on as if nothing much was said.
It is said about a child, but it rarely lands on the child. It lands on the adult standing beside them, as a comparison with a time and a house that parent was never part of, and a test nobody mentioned they were sitting.
When did you last hear “in my day, kids listened”, and what was your child doing in the seconds before it was said?Talk about this ›
The first few seconds
What happens in the first second #
Some parents describe a small freeze: a smile that stays on the face while the inside goes cold, a hand reaching for the child's shoulder, a sudden urge to explain the whole week. Others feel heat rise and say nothing. Any of it can happen, and none of it needs defending.
Being watched while doing something as close as caring for your own child can make a comment register fast, before any thought arrives. The thinking often comes later, in the car or at the sink, with all the replies that turned up an hour too late.
What did your body do in the first second after those words, and what might that say about how much that ordinary moment with your child mattered to you?Talk about this ›
Why it lands
It measures today against a memory #
“That's a lot of questions” would be about a moment. “In my day” reaches past the moment to a whole era, held up as the standard, and the parent in front of it has no way to check how those days really looked from the inside.
Comparisons with a memory are hard to answer, because memories tend to keep the neat parts and lose the rest. So the sentence can feel like a verdict on today with nothing solid to push against, and some parents end up arguing with it silently for days.
If the comment had been about one specific moment instead of a whole era, which moment would it have been, and how big was that moment really?Talk about this ›
The voice inside
When the comparison starts running on its own #
Hear it often enough and it can move in. “They're watching, keep it neat.” “What will she say about this one?” “Hurry, before somebody comments.” Sometimes the voice speaks before the visitor has even rung the bell.
The person who said it may be miles away, but the measuring now happens inside, on an ordinary school run or a slow evening. Because it sounds like your own voice, it can pass for good sense rather than somebody's sentence about a time long gone.
Whose voice does the comparison borrow when it speaks up in your head during an ordinary evening with your child?Talk about this ›
Where it comes from
Where it can come from
For some parents, the sentence has an echo #
“Don't answer back.” “Sit quietly, the elders are talking.” Some parents hear “in my day” and find themselves, for a second, back in their own early years, being told how to be a good child in somebody else's room.
Some people trace the sting back to those years; some don't. Either way, a sentence about how children used to be can press on two places at once: the parent standing there today, and the child who once sat in a room like that.
Who, in your own childhood, used to talk about “our day”, and how did the room change when they started?Talk about this ›
The belief under it
A quiet rule that can settle underneath #
Underneath, a belief can form: “I must never get this wrong,” or “My view on my own home doesn't count for much.” Some parents carry a quieter version: “If anyone sees a messy minute, they'll think it's all like that.”
Beliefs like this rarely feel like beliefs. They feel like being careful, the way checking the front door twice feels like plain sense. That is exactly why they can be worth taking out and looking at in daylight.
Some people trace a rule like this back to early years; some don't. Either way, it can be looked at.
Which rooms does the rule about never being seen in a messy minute still fit, and which not?Talk about this ›
What it costs
What it costs
What carrying the comparison can cost #
It can mean visits spent managing the room instead of being in it, small ordinary moments rushed so nobody comments, and a habit of watching the adults' faces more closely than your child's. Some parents notice they enjoy those visits less long before they admit it.
There is a quieter price too. Holding your own way up against a remembered era is tiring, and the doubt it plants can travel home and sit in on ordinary days. Over a year, that can add up to many evenings spent half with your child and half with somebody's comment.
Over the last year, which ordinary moment with your child got rushed or tidied up because somebody might compare it with “their day”?Talk about this ›
If it stays as it is
Five more years measured against a memory #
Picture one ordinary Tuesday on a day when “they'll compare this with their day” is loud. What is in it: the school run, the calls, the visits, the small moments tidied before anyone sees them? It's only a picture to look at, nothing to fix.
Maybe it holds a weekend visit planned around one person's comments, a cheerful question from your child answered in a rush, a phone call with a relative spent explaining. Some of it may be familiar, some not at all.
Nothing here needs an answer yet, and the picture can be put away whenever you like. What, if anything, do you notice when you look at that Tuesday?
Another way to see it
Another way to see it
Which day, exactly? #
Once those are named, the sentence starts to look like a memory, offered by one person, from one seat in the room.
A memory and a measure are different things. The same moment that looked like too much to one visitor can look ordinary to a friend, or to another parent at the school gate who has seen a hundred moments just like it.
“In my day” needs a day to mean anything: which house, which street, which year, and seen by whom?Talk about this ›
If a friend told you a relative had said “in my day, kids listened” about their child, what would you have wanted to say to that friend?Talk about this ›
Noticing it sooner
What some parents see when they look again #
When some parents replay the moment slowly, they look at what was actually happening: a question, a long story, a small voice in a room full of adults.
Others notice the people who have seen more than one minute: a friend who knows the whole week, a teacher who mentions something kind at pickup, a neighbour who waves on the school run. Sometimes those voices were there all along, only quieter.
Set beside the words that came back, what does a slow replay of that moment show?Talk about this ›
Who has seen more than a single minute of your days with your child, and what would they say about the visit where the comparison was made?Talk about this ›
Making peace with it
No need to win against a memory #
Making peace doesn't mean agreeing about anyone's day, or pretending the words didn't sting. It means one remembered era gets less say over how your afternoon goes, and over the next ordinary moment with your child.
Some parents find it lighter once they stop arguing with the past in their heads. A memory can't be checked or out-argued, and each round keeps the person who said it in the room long after they've gone home. Some rooms really won't listen, and you don't have to test them.
What would it be like to let “in my day” stay with the person who said it, and keep only what is useful to you from that visit?Talk about this ›
A truer sentence
A truer line to keep nearby #
If “I'm getting this wrong” has been running since that visit, there's no need to fight it head on. Some parents keep a line like this ready instead: “That was one minute of my day, seen through somebody else's memory.”
It doesn't have to feel true. It is only a line some people try on, and some find that, said quietly, it takes up a little of the space the comparison used to fill, especially in the hour before a visit.
What would your own truer sentence be about that minute with your child, one that is accurate without needing the visitor to agree with it?Talk about this ›
What to let be
Some of it can simply be set down #
Not every “in my day” needs a reply, a history lesson or a plan to be neater next time. Some of it can be noticed, felt for a moment, and set down, like school bags dropped by the door after a long afternoon.
That isn't giving up. It's choosing where your attention goes, and some parents say it leaves more of it for the evening itself: the bath, the silly song, the bedtime story that gets read twice.
Putting the comparison down for the evening doesn't mean it was fine, or that it's settled. It only means it doesn't have to come along into bedtime, or into tomorrow's school run.
If it loosened
And if the comparison loosened a notch #
Imagine, only as a picture, the comparison a notch quieter. A visit is still a visit, and the remembered era stays where it is.
Small things can be enough, such as a long story from your child heard all the way to the end, a visit enjoyed for its own sake, or a car ride home without the replay. What would your first small thing be?
Nothing here needs to be said to anyone. Whatever comes up is yours, and worth noticing, however small it looks. If you'd like to look at it properly, a chat is one tap away.
What is the first thing that feels different, even slightly, on an ordinary afternoon with your child?Talk about this ›
Small things to try
Something to try
A few small things parents try #
- Name it in your head: “there's the in-my-day line again”
- Ask yourself quietly: which day, exactly, and seen by whom?
- Notice which part of that visit is louder now: the words, or the tone
- Think of one person who has seen more than a minute of your days
- Notice one small thing you wanted today, however small
Small, private and optional. Pick whichever feels doable today.
Pick a question
Talk it through #
Tap one. A chat with Dr. Thoughts opens on that question: free, private, no sign-up to start.
- What was your child in the middle of when someone said “in my day, kids listened”?
- Whose face were you watching, in that moment, instead of your child's?
- Which part of that visit came home with you and kept replaying at bedtime?
- On an ordinary day when the comparison is loud, what would you still be putting off?
- If the comparison eased a little, what would you notice first?