Many years ago, when my daughter was young, we went to see a counselor who helped people with parenting issues.  Our daughter was a very head-strong kid, even from the age of two and it seemed to get stronger every year as she grew.

The counselor asked my husband and I what we thought the job of parents was.  I answered to love them.  My husband agreed, but added he though to discipline them so they grew up with responsibility and respect.  The counselor told us - - all good answers.  But think about this one.  Your job as parents to is to teach your kids resiliency and independence.  Life is full of disappointments, and in order to cope and grow, kids need to be taught how to bounce back, taking failures as learning opportunities.  And independence because at some point, they will need to take responsibility for themselves.  We hadn’t thought much about either of these prior to the visit.

A few years later, my daughter as a sixth grader, was caught shop-lifting at a local amusement park with a bunch of girls.  Her punishment from the park was a ban for a year, a big thing at that age.  The ride home was pretty quiet, except when I heard a small voice ask me if we had to tell dad.  Yes, I said, we do.  Then the crying started.  He will be mad, she said.  When we got home, we just sat in silence until he arrived.  The major crying started now.  He told her to come and sit by him, which she did.  He asked her what she had learned from this.  She said she had learned not to steal and not to give in to peer pressure.  Her story was the other girls had stolen stuff several minutes before and were pressuring her to steal too.  My husband just looked at me and told her, ok, you are banned from the park for a year and you are grounded for two weeks.  That was the end of the discussion.  A sullen sixth grader headed off to her room.