I was actually surpried how many responses were good, but how ever we got here, were all hear now
You're so positive, Jason, and you're correct; we are all here, and hopefully not carrying too much from childhood into our adult lives.
I would say my childhood was maybe a 4. There were parts of my childhood that were great (lots of unstructured playtime/roaming around, mom at home, etc) but mostly what I remember is the bad stuff. Now, I KNOW people had it way worse, and there was no physical or sexual abuse, but there was a lot of what we'd now call neglect. My parents were both drinkers- 'social drinkers' as 'alcoholic' wasn't a term used at the time, BUT... there was a lot of drinking in my home when I was a child. My dad died before I turned 13 so I'm the only child with clear memories of him, but a lot of them aren't great. He and my mom fought a lot, and she confided when I was older that if he hadn't died, they'd have gotten divorced. I remember him being so disappointed in me, yelling at me about my weight and the money he was wasting on dance classes, stuff like that. Having reconnected with my first cousins as an adult, it's nice to hear the glowing memories they have of my dad... his generosity, his kindness, his love of everything. They are right, but they didn't see or have to live with the other side.
My mom just had no backbone or experience in life. She went from her father's home to my father's home, never living independently or learning who she was or what she wanted. She was also a drinker, and after my father died, she pretty much crawled into a bottle and didn't come out. She was functional, held down part-time jobs and such, but was always buzzed, or more. It was hard for me, as the oldest, but my younger siblings had it worse; my mom became more and more of a drinker as the years wore on, and my sibs tell stories of not being picked up after school dances, of being driven places by my mom and not sure they'd get there alive, etc. As I've gotten older, after talking with aunts I've understood more and more how my mother became the person she was, but I will never understand how she could have forgotten about and neglected her children. I'd sacrifice my own life for my DD, and I just don't get how my mom could have ignored both her children and her grandkids.
SO... not a rosy childhood at all, but not as bad as it could have been. I am thankful that my siblings and I came out mostly unscarred (well... not my brother, but not my story to share publicly) and are close with one another. The best thing to come out of all this is that my siblings and I learned what kind of parents we did NOT want to be, and our children feel our love for them all the time.