The Best Childhood Advice Readers Still Live By

What piece of advice from your childhood still shapes how you live? Positive News put that question to its readers, and hundreds of replies came back — often simple, often from a parent or grandparent, and often still useful decades later.

One line that kept appearing: take time to stop and smell the flowers. Not as a slogan, but as a reminder to slow down and notice what's in front of you. Other answers touched on kindness, honesty, trying again after failure, and looking out for people who need help.

Several readers said the advice only made full sense once they were adults — passing on the same words to their own children or grandchildren. The collection is less a single lesson than a patchwork of small habits that people credit with keeping them grounded.

It's a readable snapshot of what people value when they think back to childhood — practical, unsentimental, and worth sharing around the dinner table.

Originally reported by Positive News.