I know the feeling Manta, part of why parenting can be so humbling: I always swore I'd never say the things my mother said... but to my dismay I do and it gets worse! I have been known to say such classics as "you're not going out dressed like THAT!" and "Don't come complaining to me if you get hurt/sick/hungry etc"... and "clean your room, it's a pig-sty!". And I've even made reference to the "music of today" saying that it has no meaning and was too sexually explicit/rascist/boring!!!

So I've decided to make it easy for myself and just accept it... safe in the knowledge that my children will say the same things to their own kids. My ego can take it... does it do them any harm?

You sound like the kind of mum who would make up for it in other ways... me: I sit and play with my kids (my own mother didn't do THAT) and I tell them I love them everyday (and my mother never did that either). So... see... I AM different from her afterall (We have an uneasy relationship if you can't tell)