Nope. I don’t spank my kids or call them mean names when they upset me or do something wrong. When I ground them, they can’t talk their way out of it or do extra chores to get out of it. I don’t use them as replacements for adult friends, talk to them about my relationship with my husband (their father), or need them to be on my side or happy with me all of the time. I don’t buy them everything they ask for at birthdays or Christmas, I keep the house reasonably clean, do laundry regularly, and insist we all eat dinner together at the table every night. I don’t let them watch all the TV they want or watch shows that aren’t age-appropriate.
My parents weren’t terrible, but my dad was harsh and didn’t communicate well. He wanted to be in control of everything, to the point where when I was 17 if I didn’t eat all of my dinner, he’d ground me to my room. But then I could either offer to do some chores or just talk my way out of it. I actually think it’s kind of funny that my parents did a lot of the things people complain about now, like spoiled us and didn’t effectively discipline us. Yes, we were spanked from time to time, but all that did was make us try harder not to be caught. We had no problem with lying to stay out of trouble. And yet, supposedly parents “back then” did everything right. ;)
My mom has some emotional problems that have worsened over the years. She wasn’t so bad when I was a kid, but clearly didn’t know what boundaries were. She’d talk to me about things like her sex life with my dad, her plans to divorce him someday, and how her life would be better if my younger brother had never been born. She didn’t do much around the house, I often had no clean clothes to wear, she never took us to the dentist, and anything related to personal hygiene was completely optional. She was mortifying to be around in public. I know think she has borderline personality disorder. She’s actually gotten much worse, but didn’t really go off the deep end until I was in college.
Sometimes I wonder how my brother and I turned out to be pretty normal people. Anyway, I’ve made a lot of conscious decisions to NOT do things the way my parents did. My brother and I had to figure a lot of things out the hard way, much to the delight of meaner kids. For example, I clearly remember when I learned most people bathe more often than once a week and brush their teeth more often than once a day.