I’ve spent so many years in classrooms, teaching children of different ages. I’ve helped students with different needs, helped them manage academics, time and school work, mediated playground and corridor disputes, and celebrated milestones, thinking I had a good grasp on childhood. Yet nothing could have prepared me for the mirror held up by my own 3-year-old son.
It started subtly, almost innocuously. One morning, he refused to put on his shoes. My inner teacher kicked in: “Structure, patience, guidance, you know what to do.” Then the parent in me whispered: “He’s only there.. Cut him some slack.” Despite my professional experience, I caught myself silently comparing him to a version of myself that may never have existed. I remembered being calm, obedient, and independent. I remembered finishing my chores without complaint. What I didn’t remember were the tantrums, jumping off the school van, refusing to go to school, or the times I tested every limit I could find.
I fell a rabbit hole reading about memory illusion, the psychological phenomenon where we remember things not as they actually happened, but as our minds want them to be. Turns out, memory is less like a video recording and more like a Google doc: every time you open it, you edit a little, and sometimes you hit “save” on a completely new version.
The other day, during a session with one of my students, she told me she was struggling to remember things and feeling overwhelmed by schoolwork piling up. I suggested keeping a journal and shared a memory from my own childhood: “When I was your age, I felt the same way and started writing down my feelings every night. But I realised I rarely wrote about the bad days or uncomfortable feelings; I mostly recorded the happy moments. It made me see that while it’s easy to give advice, actually putting all your thoughts and emotions on paper isn’t so simple, especially for a 12-year-old.
I caught myself saying to another student, “I didn’t need screen time to have fun.” But what I conveniently forgot was that I spent hours on the family computer playing Solitaire and chatting on MSN Messenger. My “no screen” childhood wasn’t exactly unplugged; it just had slower Wi-Fi.
Every adult unknowingly does this. We look at our children’s world, full of distractions, gadgets, and pressures we never had — and we instinctively compare it to our “simpler” time. We forget that we also had our own distractions: Walkmans, TV marathons, doodling in class, and writing bad poetry in the margins of notebooks.
Memory is a tricky thing. It doesn’t function like a perfect video recording; it reconstructs the past, blending facts with emotions, wishes, and self-serving edits. I discovered that my “perfect childhood” was partly a product of nostalgia and partly a product of forgetting. And that illusion had silently influenced how I expected my child to behave. I realised I wasn’t parenting the little boy in front of me; I was parenting the ghost of my own reconstructed childhood.
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There’s a part of me that loves nostalgia. I can still picture the dusty playground, the thrill of finishing a handwritten letter, and the joy of hearing my favourite song on the radio instead of streaming it instantly. But nostalgia is a master illusionist; it keeps the beauty and fades the boredom. It’s easy to think, my childhood was simpler, better, happier. But was it really? Or was it just less documented, less compared, less analysed?
That’s the tricky part about memory illusion: it doesn’t just rewrite events; it rewrites feelings. The struggles we had as kids often get softened over time, while our small victories get amplified. We forget the loneliness, the fear of being left out, the times we bombed a test or said something reckless. And then we wonder why our kids aren’t breezing through life the way we “did.”
Being a teacher is definitely helping me see reality more clearly. I understand that children develop at their own pace, that tantrums are normal, and that emotional support often matters more than strict rules. I’ve seen many students struggle and succeed in their own ways. Yet at home, those insights can sometimes clash with my memory-driven expectations. I would sigh as my son threw a toy across the room or resisted bedtime, thinking, “I never did this. I was so easygoing.” The truth is, I probably did all of it; my adult brain just chose to forget it.
Being a parent has taught me patience, empathy, and humility in ways teaching never could. I’ve learned to embrace messes, tantrums, and the unpredictable flow of a three-year-old’s day. I laugh more, marvel more, and have learned to let go of the imaginary perfection that memory once convinced me I embodied. Each spilt cup of milk or dramatic collapse onto the rug is now a moment to witness, not a problem to fix.
This dual perspective, teacher and parent, has been enlightening. In the classroom, I guide children through lessons, social challenges, and skill development. At home, I see similar patterns, but in high definition and full emotional colour. Observing my son, I am reminded daily that children are not meant to replicate our pasts; they are discovering their own paths. The skills, milestones, and challenges may echo my experiences, but their journey is entirely theirs.
The Moment I Let Go
The shift is happening slowly. I have stopped saying, “When I was your age.” I started asking, “What’s it like for you?” Instead of lecturing, I started listening and laughing more. Some day in the future, when my son will sulk about his homework, I will tell him about the time I actually cried over a math project and tried to pass off my brother’s artwork as mine in an art competition. By sharing real memories — the unfiltered, embarrassing, human ones our connection with children deepens. They needed our honesty.
The Honest Ending
Our memories aren’t lies; they’re love letters written by a brain that wants us to feel good about our stories. But when we mistake those stories for truth, we risk demanding perfection from our kids that we never actually achieved ourselves. Parenting, I’ve learned, isn’t about recreating your past — it’s about rewriting your present with awareness, humour, and a bit of humility.
Because maybe the real truth isn’t “When I was your age…” It’s “When I was your age, I was figuring it out too.”
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