Cattāri Brahmavihārā

This morning descended into total chaos as mu wife and two oldest children fought, screamed and cried incessantly until we left. I’ve been trying a different approach for a little over a month ahhs have found that when I don’t escalate, when I disengage and accept that I can’t force my kids to bend to my will things go better. My son doesn’t get into long-lasting and explosive rages I see when he feels disrespected and unjustly punished. Unfortunately, my wife sees positive discipline as a cop out (perhaps because in the one who introduced get to our) and is holding fast to our old ways of patenting.

My wife’s style of overbearing and domineering parenting combined with her way of belittling those with whom she’s angry has been getting the results that we don’t want but she seems determined not to anything differently. I’m far from perfect but even though I agree that kids should listen to whatever their parents say and be respectful, it’s clear that trying to enforce that by an iron fist just isn’t working. We don’t live in a time or place where corporal punishment is accepted as its effectiveness is questionable so, really, what’s the end game?