How "creative" were your parents in teaching, disciplining and protecting you when you were a kid?

I just read that @Symbeline’s dad would tape pictures of starving kids in the fridge so she won’t complain with the food inside, a way of telling her other kids are suffering and she should be grateful. This triggered in my memory a friend once telling me she was never aware she and her seven siblings were growing up poor since everytime they are at the dinner table and did not have enough food, her parents would sing for them a happy funny song.