Universal Parenting Rules (That You Chose Not To Follow)

[graham418]

My mother made me Act Like a Lady once my age got to the double digits. That rule was never part of my daughter's life.

Acting like a lady is highly overrated. It always brings to mind the Laurel Ulrich quote:
"Well behaved women seldom make history"

 

[Posaune]

I have a feeling that I posted this somewhere else, but I'm not sure so here goes...

I was raised with dinner at EXACTLY 6:00; sitting in your chair, butt planted. If you were one second late it was a major infraction. Best to be early. I missed it once only and was grounded for a week.

That did not apply with my own kids. We ate when we were hungry.

Years later, after my dad's death, I was talking with my mom about the rule and she told me that it was really made to make sure that Dad would get home on time from the bar after work. It was successful.

 

[Pat AKA mustski]

My kid was standing by the road making finger-shooting gestures at passing cars.. I'm kinda torn...

I tried to keep toy guns out of my child's life. Then we watched Bambi when he was 4. For some reason, after that he kept chewing his sandwiches into shooting devices and pointing at the dog and yelling bang, bang. I just gave it up and bought him toy guns.

Differences in my parenting were few really. My parents were pretty good at what they did. He got less freedoms as a young child because it's a very different world than what I grew up with. If anything, I was more lenient in the teenager years. As long as he got good grades, I let him make his own choices. I was always bad about family meal time. We tried that but it pretty much segued into dinner in front of the tv so we could all watch Jeopardy.