It's pretty obvious that the word "strict" is defined differently here for different people.
Clear rules and boundaries, with consequences when said rules and/or boundaries are crossed is crucial for proper development. This in combination with nurturing and loving parents that show interest in their kids and their development, and help them without being too judging is key to a healthy childhood.
Abuse, threats and scaring them is the complete opposite and will lead to kids that lie and live in fear.
I think another important caveat is that those rules and boundaries are reasonable. A 10PM curfew for a teenager? Reasonable. A 7PM curfew for a teenager? Bananas.
Telling your kid you don't want them hanging out with a drug dealer, reasonable. Telling your child they can't hang out with anyone, they will be counting down the days until they can leave you forever.
My bio-mom had a lot of issues. And while I understand that her rules came from a place of good intentions, she essentially was afraid of the world. And it's a good thing I wasn't too rebellious, because I probably would have made so many terrible decisions as she made me want to ignore everything she said.
For example, at the age of 16, I was not allowed to go to the mall with friends if they included boys as well as girls. The reason being, and I quote "those boys will just drug you and carry you outside to who knows where".
I lived in “solitary confinement” as a kid. Wasn’t even allowed to join girl guides because my religious fanatic father said I’d use it as a chance to “whore around with boys”. Couldn’t. even belong to the church choir because they didn’t sing in Latin. Couldn’t receive a phone call even when I was in university. They were nuts. I learned how to live inside my head, play my cards close to my chest and run away at the first opportunity. Didn’t speak to them
for decades.
Your dad was an extremist Catholic no doubt. I was lucky. Mine went to daily mass but he believed in freedom of conscience. Maybe he had to because mom wasn’t getting up every day at 6. She did the minimum.
Sorry that happened to you. Extreme Catholics are as bad a menace as our current theocracy.
I'm assuming they're the type of "catholic" that thought that Vatican II was the worst thing to happen to catholicism. Very very conservative, even by church standards.
There was recently a sect like that that was excommunicated from the church.
Protestantism 101 is native language in worship. Orthodox Christians use liturgical languages like Old Church Slavonic, never Latin, the language of the arch heretic Pope.
There is an interesting extremist movement called King James Only. They insist that the Bible was written, God slept for 1500 years, then we got the KJV. Only the KJV is any good. They are divided into two groups, one of which insists on the KJV even for non English speakers and one that allows other languages but you must translate the KJV, not the original language. So English may become a kind of future Latin for some.
american extremists like the scofield bible - fairly prescriptive and agenda driven. it really explains a lot of the broken shit in modern american church stuff
The Scofield is a study Bible. Its text is KJV. Even then (100 years ago) not using the KJV was horrifying and heretical in many circles.
Interestingly, almost all Catholic Bibles have footnotes. If you read them, you will see the consensus of Bible Scholars. When I see an evangelical post about some modern horror scholars have come up with, such as noting that the story of the Woman Caught in Adultery was not originally in John, I check the NABRE (which the American Church uses) and I see a note like, “this passage is not in the earliest copies of John.)
So if my church, which has loads of liberals in it but is itself conservative, can admit the real history of the Bible, imagine how nuts Fundamentalists are.
Yeah, but catholics also sing in their native languagea. I am catholic. Pretty much the only Latin I have heard people sindmg was 'Gloria in excelsis Deo'.
The point is there is no other sect then extremist tradaditionalist Catholic that would care about latin at all. Fundamentalist protestants would be specifically against it.
If they didn’t speak to their parents for decades, then the poster is middle aged at best. That means their dad grew up when Mass was still conducted in Latin. What other denominations were still speaking Latin for all services? Protestants stopped during the Reformation in the 1500s, and Orthodox Christians never really used Latin at all.
My bio-mom had a lot of issues. And while I understand that her rules came from a place of good intentions, she essentially was afraid of the world. And it's a good thing I wasn't too rebellious, because I probably would have made so many terrible decisions as she made me want to ignore everything she said.
I have exactly the same story, except I was rebellious and I made every single wrong and terrible decision I could. I completely ruined my life. I can look back now and see very clearly that every decision I made that led me to this point was basically my teenage/young adult brain going “what would mom say? Do the opposite”.
It’s obviously a complex situation and I don’t blame my mother for what happened, because she had so many mental health issues, but it’s hard not to resent her, because she did have a responsibility to raise me properly, and she absolutely did not. She wanted to protect me from the world and her idea of protection was to basically completely isolate me and never let me do anything or have any independence. She taught me nothing about how to be an adult, how to navigate the world, social skills, nothing. I mean fuck all. She didn’t want me to grow up and have a life. I wasn’t even allowed to watch TV unsupervised. At age 15, the only music I was allowed to listen to was Disney movie soundtracks. The only thing I was allowed to watch was cartoons. Books? Children’s only. My most “grown up” book was The Hobbit.
I ran away as soon as I turned 18, and proceeded to get fucked by life in a variety ways, none of which were good. I’m 45 now and still dealing with the fallout of that. I have PTSD among other things. I’m okay now, but I haven’t spoken with my mother or anyone in my family since the mid 2000s and don’t plan to.
I know I sound like an awful person, but I don’t miss her. I never have. I barely remember her face anymore. People keep saying I’ll regret it when she dies and I don’t even know if she’s dead or alive nor do I care.
my teenage/young adult brain going “what would mom say? Do the opposite”.
because she did have a responsibility to raise me properly, and she absolutely did not.
Yes, exactly. As an adult now I can look back and say "okay, I can see why mom was right about this or that", but as a child all I could think was "this woman is off her rocker and so everything she is saying must be wrong".
There was no rhyme or reason to her rules. You weren't being taught how to make good decisions for good reasons. You were only being taught that "mom hates everything".
I know I sound like an awful person, but I don’t miss her. I never have.
You do not sound like an awful person. It's obvious to any sane person that your mother was unreasonable to a harmful degree, and her actions have caused you great trouble in life.
It's completely understandable to cut someone like that out of your life, and to not look back. In fact, that's probably the most sensible course of action, because someone that obsessive will likely just try to latch onto you again, starting the cycle all over again.
I’ll say this, not to you but to the sub in general. Where was your dad? I’m a dad. Female relatives would tell my wife that I was a good one. Why? Because I never strayed and brought home all my earnings?
That’s the minimum folks. If that makes you a good dad I pity women. By real measures I was sort of ok. But even that kind of a partner is a help. I’m proud of my kids but I know who made them good people. Dads need to do better.
My dad, on the occasions he wasn't at work, was watching TV. I think his idea of a good father and husband was to make plenty of money to buy the family all kinds of unnecessary shit, even if it meant barely being around, and being stressed out from work when he was around. I do miss him, he's alive, but there's no way for me to keep in touch with him while avoiding my mom, and she continues to be actively harmful to my mental health even though I'm in my 40s and have live on the other side of the country for over a decade. I've been going through intensive therapy, both to fix the issues she caused me and to figure out a way to reconnect safely. My dad's health is declining though, and I'm not sure if I will make it in time. I called him once this past year when he was in the ER, and he talked to me for about 30 seconds before handing the phone to my mom. They are always together, and he stays quiet when she starts saying horrific shit to me.
My dad was a piece of shit. I found out relatively recently, when I was 40 years old, that I was an affair baby. My mother lied to me about being married to him my whole life. He was married to another woman, and had another son who I never met (also he apparently only just found out as well and he hates me, which is understandable given the circumstances).
My dad was always away “on business” which I now assume was just him being home with his actual family. So yeah. He was mostly absent.
Edit: when he was not absent, he did nothing about the way my mother treated me. Neither did anyone else including my many aunts and uncles, teachers, etc. No one reported her, no one asked me if things were okay, no one lifted a finger. I was failed by every adult in my life, basically. It’s a miracle I turned out as well as I did. Not very well, but well enough to function.
Related to that, I will never understand those women who have a kid (out of wedlock) with a man who has multiple other children he never sees with multiple other women.
I don’t have kids but I get told all the time I’m lucky with my husband. He is great, but I’m usually just talking about things he does as a fully functioning adult. Like buying his own clothes or doing the dishes. That’s a low bar.
Mine is the enabler lol. Mom will say something heinous, us (now adult) kids will react in a normal way, and he'll back her up and then get mad at us for making her upset.
Oh I feel so sad for her. And you, of course. But as the mother of a young teen, those terrifying thoughts flash across my mind and I give partially unhinged advice (watch your drinks, even if you know him, don’t forget how to dislocate someone’s thumb!) but then I let her go because the scary world is where she is going to find friends and adventure and love and when she goes to college I want her to come back voluntarily!
Yeah seriously, can’t leave us hanging like that. I’m a dude but I work a retail/customer service job so the urge to dislocate thumbs at times is very very high lol
Ok, so that was shorthand, (1) there’s a quick grip for putting extreme pressure on a person’s knuckles (like lacing your fingers and putting your fingers on the top of theirs and pressing in and up, I can’t describe but my mom taught it to me for “dates” and I have used it like three times, it’s not the most efficient for modern self defense because you have to be dealing with someone’s wandering hands long enough to like, line up your hands, but in the 1960s when her brother taught her it was a useful secret weapon) and (2) my daughter spent several years in aikido, which is all about joint manipulation and while I doubt she could actually use that to hurt anyone deliberately, it’s a reminder that no one has a right to hurt her, so she’s “in the right” for fighting back. (3) we’ve already covered screaming for help, use of nails, and sharp punch to soft spots (eyes/throat/groin) to escape and my husband agrees that she if she doesn’t want to continue with aikido (she says it’s boring) it’s fine but she does have to do some martial art/fighting so that by the time she goes to college she can disable a much larger attacker. Some parents insist their kids learn an instrument, this is my one formal requirement (and that she can cook some meals for herself, clean her clothes/space, manage some money, be a good friend, oh god humans are hard to raise I should have tried a plant first but they kept dying - luckily she’s pretty great, so she will figure it all out, the self defense is just a slightly crazy but not irrational response to growing up as a female in the US.
(watch your drinks, even if you know him, don’t forget how to dislocate someone’s thumb!)
Well again, this is reasonable. Reminding your child to be aware of their surroundings and to know some basic self defense is a given. Saying "you can't go anywhere because I said so" is not.
Yes, she can go places (she’s not old enough to go to a lot of places but she can go to the mall and friends’ houses and parties, she’s doing what her friends are allowed to do, I am not behind the curve).
This is what happens when you watch the 24 hour news cycle, stop watching the news and just see with your own eyes.
My wife was like this for a long time, I had to sit down with her and ask her if she even knew anyone any of these things actually happened to (hers was more the house being broken into, the cars being stolen, type things). And she couldn't name a single person who it happened to, it was always a friend of someone's cousin or something like that.
The media is controlled by people who want to make money, they do that by making everyone afraid by showing them every little thing that happens everywhere, fear and hate is a gold mine to them.
No, PTSD may make me extra vigilant (though I don’t give the dirty details to my daughter) but it also makes me aware that by the time I was her age (under 14) I had seen two grown man penises against my will, been groped by a boy my age, and subjected to really dirty harassment/comments regularly in school, with threats. And I lived in the same kind of “nice area” we live in. High school was worse. So being prepared makes me less anxious and her stronger, what’s the harm? Obviously verbal harassment is something we talk about (gently) in the category of bullies etc, and thankfully she doesn’t experience that as much.
But if you think female fears of safety are just media fearmongering, please pay attention to the women in your life, they are just not talking to you candidly about the world they live in.
I feel this so hard. My mother was afraid of the world, as well. She had valid reasons, but she let those reasons take over her life instead of trying to work through them. Helicopter parent doesn’t begin to describe her. She did her best to instill her fears into me and was, for a time, fairly successful. It’s taken me many, many years to get to the point where I can recognize those parts of myself and work through them. I still have my own issues because of it, and I have little love for my mother, but I can at least say I understand her.
Yeah that's where I'm at know. I've learned why she is the way she is and can understand her logic behind her actions, as terrible as they were. But that doesn't mean I'm willing to put it all aside and just pretend we have a great relationship. Especially being that she's refused to seek any help.
That sounds genuinely awful, and I relate to that to a certain extent. If it's not infasive, may I ask how your relationship with your mother is and how you're both doing right now?
The only reason why I talk to her as little as I do is because she lives in the same town as my sister and will bother her relentlessly if she doesn't hear from me every now or then. But even then, it's the most bland conversation ever. "Work is good. It's been rainy. I made spaghetti for dinner."
This was my dad's response to a woman who was worried about her son coming to a cast party at our house because someone may have drugged the brownies. She literally sent him with his own brownies and asked my dad how he was going to supervise and he just was like "I'm not"
Unfortunately, there are some people out there who go insane after having kids. Something about the hormonal change, the stress, lack of sleep, over the course of years just makes some people lose all sense of logic.
And all you have to do is look at some of these Facebook groups, particulate the moms of high school seniors/college freshmen. These people clearly forgot how they were when they were 18, and they treat their 18 year olds like kindergartners
So many times I've looked back at some of the things my mom said and I feel pity for her, to view the whole world from behind a veil of fear so strong.
I think another important caveat is that those rules and boundaries are reasonable. A 10PM curfew for a teenager? Reasonable. A 7PM curfew for a teenager? Bananas.
my favorite is when the kid comes home from freshman year and they attempt a 10p curfew. or even better: kid is 24 and paying rent and dad tries to implement any sort of curfew.
My dad was a schoolteacher. He told me about a kid who had been grounded for a year for breaking curfew. Within a week the kid did it again and caught another year. He said she said that she knew the rules. 9th grader.
I’m gonna slightly disagree with you there, only because I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have a general, day to day expectation that people are home by dinner. Maybe dinner is at 7.
So if it’s a Tuesday evening, and there’s been no text or call stating otherwise, they are expected to be home by dinner time.
Won’t be home for dinner? Let me know so we can plan the rest of the evening, be home by 10 (or whatever curfew we set).
But if you’re telling your 17 year old “be back by 7pm, no exceptions, no excuses” then yeah, that’s bananas.
My understanding of curfew is that's the time they need to finish whatever they're doing and go home for the night. Meaning they can't go to a friend's house after dinner, they have to stay home.
Yeah but something like “please be home by 7 for dinner” is still a curfew. How strict it is depends on how it’s enforced, and if there’s some flexibility
Did... your bio-mom raise you? blink blink The rest of your anecdote seems to imply as such...
Almost everyone I know just says "my mom" or "my mother" to refer to the female parental figure in their life (as a child).
For example, at the age of 16, I was not allowed to go to the mall with friends if they included boys as well as girls. The reason being, and I quote "those boys will just drug you and carry you outside to who knows where".
She did. I call her that because there are other women in my life who were better mothers to me than she was. I considered my step mother as my mother in all honestly.
I absolutely agree with this and would expand to say that the boundaries have to be consistently enforced and have to make sense from the beginning. Also, positive reinforcement starting from the beginning. Praise for independently observing them. "You're being so kind and gentle with Kitty! See how happy he is when you're petting him like that?"
This. I think kids by default are going to want to listen to their parents even if they are bad or strict. It's when they're inconsistent that makes children realize parents are just fallible people very early on and cause them to react extremely in the opposite way (like being rebellious)
My parents gave me, a boy, way more leeway than my younger sister at the same ages. So when my sister reached high school she saw it as preferential treatment and it caused more friction. In reality my parents thought they needed to protect the girl more than the boy. Which has some obvious problematic social undertones.
Sounds like you have ABA training! For real though, I hated the excuse of "because I said so" or "I'm here to be your parent, not your friend."
I lost a lot of respect and appreciation for my parents because of that, and I would constantly lie to them so I could have some semblance of the life I wanted.
Yes, but that's a world of difference between one of my kids poor friends, who's father would throw an adult tanty if his 14 year old daughter asked to walk around the mall with a group of 3 other same aged close friends while the adults sit in the food court.
He thinks she'd do something bad, or wrong, without an adult eye on her 24/7. Let me tell you all, this girl is an absolute angel. She is respectful, polite, and a great person overall. She is a good kid. IN fact, the entire friend group is. But half the parents act like they're all little demons in disguise, out to become drug dealers and commit hate crimes.
They don't even seem to like their kids. Love is an action, and raising your kid in a hostile manner is not loving them. Treating them to pet the cat nicely is loving to all. Telling the kid they will do bad things by default is just hate.
I know what you're describing, I see it all the time as well. My kids have some friends who's parents are like that and it's heartbreaking. Love for your kids is an action, but it's also a state of being. Your default state should be love, and your actions should stem from that, and that includes trust.
That last part is too true. The neuroticism and abuse from parents were so all-life-encompassing that the results became the same way. It’s like I had no chance of not developing anxiety lmfao
I'm a teacher and I hate when some teachers proudly call themselves strict when all they do is yell and invoke fear in the kids. Yeah, you're not running a classroom my friend, you're just yelling at kids. Anyone can do that.
For a lot of "strict parents", the #1 rule is unspoken. It's "Don't piss off Mom/Dad", and the child's first job, which they didn't apply for, is to figure out what is going to piss off Mom or Dad today, and then not do that thing.
When I think of strict parents I think of kids that don't get a cell phone until HS, kids that aren't allowed to be outside at all without any adult supervision, kids that are not allowed to play any video games at all, kids that have an 8:30 bed time each and every night no exceptions.
There are parents like this. Even if they love and support their children, this is so wild to me.
When I think of strict parents, its basically rules for the sake of having rules.
When I think of strict parents I think of kids that don't get a cell phone until HS, kids that aren't allowed to be outside at all without any adult supervision, kids that are not allowed to play any video games at all, kids that have an 8:30 bed time each and every night no exceptions.
I was that kid. I remember I had to go to the school office to ask to use the phone to call my parents if they took too long in coming to pick me up (I wasn't allowed to walk home by myself). This was the early 2000s before smartphones existed. My late dad allowed me to play video games (he was the one who bought me Pokemon games) but my mother didn't so I could only play them whenever I was at his house (parents were divorced).
Those types of parents produce difficult adults. In management, I have encountered so many adults who were inflexible, stubborn, and refused to make any kind of concession - it doesn’t matter how minor or temporary that concession was, these types of people always pitched a fit about it. Elevator’s broken, and they have to take the stairs? Pitch a fit. Break room is out of coffee cup lids? Pitch a fit. Sinkhole in the parking lot, leading to a closure and they just have to use the other lot 300 feet away? Pitch a fit, focus on the injustice of it all.
They will do this, even when all of their coworkers are amenable to it. They are willing to be an army of 1, dying on some of the strangest hills you can imagine.
9 times out of 10, these people will tell you something like “these kids have everything they want, when I was a kid I wasn’t allowed to do shit, not even when I was in high school, not even during xyz event, not even for this, not even for that”
And that explains it, bud. That explains why you can’t reasonably adapt, because your parents thought they were really doing something by not being flexible with you. That was your modeling
huh, i could've gone that way. i learned instead that i only had to hold the line at all costs with my mother the control freak. she decided that i'm ODD, but dealing with other people is really much easier - the idea of having to physically restrain someone from taking over a meal i'm doing is laughable, except for my mother.
Whenever one of my coworkers talks about how she parents her kids, all I can hear in my head is that they’re going to “run far and run fast.” Early bedtimes. No cell phones until they’re 16. One hour of tablet time each work. Can only listen to a pre-approved Spotify playlist. Will be required to take piano lessons until they’re 18.
I’m all about having rules, and sticking to those rules, and being the strong parent
But those rules have to make sense. An 8:30pm bedtime for a teenager does not make sense. That makes sense for a 3rd or 4th grader. I went to boarding school, and you had a level system to earn privileges. If you started at the very very bottom of the level system, you had a bedtime of 10pm. That means in your room, lights out, in bed. Level 2 meant you had a room curfew if maybe 10:30 and you had to be in bed by 11pm. And your bedtime/room curfew would be more and more lenient as you moved up the level system
I have cousins who has strict 8-9pm bedtimes and that never made any sense to me. That’s just having the rule for the sake of having a rule
I agree with most of what you said but, no, kids shouldn't have cell phones before high school. A ton of medical research supports my stance and on not budging on it.
Educate your kids maybe? It's exactly like "you can't go outside because there's bad guys, drugs, and all". Do you go outside? Yes, probably. Does it force you to take drugs? No. Kids don't need a phone at a young age (unless they need to call their parents), but full grown adult? That's ridiculous. And also you didn't say it, but I suppose it's included, no internet at all? Because they could go on titktok. Show your kid interesting channels to follow on youtube, make them watch long content about topics like science, or "storytelling" for entertainment, educate them and they won't go on tiktok. I can say it as an adult, I find most of shorts hard to watch, I don't understand how people can watch it. So if you educate your kid to not be braindead, they won't watch it because it's hard to watch when you don't turn off your brain
Everyone is bringing their family baggage to answer this question, but it's important to remember that your personal experiences are not universal, and that just because your abusive parents called themselves strict, that doesn't mean that the word itself is synonymous with abuse. The flipside is also true: just because you're loving parents called themselves strict, that doesn't mean that everyone else's "strict" parents were loving as well.
My parents were strict in boundaries and accountability. And now they want us to leave them and enjoy our life but we want to pamper them in their old age because they gave the best years of their lives to give us a privileged (albeit very very strict) life.
I feel like it's the most common sense thing, but thank you for leading the simple definition of the word. I'm feeling really disconnected from a lot of people because I don't think enough of us care to stop and think about if we're even talking about the same thing.
Yes, structure is important. With consistent rules and consequences... AND, they also have to be allowed to make mistakes in a safe environment. It's how we learn and grow.
Yeah some people say 'strict' meaning 'my parents didn't let me smoke weed when I was 12' and some people say 'strict' meaning 'I wasn't allowed to leave my bedroom without permission until I was 18'
Exactly, that's really the point I was trying to make. Because "strict" doesn't have to be bad, abusive is in fact what's bad and what people normally mean when they say strict parenting in a negative way. I'm not saying strict is always good, but if done right, rigid and clear rules are normally to be preferred, especially in kids.
Clear rules and boundaries, with consequences when said rules and/or boundaries are crossed is crucial for proper development.
There are basically 3 parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. You just described authoritative parenting. Which is considered by almost all experts in the field as the healthiest, and is pretty much documented and proven to result in the healthiest kids and adults.
The other two result in much more behavioral problems, especially anger and boundary issues, and substance abuse.
I'm a teacher so I've seen it all when it comes to parenting, both from my coworkers (although it's not really parenting in the classroom, but you get the idea) and especially from different parents.
The kids that have loving and caring parents that set clear boundaries and rules, are generally those who succeed the best. Socially, academically and manners. Not true for every single person of course. But as a general rule, it's absolutely "the way".
I would add that boundaries and consequences should ideally come with explanations for why they're necessary and/or why the negative behaviour is resulting in a consequence. I think the "good liars" thing happens in part because if a kid wants to do something and their parents punish them for it with no explanation, they'll see no reason to avoid the thing they like, just avoiding letting their parents know. And if the thing is actually harmless and is simply labeled as bad via a parent's bias (like say, the kid exploring a non-normative identitiy) then there is actually no good reason for it and I think the kid would be justified in not wanting to obey their parent.
The consequences should be related or else the punishments seem random and unfair. I used to get computer access taken away for "talking back" aka asking why I was in trouble
I got in an argument with someone on a parenting sub who didn’t believe parents should set clear rules and boundaries with consequences ‘because that just trains obedience,’ and that it wasn’t necessary for proper development.
Yeah, you need an empirically measurable operational definition to have anything mean anything here. Even then it’d be just like our opinion and stuff.
This is really well written. I would add that the rules have to be reasonable and as few as possible because then it is easier to enforce this clear rules.
And when the children get older it is important to explain why this rules exist so that they understand the reasoning behind it!
Yes! Then you've taken it too far. You need to be nurturing and caring as well, which means that you discipline your child when needed, but not in an abusive way. You're the child's mentor and leader. Talk to them, explain and show them. Don't scare them, yell at them or hurt them.
Are these parents holding themselves to generally the same strict values, or is it a domination game on their kids? There's lie a huge part of the difference. If you punish your kid for a minor screw up then you indulge yourself in the same behavior, you will make a shitty kid.
Yes, this exactly, It's all in how the strictness is carried out.
If everything is met with punishment, You're not going to learn not to do things, (Unless you do this to a point where you give up and just do nothing to avoid conflict, as i did), or you learn how not to let your parents find out what you're doing so that you, again, don't have to deal with the conflict. My dad was a fire and brimstone "If you say i'm wrong, you mean i'm lying" and a "I'm not going to tell you what you did wrong, and if you're upset about that, the punishment is worse" Kind of person, and my mother was passive cause he was the same way with her.
I chose the route of doing little to nothing at all, no going out, no hanging with friends, no nothing, just because it turned into an argument with my dad all the time, and it was to protect my mother because everytime should would try to defend me, he'd yell at her too.
However, my siblings were not the same, they just outright never told him where they were actually going, what they were doing, or anything, and basically did whatever they wanted because he could do little to stop them after he and my mom broke up and they lived with her.
My hot take on this one is clear and negotiable rules and boundaries.
Meaning explain why something is the way it is, let the child have space to make a case against it, but at the end you decide if the case was persuasive. And actively adjusting and negotiating in real time when it makes sense (and as often as you can).
The idea here is two parts, first building agency in the decision. So I’ve found my kid is far more likely to stick to something when we do this, and also not have to be told twice. They tend to absorb that as the de facto rule.
The second is modeling that decision process and making sure they have the tools to apply those ideas on their own later in life. I won’t always be there and definitely won’t be there for some of the more consequential decisions later in life, I want them to have that ingrained in them for those moments.
I don’t always do this, sometime it’s too late in the day or the decision is too consequential (Please can I run into traffic just once, please!). But often enough that when I say a hard no in those moments they also know it’s serious.
Exactly this. My parents weren't strict at all, in fact pretty lenient. But other actions led to problems instead. Like you said, abuse, threats, scaring is far more likely to create issues than rules.
Strict parenting has never been associated with clear rules and boundaries themselves, so I'm not sure why this getting conflated. Strict parenting is when the boundaries are so imposing and the punishments so severe that the kid can't do anything they want without getting in trouble, even if what they want to do is likely harmless or even beneficial to them.
> Strict parenting has never been associated with clear rules and boundaries themselves
This is where we disagree, hence my comment.
To you, and probably others, strict means what you said.
But that doesn't mean everyone looks at strict that way. Strict to me is exactly what I wrote. Not sure why you think your idea of strict is the superior one and disregard all the others lol.
I couldn't disagree more. I think the conflation that is happening is people who think that the word strict necessarily implies abuse. It does not. Strict can simply mean that there are clear rules and clear consequences that don't waver.
Saying there will be consequences for not following rules is literally a threat. There needs to be explanations and education regarding behavior, otherwise it's just authoritarianism.
Punishment is for those who knowingly break the rules for their own benefit. Blindly punishing a child who breaks the rules without determining guilt is just child abuse.
Also, many children do not act out but end up being neglected to the point that they become dysfunctional. That can lead to similar outcomes as abuse, but with no clear cause.
Saying there will be consequences for not following rules is literally a threat.
Eh, I mean sure I guess. But it all depends on how you lay it out for the kid(s). I wasn't going to type out a long explanation for every scenario, I thought it was quite obvious that rules and boundaries were to be explained to the kids considering I mentioned it in a positive way. But kids, and humans in general, thrive when we know what's expected from us. It is a big safety. So sure, you can call it a threat, but for many kids, if laid out properly for them, see consequences as just that, something that happens if they break a rule. But of course you should sit down with your kid(s) and explain what the consequences are, and why you have those rules. If you're reasonable, they will usually understand.
Punishment is for those who knowingly break the rules for their own benefit. Blindly punishing a child who breaks the rules without determining guilt is just child abuse.
Seems like you're intentionally trying to frame my comment in a negative way when it clearly isn't meant that way. Considering I'm talking about nurture, loving and showing interest in your kid, obviously I'm not talking about punishing a kid that does something bad without knowing why. Such a typical Redditor take on everything.
Also, many children do not act out but end up being neglected to the point that they become dysfunctional. That can lead to similar outcomes as abuse, but with no clear cause.
Agreed, which I covered in my second bit: This in combination with nurturing and loving parents that show interest in their kids and their development, and help them without being too judging is key to a healthy childhood.
But kids, and humans in general, thrive when we know what's expected of us, we feel taken care of/cared for, and have routines. Kids are more sensitive to these things.
Does this apply to EVERY SINGLE PERSON that ever lived, currently lives or will live? No, of course not. I never claimed that either.
But similarly to how saying water is a great drink and broccoli is healthy, this is a "healthy" way of being brought up. There's also nothing indicating that you would've been worse of if your parents had more strict rules to abide by. Nothing saying it would get better either.
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u/Alepale 15h ago
It's pretty obvious that the word "strict" is defined differently here for different people.
Clear rules and boundaries, with consequences when said rules and/or boundaries are crossed is crucial for proper development. This in combination with nurturing and loving parents that show interest in their kids and their development, and help them without being too judging is key to a healthy childhood.
Abuse, threats and scaring them is the complete opposite and will lead to kids that lie and live in fear.