Mother was the “wait 'til your father gets home” type punisher. After Dad punished me, I could never remember what the punishment was for. The punishment was always the same - hitting or yelling - and the fact that it never corrected the behavior seemed to have little to do with the thought processes of either parent.
Kids actually like it when parents set boundary’s. They will test the boundary’s and push the limit but it comfort them to have an authority figure that will be consistent and keep them in line. I can’t explain everything I know about kids, you will have to read Dr. Spock yourself.
I know limits are security to a kid, but what if the parents disagree about what is allowed?
Then a fight ensues and nobody gets dinner.
When I was little I often got punished for staying out past the time when my parents told me to come back home. A lot of my friends got punished for that one too. I always got spanked, but perhaps a more appropriate, and maybe worse, punishment would be to ground me for a while.
Oh man, all through high school the top three of my running fights with my parents was breaking curfew, not keeping my room clean, and always trying to get out of washing dishes Oscar Madison would have been proud of me, to get anywhere in my room you had to wade through clothes strewn all over the floor, books, sports equipment, and miscellaneous other teenage
stuff.
I think my parents mostly did a good job of raising me, but there are a couple of things I needed their help with and didn’t get. I guess they let me figure that stuff out on my own.
I thought my parent did a good job training us kids. We lived in a middle’ class apartment but we were probably a few notches below middle class. But us three kids turned out to be nice, smart, friendly, funny, and likable. My two sisters have decent jobs, good friends, and a good income and are very well adjusted.
Well, my life got side-tracked by a little thing called paranoid schizophrenia but after the worst of it I manged to do pretty well considering my situation and I thank god that I’m a good person and that I’m likable. It ain’t easy but I try. Yeah, at age 56 I am actually starting to think about where I came from and everything they taught me when I was growing up. I can use that stuff!!!
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Sometimes I marvel at how much more capable than me our father was. He did this one abstract painting that we hung in our den, and when I think back on it I think he could have been a great artist. He wasn’t interested in that, though. He didn’t want to be great. He wanted to raise a family. I was the one who wanted to be great, even though there was nothing great about me. I sometimes wish I’d had more insight into my condition when I was younger, and I had worked on finding a job that fit with my profile of disability. Maybe I could have been some kind of nature warden - just putter around a wildlife reserve taking measurements on what was going on in the local ecology. I’ve sometimes thought that I could be some kind of night janitor in an office building or a church now. I’m afraid to get back into the work force, though. I’m afraid that I have pissed enough people off that they would be really mean to me if they were my superiors at work. Also, I have back trouble, but I think I can handle that by not doing the things that trigger my back pain.