She Did It Her Way

It was the best of times! When I was growing up, children obeyed and respected their parents; there was no back-talk, no tantrums if one didn’t get his way. There was no such thing as a “time out.” There was no need for it. That’s just the way it was! Our parents raised us to be respectful and we passed it on to our children. As a result, they’re now adults, and still respectful! I would never have heard one of my children speaking to me the way I hear some little ones talking to their mothers in grocery stores and other shopping places today. At least, I wouldn’t have heard it more than once. Why? Because there were immediate consequences for bad behavior. Not so today. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard, “You do that one more time and I’m gonna wallop you!” I always think, “Well, why give him one more time? Wallop him now and he’s not likely to do it again.”I learned about respect very young. Even before I started school, my mother was drilling these words into my head, “Always respect your elders!” My mother had quite a bag of tricks, too. One of them was: when we’d be out shopping together and meet up with someone she knew, she’d take one step closer to me and grab my hand. The other adult would invariably ask me a direct question… something like, “How old are you?” or “What grade are you in?” If there was so much as a hesitation before I spoke, my mother would squeeze my hand so tight that I knew if I wanted to keep the use of that hand, I’d better answer soon and the answer had better be to her liking! All the time she was doing this, she was smiling! You just had to love my mother’s way of disciplining! It worked.