"Teaching your children to fear you (so they'll obey instantly when they're, for instance, doing something dangerous and there's no time to explain to them why they should stop) is a necessary part of good parenting, not just a fundamentalist fetish."
That's so many levels of fucked up that I don't even know where to begin.
You know what also works to get a child to instantly stop doing something dangerous? Trust. If my mother yelled, "Alena, stop!" while I was doing something, I would immediately stop, because I know that my mom wouldn't yell at me for no reason and I trust that she *would* have a good reason for doing so.
There were times when I feared my father. There were also times when I hated my father. And because I'm the kind of person who turns fear into anger, when he started yelling at me, my natural response was to become hostile and snappish and resistant to any order given to me. And even if were one of those people who *do* freeze in terror, it's still fucked up. My mother managed to raise me to be an intelligent, compassionate human being without striking me once, ever. And I've never feared her, ever. Not even once. Not even when she was mad at me.
I listen to my mother, because I trust that she has my best interests at heart. I couldn't care less what my father tells me to do. His opinion on my life has absolutely no bearing on how I live it, whereas my mother is capable of influencing my entire life path based on *her* opinion. My life is still my own, and I may not always agree with her, but I'll always seriously consider her input because I know that she's not just spouting off when she tells me that she doesn't think what I'm doing is a good idea.
If your child fears you at all -- let alone fears you so much that they literally *freeze up* when you yell at them -- then you have failed utterly and completely as a parent, and never should have become one.
