I Am My Parents: Don't Make Me Come Back There!

It's not until recently when I reached the mUm status of a 'No, I want to do it on my own', defiant almost four year-old and a 'I know everything - insert eye roll and annoyed sigh', almost 'tweenager', when I started to hear myself blurting out those fabulous one liners that, as a child I remember my parents saying.

Being a parent and getting all 'parent like' when your toddler is fighting his bedtime by running semi-naked through the house, yelling, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I don't like my bed, I love you mUm, I heard something, I don't like Robots, and the myriad of other fabulous procrastinations of actually going to sleep, or when your sulking 'tweenager' is eye rolling through the 'do your chores' speech, are the times when I jump back to my own childhood and think to myself 'Sorry mUm and Dad'...with a cheeky chuckle!

Although times have certainly changed from when I was a child, in the way that parents deliver their methods of, what was once called discipline, now positive guidance, some of my mUm and Dad's 'parent like' one liners somehow still remain close to my heart and apparently lodged within my verbal notebook.

Perhaps it's because they take me back to being a child, when thinking for myself was my parents job, and just being a child was mine! When I think about then, and now as parents we teach our children to make positive choices versus just dictating what we don't want them to do, I can still hear mUm and Dad giving me the 'choice' to make a 'decision' for the 'desired outcome' based on the following statements:

1: Don't make me come back there!
A true classic in a series of three famously used liners on those long road trips, where hours of
'mUuuuuuuuuuuum, she's hitting me, 'no I'm not, 'mUuuuuuuuummmmm' drive mUm and Dad crazy.
Usually followed by...

2: Don't make me stop the car!
'Oooh now you're in trouble'

3: Wait until your father gets home!
I'm sure this 'scare tactic' stems from the days when women stayed at home with the children, looked perfectly poised, drank tea and played cards, while the men provided. I actually used this line on Michael a few times when I was a stay-at-home-mUm, but I quickly realized that I was dragging
myself back in time and deeming Chad the big bad ogre. This wasn't fair to Michael or Chad so with
a new approach, I became the big bad ogre deliverer of positive guidance!

4: It's not you I don't trust, it's other people!
I remember mUm saying this to me when I was learning to drive. A sixteen year old alone behind
the wheel of a car with insurance premiums through the roof....are you kidding me, what's to trust?

5: You'll thank me in the long run!
In 99.9% of the cases, I actually do, so thank you!

6: Just promise me you won't do anything stupid!
I'm a child, not thinking sometimes is what I do best and the force behind you saying 'just promise
me you won't do anything stupid'. I personally don't like the word stupid, and unless I catch my dog
Jeffe digging out and chowing down on a fresh cat nugget 'stoopid dog', we don't use it.

7: I talk until I'm blue in the face!
If you have ever tried reasoning with a sulking 'tweenager' you may agree that sometimes there just
aren't enough shades of blue! Enough said!

I'm sure there were countless deserved others that were sent flying my way, just as I'm sure that when Michael is a Dad (earmuffs), he will blurt out and see his reflection in my famous one liners.

I wonder how far these simple one-liners date back and if my parents and grandparents heard the same lines from their parents? I'm curious to know what other lines parents are saying from around the world?

Crikey!