14 DAY TRIAL // Girls, as they grow up, make a resolution to never be like their mothers, in the sense of taking after them in terms of nagging and using one-liners that don’t leave any room for reasonable argument or discussion. As they become mothers themselves, they deliberately try to avoid making the same “mistakes,” as they once considered them, as their parents and are even convinced they’re doing a fine job, a new survey cited by the Daily Mail reveals.
That doesn’t change the fact that they still resemble their mothers, though, particularly when it comes down to the abovementioned one-liners used to stop arguments. “Because I said so” and “You’ll see” remain popular remarks mothers use on their children, even if they may have once promised not to resort to them, the survey conducted on 3,000 moms has learned. The bottom line is that, no matter how much we try or believe we’re succeeding, we’re not that different from our own parents.
“The funny thing about this research is that many mums will insist they are nothing like their own mothers. But the reality is that we can’t help but teach our children as our parents taught us, and that means using old sayings, familiar methods of discipline and routines which worked for our parents. It’s easy to understand how some of the top 20 sayings could feature in everyday conversations,” Kathryn Crawford, spokeswoman for TheBabyWebsite, which conducted the survey, says for the Mail.
There’s a reason why our own parents used these sayings on us, and why we’re now using them on our kids, Crawford further explains. To put it simply, they work. “Children are always questioning their parents, pushing the boundaries to see what they can get away with. Sometimes a quick retort such as ‘Because I said so’ is all mums can offer before running out of patience,” she adds for the same publication.
Also in the top 20 sayings moms use, although they wished they didn’t, we can also include: “If someone asked you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?,” “You’ll have someone’s eyes out with that,” “Close the door, you don’t live in a barn,” “I’ve told you a thousand times!,” “Back in my day!” and “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”