I don’t believe in perfect parents.

I believe in good-enough ones—people who loved you with the tools they had, who sometimes missed and then tried again.

If you grew up with that kind of upbringing, the signs are subtle.

They don’t show up on a transcript.

They show up in the way you move through a Tuesday, how you treat a cashier, how your shoulders settle when you walk into a room that might need your help.

Here are ten signs you had a good childhood, even if your parents were flawed humans doing their best.

1) You assume adults are capable of repair

Not flawless—repair. When someone snaps and circles back with, “I was short with you. I’m sorry,” you trust it because you’ve seen adults do that before. Maybe your parents argued in low voices that still leaked through the hallway, and later you watched them hug or heard dishes clink while they made dinner like teammates again. The lesson wasn’t that conflict is bad. It was that love can survive a bump and fix it before bedtime. That expectation becomes your default setting. You don’t panic at every misstep. You look for the repair.

2) You’re comfortable with “enough”

A good childhood often includes a practical relationship with “enough”—enough dinner, enough gifts, enough attention without needing the room to revolve around you.

Maybe birthdays meant a homemade cake and one present wrapped in grocery-store paper, not a mountain.

You still felt celebrated. Now, as an adult, you can sit in an average restaurant, eat decent soup, and enjoy the company without needing the evening to audition for a highlight reel.

Contentment is a skill. You learned it early.

3) You know where to put your feelings

I don’t mean you never felt flooded.

I mean, somewhere in your house there was room for feelings: a parent who asked, “What happened?” instead of “Why are you like this?” a couch where someone listened, a backyard where crying didn’t equal trouble.

You may have learned basic scripts—“sad, mad, scared, glad”—instead of being asked to produce a dissertation. That literacy shows up now when you can say, “I’m hurt,” without turning the room into court.

You don’t have to invent a personality every time your insides get loud. You know the exits.

4) You trust boredom

My best childhood afternoons were unremarkable: a book, a backyard, a basketball that obeyed no one.

A good childhood gives you boredom without panic. You can sit in a waiting room without immediately needing a show, take a walk without a podcast, let ideas catch up to you.

Boredom taught you patience, and patience turned into competence. Later, that competence paid bills, saved friendships, and let you finish things that take longer than the world’s attention span.

5) You treat service workers like people

If someone taught you to say “please” and “thank you,” to make eye contact with the person bagging your groceries, to return a tray, to tip well when you can—those weren’t just manners.

They were a worldview: people are not props in your story. Good childhoods often include tiny rituals of respect—thank-you notes that didn’t need to be flowery, apologies with verbs, “leave the campsite better.”

Now, you don’t need an audience to be kind. You do it because it’s the way your hands know how to move.

6) Your nostalgia has edges, not chains

You can visit the past without trying to rebuild it brick by brick. Maybe your parents had traditions—Friday spaghetti, a tree you decorated crooked—and also had blind spots you can name.

You learned to hold both: affection and clarity. So now, you don’t fight your siblings for “the one true version” of how things were. You compare memories like puzzle pieces. You can love your childhood without recruiting it as a campaign poster.

That flexibility is a sign something went right.

7) You’re not afraid to ask for help—but you try first

Some homes turn help into shame. Others turn help into a permanent crutch.

The good-enough home lands in the middle: “Give it a shot; if you’re stuck, holler.” Maybe you were taught to read instructions, to carry your weight, to attempt the math problem—and also to bring the mess to the kitchen table when the wheels came off.

Adults were scaffolding, not saviors. Now, you Google, you attempt, and then you email a mentor without embarrassment. Self-sufficiency and interdependence learned to dance.

8) You can disagree without needing exile

If your parents let arguments end without banishment, you learned that dissent isn’t a prison break.

Maybe the dinner table got loud, then someone cracked a joke and passed the bread. Your nervous system learned: disagreement is part of belonging, not the opposite of it.

As an adult, you can say, “I see it differently,” and still RSVP yes to the barbecue. You don’t require ideological twins to feel safe. You’ve got thicker skin than that, and a wider circle.

9) You move toward responsibility instead of away from it

I’m not romanticizing chores.

I mean the small responsibilities that taught cause and effect: feeding a pet on a schedule, returning library books on time, calling a grandparent, carrying the second bag from the car without being asked twice.

You got the dopamine that comes from being useful.

Now, when a room needs a volunteer, your hand twitches before your mouth does. You’re the person who refills the water pitcher without announcing it.

That reflex comes from a childhood that gave you age-appropriate jobs—and treated them like trust, not punishment.

10) You can name the good and keep it, and name the harm and fix it

This is the synthesis. A good childhood doesn’t mean harm never happened. It means you inherited a pattern that lets you metabolize both.

You can say, “My dad worked too much,” and still admit, “He never missed a school play.” You can say, “My mom snapped when she was scared,” and also, “She taught me to apologize without theater.”

That kind of integrated story keeps you out of two ditches: idolizing the past or resenting it forever. You’re allowed to edit the inheritance. You can keep the recipe and reduce the salt.

Two small stories, because stories tell better than slogans.

When I was eleven, I broke my mother’s favorite bowl while “helping” with dishes at speed. The crash sounded like indictment. I waited for shouting. She looked at the shards, then at me, and said, “Are you okay?” My chest loosened.

We swept together. “Next time,” she said, “water off before you turn.” It wasn’t permissive. It was proportionate. I learned that accidents aren’t character flaws—and that responsibility lives in the next attempt.

Decades later, when a junior colleague made a visible mistake, I heard my mother’s sentence form in my mouth: “Are you okay?” Then: “Here’s how to try it again.” That’s a childhood dividend.

In high school, I came home with a lousy grade, braced for the lecture. My father read the paper, tapped the red ink, and said, “Tell me the story of this C.” Not an interrogation—an invitation. I explained the botched outline and the late start.

He nodded. “Two tools,” he said. “Start earlier, and ask the teacher for five minutes tomorrow. Tell her the truth. See what she says.” I asked. The teacher gave me a rewrite, not because I deserved it but because honesty tends to find ears. I improved to a B.

More important, I learned how to handle “not enough” without theatrics. That came from a home that treated failure as feedback.

A few field notes for recognizing and strengthening these signs in yourself:

• Practice tiny repairs. If you snap, circle back quickly. “I was sharp. Not fair. Let me try again.” You’re reinforcing lesson #1 for the next generation—whoever’s watching.

• Ritualize “enough.” One nice thing used on a weekday: the good towel, the good mug. It teaches your nervous system that ordinary days qualify.

• Schedule unstructured time. Ten minutes of boredom before screens. Let your mind make something from nothing.

• Keep a “useful” list. Small weekly responsibilities that make you a good ancestor in your own home: replace a lightbulb, check tire pressure, text a friend who tends to disappear.

• Practice gracious dissent. “I love you; I disagree.” Then pass the bread.

And if your childhood didn’t include many of these, you’re not excluded. We get to re-parent ourselves in small, non-dramatic ways. Build the house you wish you’d lived in: consistent repair, practical competence, clear boundaries, kindness that shows up when no one’s filming.

Parting thoughts

A good childhood isn’t the absence of hardship.

It’s the presence of patterns that make adulthood less brittle: repair over perfection, enough over excess, feelings with a place to land, boredom that doesn’t scare you, respect as reflex, nostalgia with a spine, help asked for cleanly, disagreement without exile, responsibility as dignity, and an integrated story that keeps what was good and fixes what hurt.

If you recognize even half of these living quietly in you today, be grateful. Someone—imperfect, tired, probably winging it—handed you a sturdy beginning.

Your job now is to keep handing it on.