Does your parenting style differ from your parents?

[MarioandLuigi]

Was thinking today how different I am to my Mum (this is deliberate). I hate shouting, dont smack and am much more laid back than my own mother. My own childhood was quite stressful and we never did very much together. I am trying to change that with my own children.

Oh yes, definitely. I don't smack, I don't mock my child when he cries. I always put his needs before my own. I keep the house clean, I keep him safe. I don't give him alcohol or leave him in the care of people who will let him drink alcohol. The list is endless...

Oh and I dont steal from my children :(

Oh god yes. When I was in ante natal group the HV asked 'what is your biggest fear' and I said 'to become my mum'. It made a few people laugh but it's true. She shouted at us and we were scared of her. She smoked 2 packs a day, swore at us, swore in general, and was a very bad cook. She was a gambler and it was common practice to take me (the youngest) to her poker evenings and I'd play on my own and fall asleep on the sofa wherever I was. I had ice cream for breakfast and I had no communication with her on a personal level. I'd had my period for two years before she actually found out about it.

She also took money from us because of her gambling.I have a differnet parenting 'style' altogether! I am not a perfect mum but I will never do to my kids what she did to us.

My problem is my parenting style is quite similar to my mum's, but my children are nothing like I was! So whereas she would blow her top once in a blue moon, same with smacking, the thought of either of those things happening would make me behave impeccably nearly all the time, and I strove to make her a happy mummy. I would never be rude or disobedient, or tell her lies. This does not apply to my dc though, hence end of tether most days...

Some of my parenting ideas are quite similar to my mum's. She breastfed all three of us until we weaned ourselves (my youngest brother at 3.5y), co-slept (and my "baby" brother still sleeps in with her from time to time, he's 11), she BLW made other similar choices to what I chose for my DS and will for Bump.
On the other hand, there is this book that was released recently by an american lady, *Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom" - and I was brought up quite similarly to this once I was a little older, and there is NO WAY that I want to parent my DCs like that.

Is the pope catholic?

Mine differs quite a bit.

My mother let general difficult behaviour go, but went mad if something irritated her personally (this made things confusing elsewhere). She pandered to us a fair bit, and only made things harder for herself. She used to give out to us while asking us to do something for the first time - i.e. even if nobody was objecting. She never gave encouragement to stick at something for fear of putting us under pressure.

I set clear boundaries and have set immediate punishments. I don't pander and I look after myself too. I only give out when there is reason to, and never rant at length. I gently push them to keep trying.

This said, I know that my mum tried her very best and she really did do a good job. I just choose to do some things differently.

my mum was a hippy - before she went totally insane

i am more of an authoritarian

do as i say or i'll drown your playstation kinda parent me

I parent quite differently to my mother. Not because I feel she did a terribly bad job parenting me (I reckon I'm relatively normal, although DP might disagree ), but because I know there are a few things I don't want to do like she did (smacking, and saying "I won't like you if you do X", for instance), but also I just find I don't want to/am unable to treat DS like that. I have surprised myself by leaning much more towards an unconditional parenting style (although definitely not the whole way there) than a traditional parenting style. DS is now 2.5.

erm well, i would emphatically deny being like my agressive abusive hard faced mum, but at times i can hear myself and am shocked at how much i sound like her.

I am a completely different personality to her so i am not like her.

I dont swear in front of or at my child. dont hit him, dont scream or alternatively ignore him. I dont treat him like he is an irritating unimportant thicko.
I spend time with him, just us, quietly, read to him and talk to him.
I call him by his name, i didnt know my own name till i was about 6 because she just used to call me "you".

So no, nothing like her...thank God!

I think actually I'm very similar to my mum, but have only gone through the baby and toddler stage so far - will wait and see what happens when the children are older! She was a really good mum when we were little - I think she treated us a bit like baby dolls and loved dressing us up, doing our hair and showing us off generally! But was really responsive to our needs, and I like to think I am the same with DS, he always comes first, as will DD when she is born next month.

Having said that, I think she became unnecessarily strict as my sis and I grew up - she wanted us to have a better life than the one she had had growing up so pushed us very hard academically. She also became depressed when we were teens and drank a lot - I think this was a big factor in her obsession with us 'doing well'. There was always praise for us when we did well, but a lot of when we didn't succeed. Hope I will be more tolerant of my childrens' paths through life.

My parenting style is very different - I actually like my children (most of the time anyway!)

I don't for one second believe that my mum was a bad mother, I just don't agree with some of her methods. DS is only 7 weeks old but I've vowed he will never be smacked. I also feel my mum took her moods out on us kids a bit much, even if it was nothing to do with us.

As I say, im only 7 weeks in, so as much as I say I'll not be like her, who knows!

I support my children, show an interest in them and tell them how I feel about them

I don't shout, so that's easy. But what bothers me was there was an oppressiveness about our home that I can't put my finger on. I think DH's home was the same. I don't want it, but I don't really know what exactly caused it so I don't know if I'll be able to avoid it.

I'm a lot like my mum so far but I'm lazier. She stuck to the no-television rule until I was in primary school, served incredibly healthy meals and made a lot of our clothes because we were very poor, and from when I was 4 and my brother 1, she did it single. She never smacked, must have shouted occasionally but I don't remember it, and spent every weekend doing endless arts and crafts projects with us.

The only thing I claim with pride that I do and she didn't is that I'm teaching my daughter cooking and housework skills as early as possible, because my mum loathed those so much that she did as little cooking as possible, and never 'inflicted' the knowledge on us. But apart from that, she's a lot to live up to.

I think my style is fairly similar to my mother so far, although I hope to be a very different mother to teenagers (we didn't get on at all for several years, to the extent that I asked to be sent to boarding school). I watched my much bigger sister choose a very different style for her children as babies (much more child led), saw how hard work it was and reacted against it I suspect.

We seem to be doing OK so far, I've no regrets.

It is really hard to explain. It may have something to do with the fact that we are Jewish, and have that stereotypical unhealthy sort of guilt and over involvement in the parent child relationship. Also, my parents were immigrants with no family around, and I have read that that can make a mother more controlling. But, in a similar way to what you describe, two people, my parents always wanted us around, never wanted us to leave home, loved us hugely and encompassingly, without really seeming to like us much or to be very nice to us. they used to shout all the time, about the most minor things.

I never had a boyfriend when I lived at home ( which included most of uni) even though it was important, but when I was away from home I always formed relationships. It was like there was too much scrutiny and pressure at home.

Also, my mother was very negative. Whenever I wanted to do something new she would say 'why would you want to do that?'. It's something I still have to fight in my superego - the tendency to block new ideas. I had to fight hard to be allowed to do the things that all my peers were doing - to stay up a bit later at night, to go into town. It was even a huge fight when I wanted to do Latin at school - they thought it was pointless.

God, yes. In every way!

Completely.

I don't shout and scream and go on and on ranting about my behaviour. Then go downstairs, child goes to bed, thinks mum has calmed down....but then she comes back for another shouting match, smacking child in bed in the process......

I don't give my children chocolate biscuits for breakfast. I make sure my children go to school every day and don't miss a day if we get up late.

Completely.

I don't shout and scream and go on and on ranting about my behaviour. Then go downstairs, child goes to bed, thinks mum has calmed down....but then she comes back for another shouting match, smacking child in bed in the process......

I don't give my children chocolate biscuits for breakfast. I make sure my children go to school every day and don't miss a day if we get up late.

I'm only 10 weeks in but I hope to be somewhat different to my mother. I'm rather ambivalent about her actually as I feel she was fantastic in some ways and terrible in others. I would say her level of strictness was about perfect (even though she now reckons she was too strict, I don't know why). When my sisters and I became teenagers it never really occurred to us to rebel, we enjoyed our home life and respected our mum and so didn't do anything that might hurt her or frighten her. She never had to tell us not to do things and I have no idea how she instilled this sense of self control in us. I don't think it was just chance as all three of us are the same - we never did drugs, barely drank, worked hard at school, and all with very little pressure from my mum. Maybe it was because she was a teacher - and a damn good one at that - she knew how to set boundaries that would work. She taught me how to drive very successfully and with no fights - I really admire her ability to do that.

On the other hand she was quite closed off emotionally. Looking back now I think she suffered a lot in her life and it made her less affectionate and loving than she could have been. I think she tried really really hard to overcome this but never quite succeeded and it's only in the last year or so that I recognise that she really did her best and while she wasn't perfect she did a damn good job given the circumstances.

So I would love to have her level of discipline but I would also like to be more loving and openly affectionate. I think I have the loving thing down but I don't know if I'll ever emulate her perfect level of strictness - it really is a talent.

We are trying to be less authoritarian than my parents but more authoritarian than DH's parents. My parents were obsessed with education - everything must be sacrificed which could (or even just might) get in the way of school.

DH's parents were much more as TwoPeople describe - being 'in the moment'. The difference was that they werent so interested in safety/security. I think that DH missed these boundaries. There were no consequences for underperformance at school or in life generally.

My parents were convinced that boyfriends would only be after 'one thing'. Sex outside of marriage was slutty. I realised much later that my father was, in theory at least, in favour of female circumcision. This would stop girls 'straying'.

I have two daughters - please dont ever let me end up like my father.