When I was young and would throw tantrums about not wanting to wash my hair or clean my room
(I was a sloppy child, and I've always been opposed to washing my hair. I only wash it once a week now, for no other reason than it's my least favorite thing to do. When I was in boarding school, I had a horrible short haircut that had me mistaken for a boy on several occasions -- a phase that has happened quite often in my life, now that I think of it -- so I never washed it except after swim team practice and that was just a rinse, and I wore a hat so often my advisor called my mother to recommend therapy because he thought the hat wearing was a physical manifestation of my skeletons. My mom laughed and said I probably just didn't want to wash my hair. She was right, as she very often is),
my mom would threaten to tell my father. After the old "count to three" trick, that was the ultimate threat.
I don't know why. My father never hurt me. He could be emotionally abusive, mocking me when I didn't know how to put together a barbecue at age, like, seven, and all that was born out of his rampant alcoholism, which I didn't understand until relatively recently. He never once hit me, even when my mom got sick of being the bad cop and made my dad give me a spanking. After much lecturing to ensure I understood why whatever I had done wrong was wrong, he gave me a gentle tap on the bottom, and I giggled.