Your three year old hits his younger brother. You remove him from the room expressing anger and leave him in  “time-out”. Then you feel bad. He is crying and that  pulls on your heart. You begin to wonder. Am I being too  hard on him?

Perhaps you have a teenager who wants to go to a  concert with friends. You don’t feel that it is safe – so  you say “no”. She gets angry and yells about how unfair  you are. She finishes her tantrum by screaming “I hate  you!” to your face. After she stalks off to sulk you  wonder whether you should let her go to the concert after all.

Is it unusual for parents to feel ambivalent in  disciplining their children? Absolutely!! All parents  second guess themselves. We wonder whether we are being  fair or not.  Are we being mean? Is it ok to make them cry?

A long time ago, my first pediatrician for my children  said that “Children walk all over parents that waffle…  don’t waffle!” Nothing could be more true.

There is a process that needs to occur in correcting  our children. First we have to make a decision. If they  are wrong, they need to know it and live with your  correction. (No they cannot hit and get away with it.  They cannot go to a concert that is unsafe.) Once you make  your decision you should not go back on it. With a  teenager there may be more information to obtain before you  make a decision. (Is a parent going to chaperone?) But  even with a teenager if you have been provided with all the  information and still say no, you cannot go back on your  decision.

The second part of the process is much harder.  Whenever you make a decision against a child you will get a  negative reaction. They will never say “ok Mom that’s  fine”. Their reaction involves their emotions of  disappointment, resentment or jealousy. They need to learn  these emotions and how to deal with them. Our decisions  teach them how to deal with these emotions.  While they are dealing negatively to our decision,  don’t let their emotions play on yours. This is what  causes us to feel ambivalent in disciplining or limiting  our children. It is ok for us to let them have their  emotion over our decision and not do anything about it.  Let them deal with it.

At the same time we must recognize that our torn  feelings are normal. We must learn to deal with them  without feeling we need to make something up to our child  for our decision. Parents have a right to make decisions  for our children in correcting and limiting them when it is  needed. We need not succumb to feelings of ambivalence.  We should not change our mind, due to our children’s  reactions. And we need to feel confident that our  discipline is an important learning experience for our kids  – experiences kids cannot do without.