You know those annoying statements (such as “I will turn this car around!”) that parents are famous for making? My parents were big on those. When I was younger I swore that I would never repeat them to my kids, but now that I’m a Dad my resolve is nowhere near as strong. Is it possible that I might say one of them (or, gasp, a bunch of them) to Annie? For her sake I’ve decided to take a closer look at the most annoying things parents are guilty of saying.
“Because I said so.”
If there were an official scorekeeper for parenting he’d dock ten points every time a parents uttered this one. It is perhaps the most annoying parent-ism of them all. Even as a kid I knew that when a parent said this it was only because they didn’t have a real answer.
CHANCE OF USAGE: 80%
NOTES: Who am I kidding? The odds of my having a real answer 100% of the time are very low. Crap.
That’s it! I’m canceling Christmas!”
Okay, this one is just evil. Telling a kid you are going to cancel Christmas? That is messed up (and almost certain to be brought up in therapy one day). But it’s also guaranteed to work. Seriously… every kid I knew growing up whose parents dropped this chestnut spent the rest of December acting as sweet as a choir boy.
CHANCE OF USAGE: 5%
NOTES: It’s just too evil… but I reserve the right to use it in a last case scenario should Annie ever turn her brattiness level up to “11.”
“Bye! I’m leaving you here!”
Oh, crap. I’ve already used this one. When Annie is in the backyard and refuses to come inside I’ve pretended to leave her out there. “Bye, Annie!” I’ve yelled from the door. “Dadda’s going inside. Have fun outside by yourself!” Annie always comes running, but I feel a little dirty afterward.
CHANCE OF USAGE: %100
NOTES: I’ve already failed at parenting.
“And if Tommy jumps off a cliff, are you going to jump off too?”
This one always drove me nuts. My parents and I would be talking about how my friend and I were late returning to class from recess, and then my parents would say this. I always thought, “How did we go from coming in late from recess to jumping off a cliff? What do those two things have anything to do with each other?” As much as I’ve always hated this comment, however, it does get the point across to a kid.
CHANCE OF USAGE 95%
NOTES: Every kid needs to hear this one at least once. It’s a rite of passage. Not only that, but saying this line lets you pretend you are very wise. I might even stroke my imaginary goatee after saying it. It will be epic!
“Careful or your face will freeze that way!”
My mom used to tell me this when I was making silly faces and I believed her – so much so that I spent a lot of time smiling as handsome as possible and thinking, “Man, if my face freezes now I am set. I will be handsome FOREVER!!!” Of course, when I realized faces do not freeze (silly, handsome, or otherwise), I was very, very annoyed.
CHANCE OF USAGE: 30%
NOTES: I have to be honest… There is a part of me that wants to see Annie’s eyes widen as she tries to process the idea of her face freezing. So I might say it. But I probably won’t. Probably.
Sorry, Annie. I love you more than I can say but it appears as though I’ve gotten the parent disease and will be annoying you a lot in the years to come. Please be nice to me when I do. If you don’t I’ll cancel Christmas.
Sidnie says:
The last time I said, “Bye! I’m leaving!” there was a 20 minute stand off where I did actually “leave” him, screaming and kicking in the floor of the post office- (meaning I stood out in the hall and watched him through a window, as strangers told me to “be strong” and “he’s ok, just sitting there” and “dang, he’s hard-headed.”) So. um…. Yeah….
I should probably shelve that one, and move on to other parenting tactics, huh?
Amy Stone says:
This EXACT thing happened to my toddler and I, in the post office, with the comments!!!!
defendUSA says:
I have said them all, so you’ll probably have to change those percentages, haha. There are so many more, but Annie is too young, yet to be sassy enough to go there. When my third kid was feeling her oats and would not listen, and she would say I was mean (age 3), I would tell her to go find a new Mommy, then. The grocery store had plenty to choose from! She always seemed to straighten up. Was it cruel. Nope. Just one of those things I said.
Babbalou says:
I also remember absolutely HATING the “because I said so” response when I was a teen. Once my boys were teenagers, I ended up using it or something similar on occasion. There is often no good to come out of a long debate about why you decide something that isn’t popular with your teen. In the end, your opinion is the deciding one, because YOU’RE THE MOM (or the dad). It’s a tough job, there are moments when you’d certainly lose if you had to run for reelection.
Jenny says:
This one isn’t from my childhood memory bank, but it is nails on a chalkboard: “No, no, Perfect Spawn, we don’t hit/ kick/ steal/ bite/ etc.”.
Who is the “we” there?
The reason I don’t remember it from my childhood is that my parents and their generation had balls enough to flat out tell a kid “No”. They would follow through on discipline (not necessarily physical – they really would leave a fun place or put back a treat). Accountability and expectations were higher.
I’m pretty sure I will have a parenting fail and say “because I said so” or “because I am the mom” but I will hold my kid accountable for his actions.
Sonya aka Glam-O-Mommy says:
The “I’m going to leave you here” is a go-to expression for me, sadly! Sophie is often leaving-resistant and this always works. I do find myself sounding just like my mother more than I am comfortable with, but my mom’s a pretty awesome parent, so I think that’s probably okay!
Annalisa says:
Yep. If my kid is having fun somewhere, the only way she’ll leave without a scene is if I go: “I am leaving Giada, bye bye!” and actually wave at her and pretend to walk away from her. It works. For now.
I will be totally screwed when she finally does decide that maybe mommy leaving isn’t such a big deal.
Shana says:
Mike-
Growing up and even when I got married and became an instant mother to three (12, 5 and 3) step-kids who live full time with us I swore I would never say, “because I said so”. I had always hated hearing it as a kid. Then I started reading John Rosemond’s parenting books and he made the point (that I now agree with) that most of parenting is really parental preference. More often than not the true answer is simply because I say so. I now embrace it and it also drive my kiddos crazy! Another phrase we often use is, because I’m in charge.
I enjoy reading your perspective. Thanks for writing! Y’all are doing a great job with Annie!
You will all continue to be in my thoughts and prayers.
Shana
Expat Mom says:
How about, “That’s it, all your toys are going in the garbage!” I’ve used that one a few times. And even put all their toys in a garbage bag once. It totally didn’t work, they still don’t clean up without a long freak out. sigh.
My dad told me to never say anything permanent to your kids like, “You are NEVER going to leave this house again!” or “Do that again and you’ll never get another toy.” He was so right. You can never (heh) follow up on those kind of statements!
Annalisa says:
I can understand the frustration though. My mom had a pretty good variant for nap time: “If you don’t stop trying to play with your toys instead of sleeping, I’m taking them all away!”
We didn’t listen, so one day she just walked into our rooms with a large bin, grabbed all our toys, and threw them in the bin. “You can have these back after nap time”. There was crying and screaming rather than sleeping that afternoon, not gonna lie, but we learned to evade nap time in more quiet ways in the future, if nothing else.
Megan says:
One of my mom’s favorite stories is how she used to always say, “Well, I want a million dollars” whenever I’d get the I-wants. Until one day, when I was 3, I responded, “Fine, here’s a million dollars. Now don’t ask me for anything else today.”
She had some that I still hear her saying in my head whenever the situation calls for it:
“You’re plucking on my nerves.” (I say this one to my cat; it doesn’t have any effect.)
“Get out of the kitchen before I put you to work.”
“I think ‘I can’t find’ is your middle name.”
“It didn’t just walk off. Where did you last have it?”
The one where she pretended to walk off and leave me sitting on the sidewalk never worked, because she said I’d just sit there and watch her leave until she felt compelled to come back and get me.
hdj says:
Because I said so.
I might not say it exactly like this, but I get really tired of arguing/debating/discussing why things are the way they are with a 10 year old. Because she’s 10 and I’m the parent. And really, any perceived say she has is because it’s granted, not because it’s her right.
Christmas – We have a direct line to Santa in our house, so he just gets a phone call and is told that coal is all that will be needed in the stocking this year. Works like a charm.
The Cliff
I succumbed to this one for 5th grade. But if done with the right amount of “I know this is lame, but…” Then you realize you’re sounding like your grandparents (after all, this one is almost older than dinosaurs!) but can laugh about it and also having a teaching moment about making good choices. It’s also fun to pick something other than jumping off a cliff – something they think is totally stupid and would never do.
Diane B. says:
My youngest (4 yr old) WANTS her face to freeze in some goofball position. I don’t think I’ve said it could freeze, but I’m sure we’ve examined the possibilities of it getting stuck.
Such as, Me: “Gosh honey, that’s such a goofy face. You look absolutely lovely.”
Her: “Yes, I know, but I’m not goofy, I’m a zombie.”
Me: “Cool. What if you actually turned into a real zombie and you stayed looking like that? You might scare all your friends.”
Her: “YES!”
Me: “But how would you blink? And how would you eat? And wouldn’t your tongue get tired?”
Her: “Zombies, are dead so they don’t get tired.”
Me: “Okay, good point. Stay like that.”
arlene cloud says:
Used the “would you jump off a cliff…” with my now 25 year old when when he was a little guy. His answer? “Yeah, if it looked like fun.” Never used it again. My personal favorite to the “that’s not fair!” whine was, “Do you want FAIR? I’ll give you fair!” And proceed to tell them how life would be exactly the same for both of them so no one could claim “unfair”. Same food, same bedtime, same amount of toys, same friends. It always worked.
Annalisa says:
The cancelling Christmas thing is something my mom never pulled. She preferred a reminder of “Santa can see if you’re being bad, and if you are, you’ll get no toys on Christmas day”. For a while it worked. Then I started wondering how exactly Santa would see all that.
Was he stalking around and would he pop out at any given moment to tell me I was off the good list? Oh god! Did he hide under my bed with the monsters so he could spy on me? Did he follow me around the house? Why would he do something like that? I thought Santa was a nice old man, not some scary would be monster! Did Santa live under my bed year round? What did he do with his time when he wasn’t working on Christmas? Is that why sometimes I’d walk back into my room and see that my stuffed animals had fallen off the shelves? Was Santa playing with my toys when I wasn’t there? What else would he get up to? Here it bears mentioning that I was a pretty anxious child in general, and was easily spooked.
Needless to say, we had to have the “there’s really no Santa, mom and dad decide if you get toys or not” talk when I was five. To my mom and dad’s credit, part of being good enough to get toys every year required not spilling the beans to the other kids.
Annalisa says:
As for what I’ve repeated to my child that I’ve heard parents say and I’m not proud of (save for aforementioned “I’m leaving now!” to make my daughter come along willingly), the other day my daughter was having a really hard time taking a nap, and just kept whining and crying in her crib.
I just got so fed up that I plucked her out of the crib, set her down on the floor and said to her: “That’s IT! I am done being the mommy. You’ve decided you know better than me, so no more mommy fixing lunch, no more mommy kissing boo boos, and no more mommy telling you when to nap. You’re on your own, missy!”, which is an age appropriate variant of what my mom used to say to me when I was a rebellious teen.
Then I just walked away and went on to do my own thing (laundry, brushing my teeth, which I hadn’t been able to do in 3 hours because someone had been a fussbudget the entire morning).
On the plus side, it was so novel an action for her that it snapped her out of her funk because she was puzzled about it. You could tell from her speechless look exactly what she was thinking: “You mean I won? No nap? Playtime?”. Finally, the tears stopped.
On the minus side, she spent two more hours terrorizing the cats and playing around the house restlessly, and then finally sat down on the floor and started sobbing again from being so tired (something that naps are strategically planned to prevent). But at least she finally did surrender to sleep when I picked her up and put her in her crib after saying “YOU need sleep. Go get some.”
moll says:
HDJ, EXACTLY! I’m not a parent but I care for my nephews all the time, and the 5-year-old is a big arguer when you ask him to do something. I’m NOT arguing with a preschooler!
It’s pretty clear when a kid is asking “why” because they really don’t know something, or because they are arguing. If I tell C. to do something, or that we have to do something, and he already knows why it’s necessary (eg, putting his shoes on to go outside), he gets “because I said so”, not the argument he’s angling for!
Meyli says:
So…if I cross my eyes they WON’T stay like that?! Mom always said they would, and I haven’t heard a concrete contrary answer until just now (I really wasn’t 100% positive, but too afraid to actually ASK someone!)
Oh silly me….
Thank you Mike
neal says:
Dang, I’ve said a lot of these, too. But I agree. Cancelling Christmas is probably least likely to come out of my mouth.
Enjoying the site.
JenC says:
I’ve said two things I vowed I’d never say. One, when older child was complaining she was bored I said I’d find something for her to do and she wouldn’t like it. Then something my Dad used to say when I cried for no reason, “I can give you something to cry about.” I still don’t know what he (or me when I said it) would do. We don’t spank or anything, maybe I’d yell? Not sure but it made her stop maybe because she was confused like I was – what horrible thing would happen? My husbands Mom would tell him when he was misbehaving that “Mr Dear’s bus is going to come and take you away” it TERRIFIED him when he was a little boy.