The most useful parenting sentence.

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What happened to the most powerful sentence in the parent's vocabulary?

Because I said so.

For some reason kids are tolerated to demand, pester, push, and pick away at adults. Incessently. They are coddled, their demands are seemingly immediately fulfilled.

"But I don't wanna do that."

Tuff shit. Do it.

"I don't like that."

Tuff shit. Do it/eat it/get it done.

"But whyyyyyyyyyyyy?"

Because I said so.

Sadly, the push back is not even the worst of kids today. It is the disrespect. Back in the day, if a kid ever told a parent, teacher, Principal to shut up, refused to do what they were told, or responded to an instruction with anything but Yes/No Ma'am/Sir and near immediate complaince... it would have been game on.

Oh for the days of standards.

yep

zero expectations and zero repercussions.

That used to bug me. "but whhhhhy", followed with cajoling and "not this time" or all the diff reasons...

I've used because I said so a

I've used because I said so a few times on my kids. I used it on my MIL at least once too.

Well played with the MIL.

Obviously MIL never heard that message from her own parents. Or was too dense to learn it.

I had two parenting phrases

I had two parenting phrases that were extremely effective. The girls knew that when I switched to English I meant business. The phrases were:

"Stop it, BOTH of you!"

and

"I BEG your pardon!"

You could almost hear them gulp and they'd sort of shrink in size.

Great stuff.

My mom had "the look". The look ended any crap instantly.

Rags, my mother was the

Rags, my mother was the maestro of 'The Look'! Even from a distance so great that she could barely be seen, 'The 'Look' effectively paralyzed us in our tracks.

Yep

My dad had a "look". Sent shivers up my spine. Froze me in my tracks.

I thought you were going to say "No!"

It's a lost art to just tell your kid "no" and also, "no means no." It's such a useful word.

SDiabla23 *still* asks "why?" to every question or comment. Even DH is sick of it. Just once I would love to hear him say, "Because I said so." He stops responding but IMO needs to be much more immediate and proactive in addressing his adult daughter's childish behavior.

No is even better.

No, no, no,

Your kids are your buddy. You don't talk to your buddies that way, you may hurt there FEELINS . We don't want to do that. They may feel BAD about themselves. Then we can't hang out with our kids. Talking about our relationship,

ITS a new world and I don't fit in it. I understand, if not I can ask a kid