When we are younger, we do not have as much maturity and wisdom and looking at situations from later on, it seems easy to think we might have done things differently. But we did not at the time. We cannot do things different than we do do them, or we would. Regret is not very useful except for remembering so when we have a situation like that in the present we can be more mature and wiser and maybe try something different "this" time. Our childhoods are learning times. Sometimes the lessons are very hard or not quite what we need but we keep learning as we go along and as we get older we can find what we think we need/missed and help others by telling our stories (as you have, thank you!) and just keep doing our best.