Honey, did i spoil the kids?

My father had been here to see his grandchildren; and while he was here last week, he witnessed Nathan refusing to apologise to his brother for hitting him, even though i repeatedly told him to do that. What did my dad do? He laughed.....he found it cute that his grandson was resisting and had a mind of his own! That's when i asked him whether we had ever spoken back like this....he thought for a while and said that the first time i refused to do as said was when i refused to do my post-graduation.....i was already 21 by then.....This got me thinking about the difference in our parenting styles.....

We had a strict upbringing. Not that we didn't have fun growing up, but there was a time for everything.
A time to wake up, to go to school and to come back. To do homework, to watch TV. To play outside, to play inside....everything was according to plan and hardly ever variied.
Our TV channel showed cartoons from 4 to 5, i think....and after that we played outside. And i think that i remember more about the games we played outside, the climbing trees for cherries and all those things more fondly than the time i spent in front of the TV. We used to ask for permission for switching on the TV, the computer and even for making phone calls. I still tell my parents before i use the phone when i am there....old habits, i guess.

Back to discipline.....when i grew up and started seeing the way a lot of people brought up their children, i started appreciating the discipline our parents instilled in us. The thought "If only this kid was mine, i'd give him / her a whack" crossed my mind ever so often..... My parents raised responsible children, my brother had to look after me for the half an hour every day from when my mother went to work till my father came back when we was not even 3 years old. We never questioned our parents, we never whined...openly at least.

When i got married, I was of the opinion that a baby should not be carried around a lot and that it should sleep in a separate crib. Basically, i had this ideology because that was how our parents raised us. Before long, Tim was born and i found myself unwilling to put him down even when he was asleep....he slept with us till his brother was born and then he started sleeping in his room with his Dad. My children whine a lot, they fight a lot and they know they can get away with a lot of things.....They get up when they want to (unless school is about to start) and sleep almost at midnight....

Our parenting is definitely different.....and my parents are definitely different grandparents who don't resemble the parents they were when they were bringing up their children years ago.....Even though i failed in emulating the parenting style my parents adopted, i hope to raise responsible children. I sincerely hope that some day my boys will tell me "Thanks for bringing us up the way you did".