Mum's the word?

Mums DO know best: How we copy their sayings to tell off our own children

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 10:38 PM on 04th December 2009

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Most women think they can't possibly grow up to be just like their mothers, with all their annoying sayings. Well, as their mothers probably told them, there's no such word as can't.

Eight out of ten of today's mothers admit they use the very same cliches to discipline their children that they had to endure from their own parents.

Top of the list of phrases they used was the simple, yet infuriatingly effective response to a child asking why they have to do something: 'Because I said so.'

Parental wisdom: 'It'll end in tears' and 'I've told you a thousand times!' also appear in the top 20 most used sayings (posed by models)

It was followed by the answer most often used to deal with impatient children pestering to find out when something will happen: 'Wait and see.'

And in third place was that other favourite that stops most children in their tracks: 'If someone asked you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?'

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Kathryn Crawford, spokesman for http://www.TheBabyWebsite.com, which conducted the study of 3,000 mothers, said: 'The funny thing 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 and routines which worked for our parents.

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'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.'

More than half of today's mothers claim they intentionally use some of their parents' phrases because they think it worked to discipline them.

But four in ten admit they sometimes repeat things their parents said even though they didn't really know the reasoning behind them, such as: 'Who's "she", the cat's mother?'

Six in ten children regularly question odd phrases their parents say to them.

And two thirds of the mothers surveyed said their own parents found it hilarious that their sayings are being re-used on their grandchildren.

Other popular phrases that didn't quite make the Top 20 were 'Children should be seen and not heard', 'When will you learn?' and 'Eat your dinner or you won't grow up to be big and strong'.