Now you know, when you become a parent, why it is that OUR parents always laughed at us in glee when the topic of US becoming parents came up. Mine always said "When you are a parent, it will be a payback for everything we are going through", all ended with the Wicked Witch of the West laugh from the Wizard of Oz.I understand that now as I didn't then. We hear all the experts saying how easy it is to discipline your children and make them turn out perfect. HA! It is difficult to find the right mix of love and discipline. But, let's learn from each other's mistakes and do something about it.
Parents, when your kids do something wrong...do you just blow it off and hope it doesn't happen again. Do you enter shouting matches with your children? (If so, by the way, they won)
Children constantly test their boundaries. I have four of my own ranging from 20 to 13. It seems more and more that the things they think are no big deal and go pretty much unpunished become bad habits (lifelong ones).
We are reponsible for our children. We must guide them. We HAVE to respond to things done wrong with a consequence. Everyone makes mistakes. God knows we all have and will continue to. If we offer no consequence for a negative behavior, we will only cry all the harder when something REALLY goes wrong and they are in danger. Oh why didn't I do something sooner? Do it now, give discipline along with love. I, like everyone else blew off some of the smaller battles, but I have learned that those small ignored battles just lead to a test for a bigger battle.