Our parenting regrets

We asked you for your biggest regret as a parent. Here is a selection of readers' tales of sorrow, embarrassment, time wasted and love left unexpressed.

Also, a psychologist who works with families reveals the top five regrets cited by parents

The spaghetti incident 

Out of all the hundreds and thousands of things I've done for my kids: lifts, birthday parties, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, ironing, parents' evenings, financial support – the list is endless – why do they always remember the one bad thing I did as a parent?

Alison Clink: 'My four children were misbehaving and I’d reached boiling point …' Fran, right, got 'seconds' of spaghetti.

We all have our off days – mothers too. When my youngest daughter was three and refusing to finish her dinner, I picked up her bowl which contained remnants of cold spaghetti bolognese – realising even as I did it that I'd be the one to clean up the mess – and placed it upside down on her head. My four children were misbehaving and I'd reached boiling point. The food was cold and there wasn't much of it, but this desperate, if relatively mild, act of maternal rage is brought up regularly in company when my kids want to have a laugh at my expense.

Over the years the story has become more and more exaggerated. The bowl has grown bigger, the spaghetti hotter and more plentiful. This small act of aggression eclipses everything kind, loving and maternal I've ever done. Maybe it's a lesson in life – you can lead an exemplary existence but if you put one foot wrong that's probably what you will be remembered for.

I wish in retrospect that I'd left the room and counted to 10 instead. But my daughter appears not to have been too traumatised. Although, come to think of it, she did grow dreadlocks when she was 18 … 

Alison Clink

Christopher and Harry

My son Christopher was entirely in thrall to Harry Potter, the boy wizard, and his epic struggle against "He who must not be named". Over the years, as each book in the series came out, Christopher would make sure that I read several chapters to him each bedtime, only agreeing to let me stop reading when his mum shouted up the stairs that it really was time he went to sleep.

Richard Salmon with his son Christopher: 'How I wish that Harry, Ron, Hermione and Dumbledore could once again get together and perfect the ultimate spell that would bring Christopher and his beautiful smile back to us.'

In the summer of 2007, Christopher and his mum, Julie, older brother Jonathan and I were on holiday at Center Parcs in Sherwood Forest when the last in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was published. Now 14, Christopher, of course, had no desire for me to read to him any more and, as I recall, hid himself away in his chalet room for a day or so and devoured the book in more or less one sitting.

In February 2009, Christopher fell ill. His condition worsened as the week went on, so we took him to hospital. On arrival at A&E, Christopher collapsed and had to be rushed to the crash room. He never recovered and died from a rare streptococcal infection.

I now regret not having read that last Harry Potter book to Christopher and how I wish that Harry, Ron, Hermione and Dumbledore could once again get together and perfect the ultimate spell that would bring Christopher and his beautiful smile back to us.

Richard Salmon

A ruined Christmas

The family was sitting at the table, chatting after Sunday dinner, within the Twelve Days of Christmas. The tree was still twinkling – cards, holly, bells and baubles everywhere.

"You don't still believe in Father Christmas, do you?" I said. Without a word, Elizabeth, the youngest, aged eight, got down from the table and left the room.

After the washing up, I went to find Elizabeth. She was in her room, decorated with paper chains from school, snowflakes she had made at Brownies, Christmas cards from her friends. But the room was bare. She had taken down her decorations and thrown them in the bin. She was heartbroken, and so was I.

On Christmas Eve, we still followed the custom of hanging up their stockings, and putting out sherry for Father Christmas and a carrot for Rudolph. But with Elizabeth at junior school, her big brother, 11, and her older sister, 13, both at secondary school, I'd assumed that they or her schoolfriends would have laughed her out of the idea of Father Christmas by now.

I was wrong and had carelessly shattered her belief in Father Christmas; the first test of faith for a child. I hoped and prayed she'd still believe in Jesus and the reason for Christmas. 

Rosemary Brockbank

I wish I'd had a routine

Two words. Just a name, but enough to strike terror into the heart of many parents – Gina Ford. Her methods have won her a loyal following, but others find her slavish devotion to routine at odds with caring for the tiny alien whirlwind that has just arrived in their lives. I was firmly in the latter camp. How I wish I'd listened to Ford.

My son, Niko, arrived by emergency caesarean on 12 April 2010 and weighed only 5lbs. From his first day, he struggled to hold up his head, straining his neck, determined to take in the world around him. The first few days lulled me into a false sense of security. He slept a lot. Despite the post-op pain, I was happy. This is easy, I thought.

Then I took him home.

The sleepless nights began. It was hard, but don't all parents complain about sleepless nights? But it was every hour for months on end. Was this normal? So I did what I always do when I need to learn about something. I bought books. The author everyone recommended was Gina Ford, the mistress of routine. But I couldn't understand how you could make a little person adhere to set patterns and dismissed it.

My son is nearly three. He's a happy, curious, contented little toddler. He has slept through the night precisely three times. I'm 40 but look about 10 years older. How I wish I'd listened to Gina Ford. 

Suzanne Lightfoot

Sharing the love

My four-year-old grandson clutches my knees and hugs me: "I love you, Granny." I bend down and put my arms around him: "I love you too, Ben."

I'm filled with a depth of emotion that is impossible to put into words because I never gave my four children what my grandson has just given me.

I never told them how much I loved them. I was a stay-at-home mum and my husband and I tried our best to make their lives full of fun and interest. We loved them and I hope they felt loved but this is my regret: I never put that love into words to my children.

I love them still and I hope they still feel loved. I want to hold each one in turn in my arms and say: "I love you, James; I love you, Jenny; I love you, Naomi; I love you, Tom." But I think it's probably too late to do what my grandson has just taught me to do.

Anji Dawkins

Too much, too young

I regret not waking my seven-year-old son to see his dead father before he left the house 20 years ago. I woke my older son, Robert, who was 12, and we said goodbye together as the coroner's officer took his body away. But I thought Andrew was too young.

Glynis Platt with her sons: 'I regret not waking my seven-year-old son to see his dead father before he left the house 20 years ago.'

My husband looked asleep and peaceful then. When I took both boys to see his body at the funeral parlour, he looked completely different, not like my husband at all. Andrew has subsequently said that he wished he had seen his father, and I think he might have coped with his death better if he had. 

Glynis Platt

Embarrassing silence

We are in the cinema watching a film. My daughter is 11 and I am a relatively old mother, enjoying this outing hugely. Such a treat, to take your child to see a new film – we do this often.

However, 20 minutes or so into the showing I am beginning to feel irritated. There is a gang of teenagers directly in front of us, chatting and laughing loudly. This continues. I grow yet more annoyed. These young people are not only interfering with my enjoyment but blatantly breaking cinema rules. I am a secondary school teacher and the instinct to take action is just too powerful to resist. I lean forward and say, in lowered tones of course, "Shush! Please be quiet!"

It works. The teenagers fall silent and remain so. I am very aware that I could have fallen foul of the kind of creative verbal abuse only adolescents have the skill to invent, but no – they obey, clearly cowed by my teacherly authority. I feel smug.

My daughter throws me a look that says, "I want you to die, right here and now." She is mortified beyond endurance and sits rigidly in her seat for the remainder of the film. Her body language radiates an inarticulate blend of shame and fury. When it ends, she turns and hisses, "I will never, ever go to see a film with you ever again."

She is now 21 and has remained true to her word. 

Jayne Greenwell

Still my little boy

I regret making my son the "big boy" as soon as his sister was born. When she arrived, my son seemed so big, so grown-up, a real big brother. He was kind and gentle with her, giving her careful kisses and cuddles. As the elder, I think I expected too much of him. I expected him to understand that when I needed to put his sister down for a nap it was easier if he played in the lounge rather than in the bedroom with me. I forgot that until his sister arrived, he hadn't had the luxury of having mummy at home. Instead, he was at nursery while I worked. I forgot that he needed time with mummy too; forgot that everything had changed for him with his sister's arrival.

Alison Willis: 'I regret making my son the "big boy" as soon as his sister was born.'

Now my daughter is just a bit older than he was then – and she seems so little. I regret that in my head he became the big boy overnight when really he was still my little boy.

Alison Willis

Tales of the riverbank

I regret not teaching our boys to fish. My father first took me fishing when I was two. He taught me respect for and wonder at the natural world and I grew to know his wisdom through his gentle patience. When my father died, the first book I turned to was about fishing – The Deepening Pool by Chris Yates – hoping to secure his presence through familiar stories of barbel and chub.

Our sons are now 14 and 16 and, as with all teenage boys, they believe that their father's a fool.

Steve Brooks regrets not teaching his sons, now 14 and 16, to fish.

They will never have the opportunity to watch a water vole swim two feet in front of their wellington boots or marvel at the iridescence of the kingfisher hunting in the rays of a midsummer sunrise. They won't have a chance to plead for one last cast in that liminal realm where all possibilities coalesce between daytime's end and the gathering gloom of night.

These days we walk the riverbanks of the Peak District. I feed bread to the trout while my wife and the boys humour me and look on with patronising resignation. I am entranced by the magic of water. I regret they will never be drawn towards such mysteries. I regret that, for them, water will always be merely H2O. 

Steve Brooks

A sense of loss

When my elder son left for university I set about cleaning and redecorating his abandoned bedroom. But the makeover only left me grieving for the unholy mess he used to create.

The familiar fug of unaired room with top notes of Lynx surrendered to malodorous gloss paint. I close my eyes to desperately try to recall the old multi-coloured walls, topped with a nursery frieze of circus elephants marching incongruously above posters of death metal bands, a dartboard and noticeboards crammed with ticket stubs for festivals and concerts, party invitations and photos of drunken, gurning teenagers.

Floor space that used to be covered in Lego blocks, toys, discarded clothes, odd socks, and, more recently, crisp packets, cans, empty bottles and laptops is back to visible carpet. Adrian Mole, Harry Potter and Stephen Fry used to sit amicably alongside science fiction and college textbooks piled on shelves. Towers of zombie DVDs, CDs and computer games leant perilously against the chest of drawers covered in football stickers and cup stains.

Now the pristine room somehow looks smaller and the self-righteous satisfaction I should have felt after my hard work is tainted by feelings of guilt and regret that I didn't photograph his teenage world before the sterile uniformity of magnolia paint reclaimed it for the rest of the house. Euphoria has unexpectedly given way to an overwhelming sense of loss for the material evidence of his childhood, which I have obliterated. 

Diane Evans

I cannot cope

I regret adopting you. Importing a baby from a distant and troubled country into a fragile family unit was not a good idea. In retrospect, many years later, it seems madness.

I chose you because you seemed likely to be the one who would always be left behind.

You were the silent one in a room of crying babies; sullen, indifferent and distant. Even then, at less than a year old, you looked as if you had had enough of life. Unable to walk or talk, you turned your head to the wall and refused – I was told – to even cry.

Back home, slow development became special needs and then, with great speed, dysfunctional and alarming behaviour. I loved you despite it all, because of it all – at the expense of the rest of the family who felt excluded and ignored.

You watched: the rows you had caused, the disruption you created with that blank, uninterested look I first saw and felt pity for all those years ago. Even now I don't know what you feel or if you feel anything in return.

Is it guilt, love or just despair I feel now looking at you? My family is fractured and despite my indulgent love, my tough love, my frustrated love, I have to finally admit that my overwhelming feeling is one of regret that we ever met, that I thought I could give you a better life. At last I have to admit, I cannot cope. 

Anonymous

My choice, my guilt

On Sunday, 29 February 2004, the best thing ever happened to me – my pride, my reason, my son was born.

The regret is: right son, wrong dad.

I feel a deep sense of guilt and regret that my son has been lumbered with an absent father because of my poor choice. Anonymous

Not an optimal time

My biggest regret was allowing my sons to sell their original die-cast Optimus Prime Transformers. Now 27 and 29, they've never forgiven me. 

Christine Proudlock

I wish I had iron will

I wish I had done less ironing. Shell-shocked by a colicky newborn, I was rather dominated by my then mother-in-law who believed that only women who ironed tea towels possessed moral fibre. I ironed when I should have slept. I ironed in a frenzy to keep a semblance of order in the chaos of new motherhood. I ironed in a desperate and misguided attempt to be a good housewife and mother. I look back now and cringe.

Fifteen years later, and the colicky baby is a 6ft-tall charmer of a rugby player. Two girls followed; they are now 11 and eight. The years passed; a divorce and a house move. I no longer iron. The flick and hang method produces great results and most creases vanish with a little body heat.

I wish I could sit my younger self down with a large gin and tonic and ask: is this what you would like your children to be doing when they are grown up and have their own babies?

Unclench, yield to the chaos.

Aspiring to fit in with someone else's views of how family and home life should be leads to unhappiness. My mother-in-law ironed tea towels because she took pleasure in "things being nice". She is bitterly full of regret at the paths not taken in life; a stack of precision ironing eases this inner tension. My version of things being nice is different. It consists of letting go a little, breathing out, realising that we have so little control in our lives really. It's just an illusion.

Parents don't have all the answers; just being human is good enough.

Anonymous