How Well Do Your Kids Know How You'll React to Something? Do They Fear You?

I like to keep my kids guessing!
Sometimes one thing will really piss me off, and sometimes that same thing wont even phase me. It keeps things interesting!
The only thing that really gets me going is getting up on school mornings. One of my sons has a REALLY hard time getting up, getting ready, and getting out the freakin' door! It really tries my patience.
No, my kids do not fear me. Good lord, why would they!? It's not like I'm gonna beat them for doing something wrong. But, they fear disappointing me. My eldest especially.
L.

My kids have never feared me, they respect me, they fear loosing that respect.

If you want to make me angry, hide something from me. So they tell me everything and we work through it without anger. Thing is though that is by design, not my kids picking up on something about my personality. Everything about how I parent is don't lie, don't hide things from me.

Usually if anyone is amazed it is their friends. Why isn't your mom yelling? My kids usually say sunk cost and leave it at that. :)

my triggers can be different for different situations. I think the worse is when my kids put themselves or other in danger of injury or worse. Thats what flips me out. I get very angry and mostly scream and yell. Punishment is delt as to the severity of the actions.

Sometimes my kids do fear me when they tell me what they did, mainly cause they think they will lose something they dont want to have taken away.

I don't know that my son can exactly predict my response to his misbehavior or accidents, other than those times when I have already given him a warning not to do it. And then, I'm usually clear about the consequence *when* I give the warning, so there's no big surprise.

My trigger? "Didn't I just tell you to/not to...." However, that's informative for me too. My son can be a bit spacy (gets it from me) so when I think he's using 'spacy kid' as an excuse ("I didn't hear you"), I begin to have him repeat everything I say back to me for a while. That usually corrects the problem for the moment.

Well in the instance you describe my kids would have known I would be pissed. I wouldn't consider breaking something as a result of doing something you know you're not supposed to be doing an accident, I would have considered it negligent.
An accident is something that happens even when you are paying attention and following the rules. In a case like that I wouldn't be mad and yes, they would know it.

Oh yeah. My daughter is definitely not affraid of me. She knows I do not get bent out of shape easy. She also knows when I get to a point that all done fun and games get to work.

My kids usually predict by previous actions how I will react or how their dad will react.

No. they don't fear us. They know what we will be upset about and what we won't be upset about. Yes. i would be upset about a broken window. Yes. I know it would be accident - it was an accident that could have been avoided had they followed the rules and played LAX where they were supposed to.

They were playing kick ball out front - they broke a neighbors down spout - they came and told me right away. We went over to our neighbors and told them. I wasn't mad. I was disappointed. But like you said - accidents happen - just like I said and our neighbors said.

Your house sounds like mine!

I sure hope not.
The last thing I would want is my kid to "fear me"!

He probably has more fear for his father, but he knows dad is a softy inside.

Respect? Yes.
Fear? No.

This is life and life happens. Accidents happen.
The best lesson in life is to learn and move forward!

My trigger? Don't make me, you, us, them, anyone LATE! I can't stand being late to anything. I'm probably more like your husband too. I think I'd be upset about the window, or the scratch on the car, etc. I'd be most upset though with the fact that they were doing something they knew they were not supposed to be doing.

I can say one thing for sure though, my husband and I balance each other out with our "getting upset" episodes. If mom is on a tirade over something, dad is mellow about it, and visa versa. It seems to work out naturally. I don't mean that we aren't consistent, or that we don't agree on discipline styles, just that if something really upsets my husband, I figure there's no point in me getting overly upset too, and hubby seems to be the same way.

Yeah, my kids can predict. They run to tell me about accidents with no fear because I've been through it so many times with them that they never get in trouble for spilling or breaking something, it only matters that they're honest. On the flip side I make good on my warnings, so they "fear me" enough to mind what I say when they get "the look" :) They know what a last clear warning sounds like, so I'm pretty predictable. I've never just reacted to something all willy nilly where they didn't know what was happening.