My wife and I definitely do not hit insult or threaten our children…. Well, we threatened to take away privileges sometimes but that’s about it.

My parents did not usually hit us, except for the occasional very light tap on the bottom. It wasn’t like they were causing us any pain. It was more just to get our attention. My mom grabbed me by the ear a few times when I wasn’t listening, but they certainly never did anything that you could consider abuse. My parents also didn’t really tend to insult us as kids, but they absolutely threatened us. Not with bodily harm but with about everything else. Like threatening to kick us out of the house or throw away all of our stuff if we didn’t follow certain rules.

That was pretty rare though my parents were not the world’s greatest parents and they went through a lot themselves. But they tried their best and ultimately did a decent job.

Most of my worst memories as a child are of my parents arguing and all of the other emotional and psychological nonsense that comes along with having parents with a terrible relationship. I could tell they were trying not to let it affect us too much but there’s only so much you can limit that kind of stuff with all of your dirty laundry is out in the open and your kids are old enough to appreciate what’s happening. I like to think my brother wasn’t as affected because he was five years younger during the divorce, but he definitely remembers more than they would like to think.

My brother and I were never the worst kids and my parents didn’t really have to threaten us much. When we were being difficult, they would suspend privileges, put us in our room or create other similar consequences.

I do essentially the same thing as a parent now. My kids definitely have things that they look forward to. Although they’re quite young, they still understand certain rules and certain principles. We try to be understanding and allow them some grace, but if they do certain things we take away privileges. We try to walk the line between Kriaten a cause and affect situation where they understand that there are consequences for doing the wrong thing, versus needlessly, traumatizing, or sending them into a spiral of emotion. My wife and I were both raised without a good example of what a stable family situation should look like. We have always tried our best to create that stable family situation for our kids. We try to lead by example and hope that our kids will pick up on our best traits. Obviously, they mimic the bad ones too, but we try to minimize our own bad behavior to the extent possible and hope that our kids don’t pick up on too many bad habits. This process is definitely more work than hitting or threatening children, but I also want our kids to trust us instead of being terrified like my parents were of their parents. My dad and my grandfather always had a very weird relationship because of the way he was raised. It wasn’t that much better with my mother and although they got along OK and later life, they definitely did not have the kind of trust and understanding that my parents and I had and that I would like to create for our children.

I’ll tell you in about 15 years whether it was the right decision or not