We were all children once (some of us still are!) and I’m sure you can all remember some of the weird and wonderful things parents said to you as a child.
They were surely meant to be words of wisdom, or simply to scare you off doing something wrong – or perhaps, just to be downright embarrassing to you at the time.
Many of us are parents to our own children now and perhaps some of those sayings are coming back to haunt us as we use them on our own kids.

We were all children once (some of us still are!) and I’m sure you can all remember some of the weird and wonderful things parents said to you as a child.
They were surely meant to be words of wisdom, or simply to scare you off doing something wrong – or perhaps, just to be downright embarrassing to you at the time.
Many of us are parents to our own children now and perhaps some of those sayings are coming back to haunt us as we use them on our own kids.
Or maybe we can now understand how ridiculous those sayings were and are busily making up our own silly sayings for the future generation.

Either way, here is a list of some of those pearls of wisdom I have found during my research (and some from experience), how many of these do you remember?

• Do you want a smack? (??? Oh yes please mummy/daddy, I’d love one?!?)
• If you fall out that tree and break your legs – don’t come running to me! (not likely to be running anywhere if it did happen)
• If you keep doing that you’ll go blind! (actually, you wont – nor will you grow hairs on the palms of your hands)
• I’ll take the back of my hand off your face (WTF?)
• Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about (that usually did the trick)
• I brought you into this world and I can take you out
• If everyone was jumping off a bridge would you do it too
• …because I said so (the old favourite)
• Come here so I can hit you (not likely!)
• Do what I say – not what I do
• You don’t have the sense god gave a Billy goat
• I’m going to see a man about a dog (you mean we’re getting another dog??)
• If you don’t eat your crusts your hair won’t curl (but I don’t want curly hair!)
• If brains were dynamite you wouldn’t have enough to blow your nose
• Stop picking your nose or your head will cave in or your brains will fall out (no, but you might end up with huge nostrils!)
• Don’t pull that face, the wind will change and you’ll be stuck like it
• If you unscrew your belly button your bum will fall off (this is true isn’t it?)
• Make sure you’re wearing clean underwear in case you get run over by a bus (I’m thinking if you did get run over by a bus they wouldn’t stay clean!)
• Go and play with the traffic (gosh, parents can be cruel!)
• Shut your mouth and eat your dinner (one or the other but I can’t do both!)
• If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times – don’t exaggerate!

And the one they’d say just before administering a good smacking – “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.” (I doubt that very much).

I’m sure there are many more I’ve missed off the list – feel free to leave a comment with any you may remember.

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