When we consider the struggles of childhood we usually think of big, difficult traumas, but it’s often the little things that we remember most.
On Redditpeople got into quite a conversation about this stuff, with users sharing how they’ve been able to make it up to their kid-selves as adults.
If you’re like a lot of people, you can still hear your mom saying, “No, we have ____ at home” or “Don’t ask me for anything!” every time you went into a store and just had to have that new toy or piece of candy.
Every kid needs to be taught these lessons — and we’ve all witnessed what kids who’ve never been told “no” are like. But when that “no” also comes from a place of financial struggle, it can have a lasting impact. Studies have shown pretty conclusively that financial trauma is very real, and our childhood financial experiences shape us as adults.
There are lots of ways to heal that, but sometimes the best one is just good old-fashioned retail therapy, as counterintuitive as that may seem! So perhaps it’s time to take a page out of these 12 people’s books and just go buy yourself that ______. The kid version of you will thank you for it!
As a person who grew up pretty poor, this hit me right in the gut — oh, how I begged my mom for an ice cream cake every year as a little kid! Nothing seemed more magical, but at about 20 times the price of the Duncan Hines box at the grocery store, it was a no-go in our house.
Same for one Redditor, who wrote, “I bought an ice cream cake for no reason once. The freedom is palpable.” Amen, sister!
Another Redditor put an even finer point on it. “There’s a whole other world when you find out… you can literally buy a cake just because!!!” Hear, hear.
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This Redditor was talking about one of those tacky 80s pieces of “decor” with all the little lit-up filaments — you know, the exact kind of thing that was fascinating to a child.
One Redditor wrote of how her grandma had one that she kept under lock and key. “I was obsessed with it and always asked her to turn it on,” they wrote. But their childhood wonder was rebuffed at every turn.
“She ended up putting it in an empty fish tank so I couldn’t touch it.” So, as an adult, they bought their own — or three of them, to be exact. Take that, grandma!
“Braces. When I was 50,” another person wrote. “They worked and I STILL feel proud of it.”
Hey, this stuff can really make a difference, especially if your smile was something you got negative attention for as a kid, but your parents couldn’t afford to fix it. Enjoy those nice straight teeth, Redditor!
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This one came with a sort of different but equally important lesson.
“Guitars,” a man wrote. “After buying about 20, it dawned on me that no amount of guitars will put one in the hands of me at 10 years old.”
Experts say that people with financial trauma tend to become either cheapskates or spendthrifts, and this man makes an excellent point: As healing as it can be to fulfill a childhood wish, it’s easy to go overboard. Moderation is key!
“Sometimes I eat dessert first because I’m a grown man and no one can stop me,” one man wrote.
Hard to argue with that — especially if you had parents who made dessert a reward or, worse yet, forbid them entirely. Experts say this can cause an unhealthy relationship with food, so just eat the ice cream. Mom and Dad are not the boss of you anymore!
To anyone who grew up in financial hardship, this one will hit like a ton of bricks. I see you, fellow Rose Art survivors! Those terrible off-brand crayons barely worked, smelled weird, and perhaps worst of all, were like walking into school branded with a scarlet letter.
But there was one other feature the Crayola ones had that no one else did. “A box of 64 Crayola crayons, the one with the sharpener,” this Redditor wrote. That sharpener… us Rose Art kids have been chasing that dragon for decades!
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“Hobbies for my kids, the ones they want,” one parent wrote. “I wanted to play sports, and play guitar but was always told ‘no’.”
Several other Redditors said this became a priority for them, too, because they grew up without enough money to have hobbies.
But for this parent in particular, they were denied their hobbies because they simply weren’t the ones their parents wanted them to do. That kind of stifling can be tough to carry, and it’s a great example of a pattern not to repeat.
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Again, it’s the little things! This woman wrote that while she was allowed to start wearing makeup at 13, her mother absolutely forbade red lipstick.
“Even at 17 when I was about to leave home, she’d make me throw it away if I bought any with my own money,” she wrote. Why? Because “‘only whores wear red lipstick.'” Oh, brother. Yes, ma’am, get you some red lipstick, and wear it proudly!
For tons of women on Reddit, these three things came up again and again as things they desperately wanted when they were kids — especially since everyone else in their class had them — but were denied because of how expensive they were.
One man even wrote of surprising his wife with the one specific Barbie she never got as a kid. It cost him hundreds of dollars to find the vintage doll, but his wife’s reaction to finally having that childhood dream fulfilled was priceless.
Confession: Even on the dark side of 40, I STILL have a moment of thrilling disbelief every time I spread name-brand peanut butter on my toast.
Growing up, it was always the awful store-brand stuff — and my mom spread it on so thin it might as well have not been there at all. A PB&J at a friend’s house with a positively profligate spackle of Jif felt like fine dining as a kid!
Tons of Redditors were in the same boat. From expensive produce like grapes to name-brand cereal, tons of people said they make up for their frugal childhoods at the grocery store.
“Cereal…was a luxury we just could not afford,” one wrote. “Now that I have a career job and a steady source of income I ALWAYS have a box of cereal in the pantry.”
One person wrote of being repeatedly denied those little cups of animal feed at zoos and carnivals because they were too expensive. “I feed all the animals at the zoo now,” they wrote.
Another Redditor with a similar experience put this kind of childhood memory into even sharper focus. “Being that close to a giraffe’s tongue and feeling the little reverberations from the leaf being lapped out of my hands was truly amazing,” they wrote. “Such a perfect opportunity for core memories to be made.” And worth every penny.
“I run the AC/heat whenever I’m hot/cold,” one person wrote. “I’ll pay the bill if it means being comfortable, especially if it’s the summer.” Could not agree more — especially as a kid who grew up without any air conditioning at all in the swampy humidity of Midwest summers.
Now? When people jokingly list the lack of A/C as a reason they refuse to move to Europe, I reconsider my lifelong love of France; let’s just put it that way. As Scarlet O’Hara might put it, as God is my witness, I will never lie awake at night stuck to a sweat-soaked sheet again. That’s a promise to my inner child!
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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
