My dad spanked me twice, and I remember both of them very clearly. I also remember the one time I was sent to bed early for being a brat. Mom tried to ground my sister and me once (we had lied to her about going to church when she was out of town for the weekend), but that lasted as long as it took us to make plans to go out for the evening.

The usual form of discipline was the disappointing look and "I expected so much more from you, Kathy." The guilt trip has always worked on me!

Oh, and for anyone who's interested in my sister's puppies and how much they cost, I talked with her tonight and found out that there were no papers involved--they were just able to get $250 a puppy due to a big demand in their area of Las Vegas for lap dog puppies (mostly Llasa Apso, with a bit of Miniature Poodle from the mom). In fact, she has a list of people who called in response to her ad too late to get a puppy but who are interested in any future litters.

Yeah, my parents' usual discipline was a stern talk and/or guilt trip. Almost every time I got in trouble, it was for not doing something I was supposed to do, and my parents realized pretty early on that there really is no way to force me to do something I don't want to do. Usually, the issue was that I didn't do my homework, and they tried yelling at me, tried "no TV until your homework is done," tried "stay in your room until your homework is done," tried "sit at the kitchen table and I'll watch you do your homework," and none of that ever got me to do it. (Honestly, the only thing that MAY have worked would have been "no reading anything except assigned homework reading until your homework is done," but my parents would have been horrified at themselves for even thinking about punishing a kid by taking away books.)

There were some spankings , a little yelling. a lot of privileges were taken away. a lot of 'dissapointed' and absolutely no name calling. ( I would have found brat from a parent as bad as pig)My parents really led by example. There was a lot of labeling of behavior, not always accurate, but I did learn how things were seen - even if not what they truly were. I had a billion emotion storms in 6th grade, but they were more about the utter confusion I felt about every thing at that time. The biggest fight I ever had with my parents was with my dad. and it was very quiet. My dad said I had been irresponsible about something. I left the dinner table . ( to this day the number of times my behavior could be labeled irresponsible needs less than 10 fingers) . My dad apologized about 15 minutes later.

I got the no books except school books punishment once. For not doing a report in 5th grade on Amerigo Vespucci. The punishmet was more for saying I had done it, which I actually had but I never turned it in. I found it like a year later in a drawer. Anyway, I stretched the concept of "school books" to mean any book I got from school so I could read the YA novels that my teacher had a shelf of and that kept me from going nuts with literary deficiency.

My parents pretty much just despaired of punishing me as nothig ever made a lasting impression on me. I was a pretty good girl, though, so it wasn't to big of a problem. I was a thoughtless teenager, and got up to no good that they never found out about, but I don't remember any big scenes.

My parents did once move my bookshelves out of my room. But there were books stuffed between my mattresses. I don't remember what I did , but it most likely had something to do with reading instead of doing homework.

My mother would periodically confine me to my room (except for school, household chores, and bathroom breaks) with no music or recreational anything allowed. Homework was allowed, as was cleaning my room, but nothing enjoyable.

My mother would periodically confine me to my room.

When Leif gets mad sometimes he will confine himself to his room. If he is really mad he'll lock the door and barricade it. Unlocking the door is easy enough but the little bugger can build a good barricade.

well, he's your kid - OF COURSE he can build a good barricade!

In non-disciplinary news, I weighed myself for the first time in about three weeks. Now, for the past three weeks, the diet has been (mostly) followed, but exercise has been pretty much non-existent (no energy due to sinus infection), so I was expecting to be at close to the same weight I was at Easter.

I've lost 11 pounds since then--I'm now down 78.2 pounds total since January!!

That's super news Kathy.