I tried to answer this but couldn’t. Both the good and bad parts of my upbringing shaped me, I don’t know what it’s like to be a different person and would rather not roll the dice.

Oh man..I was blessed. Parents were not perfect but loved my sisters and me unconditionally. Dad was “ hard” by todays standards on expectations of behavior and work but I needed the guardrails. They were a little intolerant of other beliefs and this has caused me some grief in my parenting skills over the years with my daughters but I am aware and try to be opened to other ways of doing things.
We grew up in the country and I spent my early years entertaining myself with fishing and running around hundreds of acres of woods with a .22 rifle. Being bored was “a sign of a simple mind” according to my mom so I never allowed myself to be bored. Learned a lot from dad about building and this has been one of my greatest assets as I can basically build anything. I have never owned a home I have not remodeled, added on to or improved dramatically. Dad hated working on anything mechanical but I have enjoyed it my whole life…I rarely take anything to a mechanic and maintain everything from tractors to modern German cars.
Yeah, I was blessed and loved. It took me years to realize that I had the kind of childhood that very few were fortunate to have….I work towards and hope my daughters say the same thing when they are discussing with friends their childhood years from now.

I was one of four. Two boys and two girls and I was a middle child. We were middle-class living in Westport, Connecticut. Not the town it is now, but the small sleepy artsy town it was back in the 60s and 70s. We had a good childhood, riding our bikes everywhere, skinny-dipping in the quarry or Nash’s pond, after school and the weekends.

I was a Dennis the Menace type. Short attention span, OK in school, occasional getting in trouble doing stupid ****. It wasn’t until my 20s that I finally matured and knew what I wanted to do.

Our parents were good southerners living in New England. Our dad was firm and not a hands-on, hugging type that said I love you a lot. I learned from that and have always hugged our kids and told them I love them. We still do and they tell us the same.