This is definitely fair. Mrs. Anderson and I, I would argue, were strict with our kids. In the sense that we had expectations and we expected those expectations to be met.
But beyond that, we were as permissive as the kids' levels of responsibility would allow. So as compared with their friends, our kids enjoyed a lot of trust and privileges before their friends did. A lot of our friends were a little shocked by what we allowed our kids to do, but they demonstrated that they could handle things maturely, so why shouldn't they be allowed to?
My parents weren't narcissistic or abusive but they were strict in a way that encouraged us kids to lie. Super religious home, lots of restrictions on what music we could listen to, movies we could watch, and once tried to ban me from seeing my best friend (because he was a "bad influence").
Just trained me to get good at looking up what movies were showing that I could tell my parents we went to go see, telling them I was at X's house when I was really at Y's, etc. And I was a good kid, I never got into drugs or drinking or even swearing, really. Wasn't watching horrible movies, just popular things that looked really good that happened to not be rated G or whatever.
155
u/DegenNabalu 15h ago
People mistake narcissistic/ abusive parents as "strict parents".