When I was about five of six, my parents bought me a little record player and a Lady and the Tramp record. I played that record constantly. One day, after I finished listening to it, I left it on top of the record player instead putting it back in its protective shield and on the book shelf where it belonged And went outside to play.

When I returned a few hours later, the record was all warped and bumpy from the sun coming thru the window and frying it. I was horrified, out it in the sleeve and didn't say a word to my mom. Well, being a mom, she noticed I wasn't listening to the record anymore and asked me about it. I started to cry and showed her the record. She gave me a hug and sais something about that being why we put things away when not using them.

I learned a very valuable lesson and from that day forward have taken really good care of my stuff and I also put things that I'm not using in their proper place.

My mother allowed my boy cousins ranging between 6 and 11 to take one of the few dolls I ever received because they did not have toys. We both went to the end of the driveway to wave to them. They tossed my first the head of the doll out the window then the body. She would not allow me to go pick them up because they would come back for them. They had more toys than we did.

I wasn't much for dolls, but I did have a Chatty Cathy that I loved. One day I was mad at my mommy, goodness knows why, and in my little tantrum slammed my bedroom door shut and hurled Chatty Cathy on the floor. She was garbled after that, I was so sad. But I never reacted in anger like that since.

We raised rabbits for meat. There was one that I claimed, and it's name was Mush. I called him "my rabbit", but I didn't handle him and he wasn't a pet in the truest sense of the word.

My mother asked me if I cared if she butchered Mush. I said I didn't care...but, really, I did, and if I had said so, I am sure she wouldn't have butchered him. I felt so guilty about it that not only did I not eat dinner that time, I never ate rabbit again. I was about 6 or 7 when that happened.

My mother allowed my boy cousins ranging between 6 and 11 to take one of the few dolls I ever received because they did not have toys. We both went to the end of the driveway to wave to them. They tossed my first the head of the doll out the window then the body. She would not allow me to go pick them up because they would come back for them. They had more toys than we did.

I don't even understand what that means? Your mother gave your, male, cousins your doll? And, as they were driving away, they tossed the doll's body parts out the window? Who was driving that car?

Their mother was driving the car. Yes my mom allowed them to take the doll and when I protested they were boys I was told they had few toys. My mother just did things like that. Edited to change the she after the yes to my mom. I do not think their mother even noticed.

My mother made me leave my teddy bear behind when we moved to Australia when I was 8. When I was too small to remember I had chewed a hole in his plastic face and also scribbled on it with a ball point pen. Mom decided he was too ratty to bring. Fifty years later I remember crying goodbye to him as we were driven away from our house to the airport.

I guess Mom wasn’t very sentimental herself- she burned all her diaries before we left- and her own mother, when Mom was a child, had decided Mom wasn’t caring well enough for her pet rabbit, so Grandma served him for dinner.

I found settling into a new country without my special confidant very hard, it really didn’t happen for nearly 10 years.

My parents never messed with my treasures.......but I did. As I grew up, I decided that some of them were simply 'too childlike' and that I had outgrown them. And so they got recycled (have no idea where at that time, 50+ years ago). I recall at one time going through a bunch of school papers and art work and burning them in the old oil drum we had for that purpose. One of these 'masterpieces' was a paper mache
"impossible animal" I had made in 3rd grade (it was really quite hideous). I didn't have any issues getting rid of it but my mom was devastated that I burned it!! LOL!!

I think mothers are like that - often, these treasures are tangible physical reminders of their offsprings' fleeting chidhood :-) I still have a box of school papers and artwork that I saved from my almost 30 y.o. daughter's school days. And a ceramic handprint from kindergarten that lives in my china cabinet!

My brother Mike (who is five years younger than I am) destroyed all my toys when they were given to him to play with, including some valuable vintage model cars. My sister burned my map collection, along with my collection of programs from concerts that I had gone to. My mother served my pet calf Charlotte for dinner one evening and told me it was Charlotte. My father burned my underground comic book collection (hidden under my bed) when I was visiting my parents for the summer while at college.

Well I lost all of my childhood things and pretty much everything else in the flood. We had just brought to our house my husband's baby book, blanket, bronzed shoes, various items from his mother's house when she passed away. They too of course were lost in the flood. All those years they were safely packed away in a cedar chest at her house. We took them with us and in a few months they were destroyed.

DS is still upset that I gave away his Matchbox cars TEN YEARS after he had left home without them. I've kept his mangled, one-eyed stuffed Snoopy and a toy giraffe that still plays "Around the World". (We both blubber whenever we rediscover it in the attic.)

My parents didn't buy us a lot of toys. We mainly played outside when I was little. I remember I had a stuffed teddy bear that I decided to hand wash and left out in the sun... it rotted. I've never been a fan of stuffed animals since then. I had baby siblings when I growing up. I didn't play with dolls much. We had a family friend who would use tails from animals like deer or roadkill to make some really nice fish baits. He'd use the fur where feathers would go. He has asked for some of my hair after it was cut one time so he could make it into a fish bait. I got the bright idea to cut off my doll's hair. I don't think my mom was happy with that. My barbie was still intact until my sister came around several years later. I think she cut Barbie's hair.

I was the good mother who saved all kinds of stuff from the kids. Housecleaning I recently found two puppets I gave my son which were a present from his newborn sister at the hospital. He played with them for years and I thought he'd want them. His moth-eaten "kitty" he carried around, I gave to him years ago and I have some dolls of the daughter who is less sentimental still sitting in her old room.

My father, on the other hand, threw out an antique box of clippings of my idol Mario Lanza that I painstakingly collected over the years including a letter he wrote to me. The box was a foot long and 4 inches high but he trashed it. Made me mad and I still am. It wasn't his to destroy.

I don’t know why I was so sentimental about this, but either my a mom or my brother threw away my 2 scrapbooks I had kept through middle and high school. I think at the time we hadn’t moved from the house my first husband and I rented when we first married to our first house and then we were busy with a baby. Of course I just thought they would still be there in my old bedroom.

I had a lot of mementos, newspaper clippings, pen pal letters and some photos in them I would have liked to keep. Many of them were school awards, Girl Scout stuff, school events like proms and club activities, plus photos.

I also had a Miss America doll my favorite uncle gave me that I just loved, even when I was too old for dolls. That was gone too.

I was never one for dolls but I did have one that I loved. It was called a Baby Bunting doll-basically a stuffed thing in a bunting with a round plastic face. I slept with it. We were moving overseas and my mother was on a clear out tear burning stuff in the yard. I was clutching the doll to keep it safe and she snatched it from me and tossed it on the fire. I've never forgotten its face bubbling and melting. She admitted she didn't knw why she did it. We were allowed to keep a few select toys. I was seven. She did things like that.

Not meaning to offend, but I can't imagine the meanness of some of the

Moms mentioned. I am so sorry that some of you had to deal with that in

your childhood. Wow....makes me so sad for you.

My mother would decide that I was too old for this stuffed animal or that doll (My beloved Shirley Temple, or dolls, as it happened - my "Dolls of the World" collection that I still played with) and poof! they would be gone. No discussion. Odd because my 7 years older sister still had her favorite doll although, being a teenager, she didn't play with it, and still has it to this day.

I still have my DD's Rainbow Bright doll that went everywhere with her, and her dearest stuffed animal, tattered though he is.

Agreed Uptown Gal.

The saddest physical treasures that I lost were a bunch of old Christmas ornaments and decorations. They always transported me back to being a child and the joy and excitement of Christmas.

After my mom passed away my dad never wanted to put up a tree at home. So I took one of the most special ornaments to my own home but left the rest in their special box in my parents basement.

My dad, bless his soul, ended up with dementia, and in the early stages he gave away all of my mom's Christmas decorations. The tree, the boxes of ornaments, all the decorations - just gone.

But he meant no harm. So while I miss so many of those happy little tokens, I knew he didn't do it out of malice or meanness.

I can't imagine going through what some of you did as children. I'm so sorry. :(

> So when I was five, I got a beautiful model train set, my sister got several dolls, and we traded.

Genius !

My dad didn't have dementia but cleaned out all the beloved Xmas stuff I used to put under the tree when I was little. A barn, cows, old Santa, antique sheep, fencing. I looked in all the cubbyholes when we sold the house and they were gone with his obsessive OCD cleaning.

Well this was not a sentimental thing, and I was an older teen when it happened, but it really bothered me. We were moving and my mother threw away a set of Encyclopedia Britannica while she kept the very old --and for the kids in my family-- outgrown World Book Encylcopedia set. I was upset at the loss. But it also symbolized, to me how marginal my mother's precarious mental health was at that time. I did not say much; she already had way too much on her plate and way too few solutions available.

My father, on the other hand, was just pretty oafish about his kids' emotions including that they might treasure anything. So which parent do you suppose showed better respect for their children's thoughts, emotions and possessions? The question seems to have been framed with mothers in mind, but let's not forget fathers might have kicked their kids in the emotional gut as well.

Yes my mom sold my grandparents' farm when I lived out of state. By the time I returned, it was leveled and they were building duplexes on the property. I would have liked to have dug up and transplanted some of my grandmother's flowers from her property (they would have survived in my zone). She had a green thumb and could grow anything. Vegetables, herbs, flowers during the summer, and she had numerous houseplants.

Lars, your discussion about swapping the train set for the dolls reminded me of my brother. I am the oldest by 3.5 years. Although I did play with dolls, I was just as happy to play with his green army men, train set, and whatever else he had. When I was around 6, I wanted a pair of cowboy boots, a ‘gun’ and a cowgirl outfit. My grandparents were living in Texas and had taken us to a rodeo which I loved. They made sure I got the whole outfit for Christmas. I don’t think my Mom and Dad would have bought any of it for me.

Fast forward a few more years. I wanted a BB gun. But of course I got the ‘you’ll shoot your eye out’ lecture. No kidding, I heard that exact phrase so many times. Well, my brother finally got one and guess who was out in our back yard shooting it all the time (no one lived to the side or behind us)? I don’t think this brother ever shot a gun beyond this one.

I have lost many things throughout the years due to moving. None of them were very important, but things I think of from time to time.

The one thing I wish I still had was a small suitcase full of Barbies with clothes that my mother made for them. There were some of the first Barbies that came out. The suitcase was stored in my mother's locked storage room at her apartment - someone broke in and they were stolen. This was many years ago.

I saved all the letters from my boyfriend in a handbag in my closet in my bedroom. One day I noticed the cleaning lady was carrying that handbag. My mother found the letters and tossed them, then gave the bag to the cleaning lady. I am sure my mother read every private letter, she was always snooping around. I’d love to have those letters now. Makes me angry thinking about it. I’m sure she knew I wanted them or I wouldn’t have saved them in a special place. It was just mean.

I find these stories about parents getting rid of their children's things sad. Not so much getting rid of grown children's things, although it would be nice to ask if they want the stuff before tossing it. But, to butcher a child's pet or toss their doll in the fire; that's just mean.

Reading these responses has brought back memories from my childhood. My mom used to get rid of our pets. We'd come home from school and they'd just be gone. The reasons varied from they went to live on a farm, ran away, were going to be trained to be a police dog, were stolen and so on. One of the worst was coming home one day and finding Smokey the pony gone. He was sucha clown, a gentle soul and smart as a whip. We found out later that she'd sold him to a horse trader. The majority of the horses that ended up in his hands were sold for slaughter. I just hate thinking that poor Smokey Joe ended up in a can of dog food.

Matthias, I STILL have my set of World Book Encyclopedias. I love that each volume ( which is actually two volumes in one book) had a French lesson, a fairy tale and other stories.

Curious. I don't think our World Books had those. Do you have one or more "yearbooks" that they published? Do you know how old your set is? Ours was a 1927 set and we were kids of the 1950s to 1970s. It was interesting to see, though, that some of the articles were unchanged from 1927 to --say-- the 1970 edition which we could look at in the school library. I remember the article on "Rainbow" was unchanged, except that it now had some color illustrations. But the '27 edition was no good if we needed to look up something about WWII, NASA and space exploration, Hawaii and Alaska as states, laser, suburbanization, Cold War, most of the presidents of the 20th century, etc.

The Britannica was old, but not nearly so and had much longer, deeper discussion about everything. Britannica's article authors were identified, so not committee written.

Ha, I remember we also had an old set of Funk & Wagnalls. Remember those? Our very old ones were kind of weird, filled with some rather archaic styles of writing. By the 1960s, F&W had become a lot like World Book.

Our household did not have enough books; that is probably why I so clearly remember the encyclopedias. There was not much else around to read, (newspapers, cereal boxes, magazines --yes!) especially in summer without the school library, so we read the encylopedias. Oh, glory--- when the county finally opened a little library a couple miles away!

Matthias, I was mistaken. I think you and I are close in age. I'm a 1950's baby. Apparently the years have taken a larger toll on my memory than I would prefer to admit. I just looked at my encyclopedias and they are not World Book, published in the 40's. They are The Book of Knowledge. Later, we "graduated" to Funk & Wagnalls.

We had lots of books in our household, but we were not allowed to bring books to the table. Hence, I read and reread MANY cereal boxes.

I was an obsessive reader, and also curious, so even though we had plenty of reading material in the house, and went to the library regularly, I still enjoyed leafing through the World Book set.

I bought a set when my DD was about eight, thinking that she would use them and hopefully enjoy them as I did, but that didn't really happen. After she was grown I had a co worker whose son was very bright and always asking for more learning, especially math, so I gave her the set. She told me that he was thrilled with it: "Mom, these books have everything about math!!"