You want to make your life exceedingly challenging? Do what I just did. Ban your child from accessing electronics for an entire weekend. Oh yeah, this was necessary. The original offense was playing on his ipad behind my back before his designated time. His original punishment was just “no more electronics for the day,” but the subsequent tantrum (including expletives, door slamming and extreme face contorting) led to a prolonged moratorium.

We parents have to watch what we say when we are punishing our kids. I had plenty of moments of regret over the past few days, starting with 5:30 a.m. yesterday when my son woke me up (my one morning to sleep in) and proceeded to vacillate between whining, stomping and protesting and cuddling, crying and professing contrition. I finally gave up on any hope of going back to sleep when he began pacing back and forth at the foot of my bed and chanting, “I’m on strike, I’m on strike…”

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