Let's make this clear: responding to your teenage child's words with violence is NOT OKAY.

[renie408]

29. Yep.

I think I am a good parent. I try damn hard. It never occurred to me that my children were anything other than little people who just needed some experience in the world to get to where they were going. We have two rules in our house...never lie and never be mean. That's about it. They never had 'chores', we never had a set bedtime or homework time or anything like that. I think my son got grounded once for lying to us about smoking and he has never had a spanking that he can remember. I have to confess my daughter has had maybe seven or eight spankings in her lifetime. But, man, she was cooking with gas from the time she hit the ground. I never tried to justify the spankings and freely admit that by time I got to there, I had run out of parenting skill.

And you know what? My son is a Palmetto scholar on full scholarship to Clemson. He is well spoken, polite, and is good, loving and genuinely sweet. My daughter gets up every morning and helps us with our farm without a bit of fuss, is generous with her time and limited finances, is smart as a whip and a true joy to have around. I tell them both how lucky their father and I are to have them for kids all the time.

Maybe we were just lucky, I don't know. But I know I hear parents talk to their children all the time in a manner they would never think of using to a total stranger. And that's just wrong.