On the podcast this week, my dad and I were laughing (and reconciling) over how discipline worked in the 80s. I realized I can still recite his old Los Angeles work phone number by heart.
Why? Because whenever my brother and I were fighting, my mom wouldn't yell. She would just start slowly dialing those digits. If mom punished us, it was 5 minutes in our room. If dad got involved, it was death row. My dad joked that I "stretched the imagination" on how often I actually got spanked, but to a 7-year-old kid, that phone number was the ultimate deterrent.
Now that I'm parenting my own son, Lake, we don't use physical stuff—we use natural consequences and "honor code trust percentages." It’s fascinating how much things change in one generation. What was the "fear phrase" in your house growing up?