I'm turning into my parents

No one is born knowing how to be a parent, people have been saying that forever. My parents said that to me. It has also been brought to my attention that you cannot really be taught how to be a parent, though that I think is not quite as true.

Every action we take is basically a calculation made by a brain against past experience. We are in essence simply a collection of a past experiences, we weigh every choice down to which shirt to put on in the morning against our memories. I think this might be why I am turning into an amalgam of my parents, or at least their parenting style. About a year ago I found myself suddenly having to act like a parent; there is no manual for this sort of thing so when presented with a situation that falls into the parenting category my brain looked back and all it had for reference for what I as a child saw and well…this happens

Kiddo: “oh no a spider!”

Me: “he wont eat much”

See what happened there is I said exactly what my parents said without even thinking about it, and it’s not just that, all sorts of things are being met with the exact some tactic my parents used. And it isn’t just things like that, it seems to be everything, I have all these automatic responses that I know come from my parents. Was I on some level saving all these little habits since childhood in preparation for the day that I would need them? Or am I just remembering what I saw my parents do and parroting them because I have no experience of my own for my brain to come up with something original?

Either way they seem to work, so thanks mom and dad.

-ITBrewer