Did adults use fibs to control your behaviour?

Oh no, DM would never refuse a gypsy who came to the door otherwise she thought the gypsy would curse you and you'd have bad luck.
She always bought a sprig of heather, a piece of lace etc.

Parents still do this though - Father Christmas's elves are watching to see if you're being good etc.

I was irritated at the other Gran this year telling the DGSs to behave themselves on Christmas day or Santa would come back and take their toys away!! Luckily they didn't listen and carried on rumbustuously but what a silly lie.

I've never heard that one!
Rather daft but unkind too.

She just made it up on the spur of the moment.

I told my small girls that the Swiss Cheese plant would bite if they touched it. They believed me.

Nobody lied to me in that way when I was a child.

I may have been guilty of telling my children they had to be good to be sure Father Christmas would come. That’s a sort of lie and veiled threat. My parents wouldn’t have said it

When I claimed not to be well enough to go to school, my Mum would threaten me with 'the school board man' - ie the school attendance officer. I never found out if there was any basis to this threat because I gave in and went to school.

My mother resorted to all the usual ones; the one that frightened the life out of me was the threat to put me in a children's home if I didn’t behave and I would never see my father again! She could be quite a piece of work, my mother.

Yikes greyduster!

My mother was always threatening to send me to boarding school so she would not have to bother with me. It never occured to me that she would not be able to afford the fees.

never needed to be told lies ,mum just said to dad "speak to them" he lowered his newspaper,looked at us and said "girls you're mother says you're too noisy/misbehaving" and we stopped.He never lifted a finger to us ..well apart from smacking me for swearing when I was just 2 ...and he cried along with me .I never swore again.To this day .

Where did you learn to swear when you were only 2? You must have got it from somewhere.

Whenever I asked my grandad where he was going he'd reply 'To find a wigwam for a horse's bridle.' I suppose that wasn't strictly a lie as I knew it was nonsense talk!

When I was 4, I remember my mum giving me the warning about Father Christmas being at the top of the chimney, saying he would know if I was naughty. Although I believed in Father Christmas, I remember that I didn't believe that warning, even at that young age.

Also when i was around that age, Mum would sometimes make my brother and i stick out our tongues if she suspected we were lying, saying that there would a black line on it if we were. She also said, if one of us pulled a sulky face, that it would stay like that if the wind changed direction. I never believed a word of it!

Not my parents but on admission hospital when I was five to have my tonsils out the nursing staff told a terrified little me that if I cried my parents wouldn’t come back. I did and they did, still remember it vividly.

Yes, we were told at infant school that God was watching us at all times. We were told we would go to hell if we told lies, didn't go to church on Sunday, took communion without going to confession. We were told that babies who died without being baptised or older relatives who died without taking confession would not go to heaven. The list of misdemeanours was endless - as we grew older we learnt to take them with a pinch of salt, but as young children, we took them all literally and were petrified.

Ahh how cruel.

Before we could read my mother used to tell us that chocolate bars were adults only and not for children . Apparently it said so on the wrapper.
Until the day she died she never shared her chocolate

Oh yes, I was told the wind would change direction and I would stay like that if I looked sulky.

My mother too threatened me with Boarding School and as an avid fan of the Four Mary's and Dormitory Wisteria I longed to go to get away from her.

My mother threatened me with taking me away from boarding school.

Grandma70's one of my older sisters school friends thought it would be funny to teach me the F word.....she was around 10 or 11 .She knew fine well I'd get into trouble for it ..wee toerag .

SueDonim To find a wigwam for a horse's bridle
Jogged my memory: my mother, when asked about the contents of exciting parcels at Christmas time, would say helpfully, "it's a whim-wham for a mustard mill".

She also told me, aged two, that if I continued to grab at the red-hot pokers in my grandmother's garden I would burn my hands, and I believed her for years.

I used to be told jokingly that if I didn't behave they would send me back to my real mother. Never believed it.