Maybe because I knew he would never hurt me, I always loved it when my dad would threaten me. My favorites were "I will rip  your lips off" and "I will hang you by your toes." I guess that appealed for the same reason witches and creepy fairy tales did.

Now that I'm a mom I struggle with how to find that line between healthy language and taking myself too freaking seriously.

My mom threatened us with the wooden spoon all the time but she never even came close to even giving us a light tap!

She also said stuff like:

If you don't watch out I will send you back and get a boy

and

If you don't watch out I will sell you to the gypsies.

It sounds awful, but I knew she never would - she loved us (and show us that) way too much.

I have occasionally said things like this but ONLY when I was clearly kidding.  I frequently threaten to throw him in the lake behind our house, for example, but only with a smile on my face.  I haven't every said them in anger.

The only one I've ever been tempted to say in anger is, "I'll give you something to cry about."  There's something about my son's whiny semi-cry when there's nothing really wrong that just puts my teeth on edge and makes me want to say, "If you're going to make that horrible noise, I'll make it worth something, damn it!"  I haven't actually said it though.

When pushed to my limit, I'm often heard telling my kids, "if you don't stop fighting right now, my head is going to explode."  This used to be effective because they thought it was scary, now they just think it's funny and it has no effect in quieting their bad behavior.

My mother always used to say, "I'll kill you!"  She said it all the time growing up and I thought it was normal.  When I told my husband, he was stunned.  When I look at my own kids, I can't imagine saying it.  It cracks me up.  "I'll kill you!"  Really?

I thought I was the only one whose parent threatened to hang her from the toes!  Mine also threatened toe-nails, which led to a lot of eeeewww-based giggling.

I've been threatening to beat my kids with a stick since they became verbal. It's more or less my standard "or else" threat.

My own mother had a more colorful collection of threats, including "I'm going to kill you and tell the Lord you died" and "I'm going to tie a knot in it" (that last one only works on boys, by the way).

My parents were big fans of, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out again." It became a great family joke because as a teenager I was easily 6 inches taller than my father.

I can't even threaten to hit my daughter, but what works for now is to threaten to give her toys or snacks to our cat. As this is her only competition in the house it works pretty well, for now.

My husband's a fan of "I'll break your legs", said to whoever's bothering him- the kids, the cats, me... we all (except maybe the cats) know he's not serious, but I still hate it.

we used to tell our daughter we got her from the monkey store and we'd

take her back if she didn't behave... we always said this jokingly, but when it came time to tell her we were having another baby she replied seriously " you mean you went to the monkey store without me?" priceless!!! : )

When my brothers fought, my granny used to threaten to "tie your tails together and throw you over the clothesline".  A particularly dire threat once they got old enough to consider what might be used in place of tails.

"Just wait until your father gets home."

Even though absolutely no physical punishment ever occurred, the fear it inspired worked every time.

Umm... I hear, "I'm gonna whup you" or "You wanna whuppin?" or even "Git your ass in this shopping cart" with relative frequency at the main grocery store in the neighborhood in which I work.  And the moms are not kidding.