How Strict Were Your Parents

So once again I'm driving this morning and the FlyFM morning crew were asking the question "How strict were your parents"? Got me thinking about my own parents who believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. My parents were strict, much more strict then I am with my children. Well with the younger two I'm less strict anyway, the older three are a different story.

I can remember as a kid being made to go to bed at 7pm every night. Winter time it wasn't so bad as the days got dark early, but the summer months were the worst when it only got dark between 9:30 to 10 pm every night. My sister and I would be lying in bed wide awake listening to the neighbourhood kids running around and playing, not us though we were expected to sleep. Not surprising that every grade school teacher told my mother that I was a well rested child. My mothers reasoning was we needed our sleep as we got up at 6am everyday, no wonder since we were made to go to bed at 7pm. That's a good eleven hours of sleep every night. The reason is more likely that my mother couldn't stand to listen to us any longer.

Another thing that my mother was fanatical about was playing outside. Unless there was a blizzard, too cold for even the dog to go out or there was a rain storm our asses were kicked outside to play everyday. Winter we were bundled up, spring we wore rubber boots and rain coats if need be and summer months we ran around in shorts and sandals sometimes barefoot. If we whined that we wanted to stay indoors forget it mom's reply was "It"s too nice a day to stay indoors"! To our mother everyday was a nice day and come hell or high water we were kicked outside to get our daily dose of fresh air. At least back then the air was fresh.

Dinner time was a nightmare for my sister and I. We were what you call picky eaters. My father

was a meat and potatoes man and so that's what we had every night along with a veg. My sister and I hated potatoes and I can remember sitting at the dinner table for 2 hours as we were not allowed to leave until our dinner was done. There we would sit with rock hard cold mashed potatoes staring us in the face. After two hours my parents got fed up looking at us and we were sent to bed without our dinner. By that time it didn't matter anyways because by then it was 7pm at night, our bedtime.

For the slightest infraction we got our asses spanked. We were expected to be quiet, no running or yelling in the house and especially no fighting. My second sister and I got along just fine but sister number three was another matter. She irritated us so in turn we irritated her and she would run crying to our mother or father and of course my second sister and I got our asses whopped. We were older we were supposed to know better. I remember back when I was a kid that my father would send us to my aunts house every Saturday so my mother could visit with her sister and we could play with our cousins. Dad worked on Saturdays so we would spend the day at my aunts house and dad would pick us up on his way back home. My aunt had a neighbour who grew tulips in her garden every spring. Her whole back yard would be covered with tulips which she tended to lovingly. One Saturday my cousin and I took it into our heads to pick her tulips. We ended up picking every tulip and brought them back to my aunts house and proceeded to try and plant them in the dirt in the front. Of course when the poor old lady looked out her back door and saw all her tulips missing she began to scream and our mothers heard her. They ran outside to see what was wrong and found us in the front trying to plant the tulips. My uncle had made a nice spanking paddle to use on my cousin, he was a master craftsman with wood. That paddle was nicely shaped covered in leather and the handle had been covered with black electrical tape. I guess you know what happens next. The pair of us couldn't sit for a week. To make matters worse the tulips had no stems, we had just plucked the heads off so they couldn't even be put in a vase.

Yes my parents were strict and we grew up ok. Now a days I see a worrying trend were by kids are spoiled. They have no respect for their parents, teachers or figures of authority. Overseas it is considered child abuse to spank your kid on the ass if they are naughty. Every kid has a cell phone these days which is something which would be considered a luxury back my day now it considered an essential item every kid should have.