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9.5 Quirky Things My Parents Taught Me
Slightly unusual things I learned as a child that make me a better adult
When you think about the regular things parents teach their children — be kind, work for what you want, don’t lie — they’re all pretty admirable. But what about the smaller things, the nuances and quirks particular to each family? Some strange family habits mean a child learns equally valuable life lessons, helping them become a unique but well-rounded adult. Something as small as eating spicy food translates into the more valuable life skill of not being afraid to try new things.
That’s why I’m grateful for every one of the weird things my parents taught me, even if some of them embarrassed me as a child. Here are just a few of them.
1 Eat Spicy Food
Curries were a regular on our dinner table and they always came with chillies. Hot chillies, not those big ones that taste like capsicum (bell peppers). If the curry was too spicy, we added yoghurt or drank milk, but we were expected to finish all the food on our plates.
By the time I was ten, I could eat food as spicy as what the adults ate. I felt that mild curries were like broken pencils — pointless.
