A general question for you guys.

[Estes]

first off please excuse the grammar/punctuation/etc as im typing this from a cell phone. but this crowd in particular interests me mainly because of the age ranges.

let me start off with yourselves. when you were young (teenaged area) what was acceptable to watch/listen too? by acceptable im really aiming at what your parents allowed you to "absorb"

i really have no other reason than just curiousity. the tolerable level of what is ok and what is taboo between different age groups intrigue me. ill explain myself a little bit here.. im in my early thirties and when i was a teen my parents really let me have a long leash. obviously nothing illegal was tolerated however they were both of the mind set of "what you do in your room is your business. so long as we dont see it or hear it" type of thing.

now i didnt/dont want anyone to take offense or anything like that. there really is no right or wrong so to speak. as far as movies go there really wasnt anything i wasnt allowed to watch. short of porn or something that is.

my dad however was a little firmer in what i watched but really never had any major objections. when i was young i dont recall music ever being an issue. of course nowadays with some of the music out there i can understand people having issues with music.

the last little bit of information i would be interested in knowing is from the parents out there. do you raise your kids in more or less the same way you were raised? as i mentioned before times and society are definately different so its understandable if it is different.

i have two kids boy and a girl aged 12 and 4. the boy is the youngest. i like to think that i raise my kids in basically the same fashion. save for a few things. computers and internet are the largest ones that come to mind.

the daughter has her own pc with internet access. however its shut off on school days after 10 via the router.

now once again i dont mean to step on toes or anything here just curious. looking forward to reading some replies.

regards,
kjetil

[kilo2]

Parents didn't mind what I watched or listened to or who I hung out with as long as I didn't do anything illegal and kept my grades above B's. If i ever did get in trouble they didn't ground me or anything. I had to work it off in chores around the house and yard which sucked worse than anything else they could have done. I don't have kids but when I do I already know I am going to raise them the same way.

[Serenity]

I had a, well, nonexistant leash. My dad raised me with the rules being (And I'm serious, this is a quote):

"1) Don't lie to me.
2) Don't get her pregnant.
3) Don't get caught.
4) Don't fail high school."

Basically, as long as i was getting decent grades and didn't have a police record, I could do whatever I wanted whenever. Now of course, being a kid, I DID lie to him, I DID get caught (Many times, doing many things) and I DID have a very close brush with failing. I never earned a police record however, and I think that is BECAUSE of his lax rules. As a teen, if I wanted to get laid, I could bring her home and grab a condom from the bathroom. I didn't need to sneak around in a car and hope a pull-out would work. This helped prevent the whole pregnancy thing, lol. If I wanted to smoke weed, I could do it in the privacy of my own home without having to hide. I never did it, but it smoking pot is never going to be "sticking it to the man" because, well, "the man" in my life doesn't care, therefore I'm never driven to try pot. If I want a drink of booze, it's in the fridge, and my dad would rather have me learn the down-side of booze at home where I'm not gonna get killed. Now, I will admit, I have had a sip and learned quickly I'm just not fond of the stuff. So, before I'm able to go out drinking all night and do something stupid, I already know I just don't want to do that.

As far as music, my parents think anything I listen to is crap, but they never told me not to listen to it. So, I grew up listening to things like Flogging Molly, Linkin Park, etc. Hip-Hop/Rap was NEVER on my list. But here is where it gets interesting. Though my parents didn't prevent me from listening to Hip-Hop/Rap, I prevented myself from doing it not because I didn't like it, the way I did booze, but rather on principle. So, Hip-Hop/Rap was something of a forbidden fruit. Now, when I ride in my friend's car who listens to it all the time, I get a bizarre rebellious pleasure feeling like I am doing something... wrong. I still don't like the stuff, but it's like a private rebellion I don't get from drugs, alcohol, etc., because they were never forbidden.

As far as movies go, I saw Black Hawk Down when I was nine with my dad. I saw Road Trip (Uncensored) even younger IIRC, again with my father. When I turned 17, it was funny not to see a rated R movie, but to go without my father next to me, as I had gone to see, basically anything I wanted to with him.

Basically, I was raised to try it myself and see if it was something I liked. This worked out pretty well for my father as I have become something of a conservative republican (I bring politics into this only to illustrate that despite being exposed to essentially softcore pornography and excessive violence at an early age, I have not taken to either. Well, okay, I still love gratuitous violence.) I did try quite a few things as a kid, though many others I just didn't bother with, and I determined for myself I don't like rap, I cannot stand people who use words like "b****es" and "Hos", I'm not fond of tattoos, and I would rather walk around in a suit and tie than pants around my arse and a wife-beater.

[Rollins]

Dad never let me leave the house without my trusty butt crack knife.

[Blooz]

Tough to relate to these days but when I was a kid we had one TV and you had three channels to choose from that you had to get up and change manually. These three channels were all basically the same so it really didn't matter what you were watching. I watched what my parents watched unless it was an early weekend morning and my parents were sleeping in. When they got up I went outside to play or to my room to read, build models, listen to the radio and things like that.

What I listened to on the radio was pop. My first interest was the Beatles. Couldn't get enough of them until the BeeGees came along in the mid 70's. Later, heavy metal came along and it was AC/DC and Ozzy Osbourne but by then I was in my late teens and could listen to anything I wanted to anyway.

As to personal boundries, I was never a discipline case. I'm a mild mannered person and enjoy being creative and studious so I never had a problem with being trusted to do the right thing even when nobody was watching. I also had the devil incarnate for a younger brother. I learned by watching him test all the boundries as we grew up that for some people, rules were meant to be broken. It didn't matter to him how much the punishment would be (and it was severe back then, no "timeouts" and crap like that) he pushed the limits all the time and couldn't care less. Hasn't slowed him down at all and it's actually served him well. He doesn't let anything get between him and what he wants to do and I'm the exact opposite. He is the optimist and I am the pessimist and it has helped him achieve what I could never do because he never set any limits on himself where I had to obey every rule. It's just the way that we are.

[Soulyss]

I think my folks were pretty middle of the road, I had friends in junior high and high school who had parents who were way more strict than mine and others who pretty much did what they want. 

By the time I hit high school I could watch pretty much any movie that I wanted to (rated R or under) as long as they didn't have to watch it, which usually meant at a friends house.  The only TV I had access to was in the living room, I was not allowed to have a TV or phone in my room.  In 6th grade I actually asked my mom if it was ok if I got "Appetite for Destruction" and I was very upfront that it had bad language and some adult themes to the songs, and I understood that just because some guy on stage can say it that it didn't mean that I could and she let me get it.  After that I could listen to just about anything I wanted as long as I was in my room and the volume wasn't at ear splitting levels. 

As I recall I didn't have a set curfew every night but if I was out with friends for a few nights in a row my dad would give the 'ol leash a little tug and suggest that I stay in that night. 

I had the usual teenage strife with what I considered at the time to be my stifling parents and father/son power issues came up as well but in hindsight I think they walked the line between letting me start to lead my own life and keeping youthful recklessness in check pretty damned well.  As far as teenage shenanigans go mine were pretty mild.

[CAP1]

my grandparents had no problems with me watching things like ultraman, speed racer, the monkees, the munsters etc.

 i had to sneak away to my room when i finally was a llowed a tv in there to watch monty python, and benny hill.

[Anaxogoras]

My parents did not allow me to watch violent movies when I was very young.  As I matured into my teens violence wasn't much of an issue.  Sexual content in TV and film was OK.  There were never any restrictions on music.

There were no restrictions on the people I could associate with, they didn't check to see that I did my homework, and did not enforce a curfew.  I could have girls in my room with the door closed, and my parents encouraged the responsible use of contraception.

My step-father didn't approve of underage drinking, but never punished me if he caught my friends and I with alcohol.  Honestly, he would've preferred to find me raiding the refrigerator (hint) than intoxicated with alcohol.

All of this depends on my gender.  If I were female, I can only imagine that things would have been different.

My son will be 2 this Spring, and I have no set ideas on how I will raise him as he matures.  For now, no TV allowed.  He's way too young to have his brain filled with crap, and doesn't know how to behave in front of it.  The internet was still extremely nascent when I was a boy, and so I am a bit concerned about its dangers.  Still, I do not believe in censorship, so I have no plans for parental filters or other security features.

[Ghosth]

Tv was not on nor allowed on until after 6pm. Then it was on for the news/weather, and off again until after supper.

We each got 1 hour a week to choose, and had to work it out with our siblings, with dad being the ultimate "go, no go"arbiter. If he felt it was in poor taste, too loud, obnoxious, etc it failed.

We had a single phone, on party line with 1 other neighbor, so phone calls were rationed to important calls only.
And kept short and sweet then.

Summertime there was a minimum of 1 hour garden, lawn care duty before anything else.
By the time I was 13 my older brother and I had a sweet deal setup.
Dad provided the mower, gas, we mowed yards for other folks 3 - 4 days a week.
Thursday we mowed our place (and kept it spotless) in return for the use of the mower, gas, etc.

By the time I graduated from High School I had 5k in the bank just from lawn mowing money.
Ohh and the rule for money earned was 50% hit the bank account right off the top.
25% was set aside for new clothes, shoes, or stuff we wanted, the other 25% was free to be spent on pop, candy, etc.
Considering we worked for 1$ an hour, this worked amazingly well.

If you complained about being bored you got put to work, period. And you can bet the job wasn't fun.
No one ever did that more than once per summer.

On the plus side there were picnics, lake outings, swiming, fishing, loads of bike riding. (Loved it when they paved our street)

Otherwise the leash was left fairly short, but if you didn't hear mom call and she had to use the phone to find us, well the leash would be pretty short for a week or 2. 

Information really was not regulated back then. My Grandmother tried to take James Michner's "Hawaii" away from me when I was 12. I rebelled, refused to give it up, said she didn't have the right to make that decision. So she proceeded to question me about it up to the point I'd read for ohhh 10 min. Plot, characters, what the I thought the author was trying to say between the lines, the whole works.
She said I was getting more out of it than she had, and gave it back to me. At which point she encouraged me to read all of the old classics. From that point on I read everything I could get my hands on.

I'd suggest "moderation" in all things, with a certain amount of trust.
If that trust is broken, then tighten up the leash accordingly. Pretty simple feedback loop actually.
Most kids given a straight up setup pretty quickly learn to stay between the lines.

[Anaxogoras]

I had to work it off in chores around the house and yard which sucked worse than anything else they could have done. I don't have kids but when I do I already know I am going to raise them the same way.

I would think twice about that.  My mother was fond of using chores as punishment for petty things (usually related to tidiness), and to this day I cannot garden without a profound feeling of contempt.  It took me years of conscious effort to rid myself of the feeling that chores are negative, when in fact they are positive and good for a household and community.  I would not have survived adulthood if I hadn't succeeded at retraining my attitude.

So, now that you mentioned it... I intend for chores to be a necessary thing that my son does regardless of whether his behavior is good or bad.

[Maverick]

"Don't get caught".

Wow, in other words you can do whatever you want as long as you don't have to suffer any repercussions for your actions. That's a really great example of fostering personal responsibility there. 

[mensa180]

I can pretty much do my own thing.  I'd say I've turned out ok so far.

[Spikes]

My parents were pretty strict until I was about 13...then my mom finally started letting go, now, my dad doesn't really give two cares what I do with the exception of the normal stuff...my mom is still borderline.

[gyrene81]

I had almost no rules..."keep your peter in your pocket"..."don't get caught by the cops"..."don't do drugs"..."when your told to do something, just do it right the first time"...I was watching news coverage of Nam with Walter Cronkite every night, and then whatever movies my parents wanted to watch...stayed up to watch Johnny Carson then whatever late night movie/series came on afterward unless I was out with my friends.

There were still restrictions but as long as I wasn't doing something like theft, armed robbery, shooting people, assault, etc...there were few boundaries...I worked for money...did whatever chores my parents wanted done...kept my grades up...accepted whatever punishment was doled out for the things silly things I got caught doing.

  to the OP...responsible parenting is a fine line to walk...these days few people even consider the ramifications of being too controlling or not having any control.

[sandwich]

My parents dont believe in censorship.

The rules are...

No drugs. No alcohol. Get good grades.