This is the hardest thing to do as a parent because you love your child.
1. Make sure you love your child more than your child loves you. Many parents are unwilling to discipline because they don’t want to lose their child’s love. You’ll have to accept the reality that as a parent, you are not your child’s drinking buddy.
2. Children want to be disciplined even though they say they don’t. They know they are not ready to out into the real world. If they thought they were ready, they would have left long ago.
3. Your kids are human beings, and as such they calculate upsides and downsides to every action. They are testing you every moment of the day to see how far you will go. If you give them an inch, they’ll go for two inches – until they see a downside.
4. Say what you mean and mean what you say. If you set a rule and they break it, they have to be punished. If you say it, you have to do it.
5. When you punish them, they have to understand that they did it to themselves – that they earned that punishment.
6. You’re not doing your kids any favors by being too soft on them.