I parent my children in the the complete opposite way to the way my mother was with me (which was far too casual), but completely different again to my father, who, courtesy of his army background was quite the discipinarian. I think I have found the happy medium though and I consider myself to be 'hard but fair'. My mum thinks I am far too strict with the kids, and therefore she indulges them far too much and a lot of the time just doesn't put thought into what she does with them. I suppose I can see what didn't work (allowing one of my brothers too much freedom to the point where he was on drugs, stealing, doing break and enters and was told at his last court appearance at 16 to 'bring your toothbrush'), but also what did work - like being our friend as well as our mum. I said in an earlier post today though that mum wasn't ever strict with us, which in turn came about from the way she was parented herself (nan was a single mum) which was too strict and bordering on extreme and I wished she was. I don't think it would have changed the way I was as a teenager - I never really rebelled because I had nothing to rebel against kwim? but it would have been nice to have a curfew instead of 'see you when you come home' - so that is something I don't want to repeat with my kids at all.