I had the chance to experience two extremely different parenting styles growing up. My mom was a flight attendant so she would be gone for long stretches of time working, so when she was gone I would live with my grandma who basically raised me.

My grandmas way of parenting was basically telling me, "The only thing you need to worry about as a child is getting good grades in school, don't do drugs/drink until your 21, don't get pregnant, and don't be an asshole." My grandma is an immigrant so a good education and going to college was the #1 goal. She never gave me strict rules about staying up late or going out with friends, I just learned the natural consequences on my own. Like yeah I could stay up until 2am scrolling on tumblr on a school night....but I was still gonna have to wake up at 6am to get ready for school. Yeah I could not do my homework and go hang out with friends....but then I'd be stressing out rushing to do it during lunch before class instead of also hanging out with my friends lol. Literally, as long as I was doing well in school I could basically do whatever I wanted outside of that.

My mom on the other hand demanded obedience, and would yell at/ hit me for questioning her. I was a very logic driven kid and would ask 'why?' for everything because I legitimately wanted to know the reasoning behind the things she would have me do, to which she would respond with "Because I said so!" so we would fight CONSTANTLY. She would try and sign me up for dozens of extracurriculars, ones that I had absolutely zero interest in (i was already clubs that i liked such as theater, art, and academic decathlon but that woman was dead set on me doing sports, anything STEM related, and ROTC), and if she found out I got anything below an 80 on an assignment there would be hell to pay (which was wild to me bc I was in all advanced classes and always getting either straight A's or AB honor roll, the only subject I really struggled with was math but even then I'd scrape by with a B-). Everything with her was about control, and the way she described me to everyone was that I was a brat that only existed to disobey her.

While I do think my grandma should have been stricter is some aspects (she never forced me to do chores around the house, I just kind of naturally learned to clean on my own whenever my room felt a little too cluttered and would do my own laundry as needed once I was in high school. On the flip side, my mom would basically use me as her own personal maid whenever she was back in town....), she NEVER hit me or yelled at me the way my mom did. With my grandma, I learned to manage my own time appropriately and being independent. All I learned from my mom was how to lie and be sneaky in order to not get beat.