Poll: Favorite parental threat...

My parents didn't threaten often, but I always got the "go to your room and think about what you've done" So I'd go to my room and color, write or do something else fun. I loved time outs!!

Sending kids to their room is not really a threat. Parents may as well say, "go to another room to have fun." I remember the "wait 'til your father gets home" one a lot. My dad is one of those people who can just look at you and you know you better stop what you did. LOL. That and he's very quiet. He used to just say something like "don't do it again." and he'd get the point across. Sarah

Oh yeah, I think the best one though is "one...two...three..." When I'm taking care of kids that works the best. Eye contact is really important too. Sarah

Although I found that this doesn't work at all with Deaf kids!

I tried this with my best friend's son (Connor) and he thought I was counting with him!  After I got to three, he continued signing on his little fingers with a big grin on his face! "3...4..5...6.."

this is fun!

grrr backfired threat!

~J~

I have a deaf cousin and I noticed that just giving him an upset/disappointed look makes him stop what he's doing.
Sarah

yeah, the slaping the back of my left hand (the sign for "warning") gets his attention right quick now! hehe!

cuz he sees it in school with his teacher

~J~

Whatever happened to taking away TV, or the phone, or (God forbid!) the Internet! Whenever I was in trouble for something (usually for not doing my homework or something of equivalent) my mom stole my internet. She put passwords and timers on my account. It was horrible!

I think she should have done it more often... Now I'm addicted to the internet. And my brother is too. Which is bad because he gets away with it because he actually gets good grades.

Disjointedly,

Rachel/Rai

haha, i thought your icon was Link, from The Legend Of Zelda, for a short minute :)

You thought right! :o)

--Rai

haha, i knew the outcome before the page switched.  i was staring at the list briefly and i couldn't actually recall my parents saying any of that, either.  or something.

I also had one option that said

"do you want to tempt the evil eye?"

I got that from my Italian grandparents all the time...I had no idea what would happen to me if I did, but I decided it couldn't be good!

I got the idea for this poll from a comedy act that I rememberd from a Christian comic in the 80's..he was saying something like:

My mom would always say "I'm going to slap your face off!"  I thought, what would really happen if she DID slap off my face..couldn't be good.  then other times she'd follow it up with "..if you do it again, I'll slap you into next week!"  Well at least no one would know it was me, since I'd be over there with no FACE!

heh, that always made me laugh..since I had a mom who like to keep me in line with slapping threats! heh

I thought about the "I'll take (blank) away if you do that one more time!"  That was good that someone mentioned that, since I still have not healed from when my parents took away all my Barbies for a MONTH!  Now those dolls were my life line! I'm an only child..what esle was there to do?

heh

~J~

I used to have stuff taken away too. Sarah

My parents rarely (maybe even never) threatened, but the one thing that kept me in line was fear of the dreaded "I'm very disappointed in you." That was the doom of dooms. The worst thing I could have done was to disappoint my parents. They put so much trust in me. There was nothing I feared more than that.

ooh!

that's a good one!

how could I forget the "guilt" option?

~J~

yep, my parents were all about the guilt.
Of course, I was also always the "good kid" so the guilt worked on me every single time.

talcott, that thumbnail next to the words "ultimate pain" made me snork my orange juice.

HAHAHAHAHHAHA

My mother threatened all of us with the SPIKEY SPOON! she would get the spoon (a wooden spoon used to pick up spaghetti - the spikes were flat on the ends, not sharp) and chase us around. i cant recall any of us actually getting hit with the spikey spoon, and i doubt anyone did, but the threat of it was terrifying.

also my mom had a little rhyme she did - "see my finger, see my thumb, see my fist you better run!" and she would point her finger, stick out her thumb and then make a fist accordingly. now while this seems like a threat for a small child, the meaning of it stuck in our minds for years, and all she had to do was point her finger and then her thumb and we'd stop what we were doing and get our of her hair.

oh! spikey soopn reminds me of my other Gramma (the german one) chasing my cousins and I around with the plastic fly swatter!

THAT THING STUNG!!! (on a bare bottom)

oh, when she pulled it out from on top of the fridge, we scattered like birds, all trying to fit into hiding places that were too small for us! Now there were more than 10 of us...we could have taken her, but we never thought of that!

oh! I still have bad dreams about that thing!

>THAT THING STUNG!!! (on a bare bottom)

Which was bare because...?

gramma took our pants down! grrrrr!

~J~

heh...my mom had something similar.  ours was the big wooden spoon used to stir pasta sauce or the like.  All my mom would have to do is take the thing out of the draw and slap it on the counter top and my brother and i would scatter!

Oh, the horror of Amish grounding--which means you can't use any electricity.  That would include TV, radio, CD player, computer, phone (there's that tiny electric current doncha know)--even toasters!  Fortunately this has only actually been inflicted upon me once or twice. *shudder*

I am SOOOOOOOO using that with my kids one day!

~J~

my fav. threat is when me and other kids would climb trees or other stuff, and our moms used to say "if you break your neck dont come crying to me !!!" LOL

yeah! "don't come cryin to me"

and I forgot...

"It's all fun and games until someone looses an eye!"

"You'll put your eye out kid!"

~J~

well I was always punished in a physical way by my dad , but my mom at the same time would use the "i'm dissapointed in you" tactic... I got it from both barrels yo.

moral of the story? violence works... so does time out... but guilt works even better.

when i was very young my mom would give me brain dusters.  my grandmother didn't like that much... said if mom kept doing that she'd cause brain damage.  after that were public spankings, if i acted up in the store, mom would stop what she was doing & tell me if i didn't stop crying, she would give me something to cry about.  she said she only had to actually do that a couple times.  then it was mostly just empty threats... except the one time (i think i was like 4 or 5) i was mad at my cousin & bit him.  she dragged me back to the bedroom & bit my arm hard to let me know what it was like.  but mostly it was just downright fear & an assortment of childhood traumas which kept me in line. 

moral of the story... mom & i still talk, but only superficially.

Brain dusters?

brain dusters... the quick smack to the back of the head

Huh... never heard of it.

My mom used to get all flustered when we were arguing.. when I was 5 or 6ish. * I found that arguing long enough would always end in "JUST FORGET IT!" and them stomping out of the room, so I win!*
My mom would say "I'm going to end up in the mad house!" and I'd get all worried  and say "Don't go to the mad house!!!" I pictured a big house with a big angry face and punching people as they walked inside. Scary stuff.

My parents utilized most of the above threats. They were enlightened enough not to invoke religious sanctions. On more than one occasion I stumped them by retorting that I didn't ask to be born, implying that I had no obligation to do as they wished me to do because it was their wish to create me, not mine to be.

heh!

"in your face! mom and Dad!"

~J~

if your face, then, what? :)

 

yeah, you'll end up lookin like your parents!

EEEEEEEEewwwwwwwwww!

heh!

~J~

Yeah, I look exactly like my dad.

But not as much as my brother looks like my mom.

 

I got my mom's looks and my dad's personality. My sister got my dad's looks and my mom's personality. Though neither of us got dad's blue eyes. Dammit.

my mom used to say that she's shove a bar of soap so far down my throat i'd poop it out...

she got points for creativity...

I remember getting my mouth washed out with a bar of soap once. I don't remember what I did though. I just remember that Dial soap tastes horrible. Sarah

EEEEEeewwwwwwwwwww!

I think that one wins...

~J~

i want to say something about this poll. I don't want to imply that it shouldn't have been posted... but i need to say something. it makes me very uncomfortable. When i first saw it, my response was "What does she mean? Most fondly remembered, or the ones you still have nightmares about?"

In the home that I grew up in, threats were not remembered fondly. Threats were not empty. Often there didn't even need to be a threat... all that was needed was for a parent to come home from work upset, and you knew you were going to get it.

I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm not looking for attention. I know that this poll wasn't directed at me and that I could have just ignored it... i just think its worth pointing out that some of us aren't yet very far removed from our childhoods... some of us still live with our parents. Some of us are currently living in households with abusive parents. Not everyone can speak with detached amusement about how their parents threatened or punished them.

This poll is not about abuse or the threat of abuse, but well intentioned, if often misguided methods of parents to stop their children from "misbehaving."

"Favourite parental threat ..." implies "the kind of threat a parent most often employs." Threats, by their nature, are not suited to be most fondly remembered, unless an elephant remembered being threatened to be stomped on by a mouse, a most unlikely scenario. Mhh ...

You may well feel traumatised by abusive parents, but the context of this poll seems to be the misguided methods of parents to make their children to "behave properly," rather than cruelly abusing them as a ligtning conductor after an upsetting day at work.

She understood that. She pretty much said that. That doesn't make it less disturbing.

gella my dear, thank you for saying exactly what i wanted to say.

I didn't have threats. I was allowed to do anything I pleased. I turned out pretty crappy.

No you didn't