Q (Parent): If I discipline my kids and/or too consistently, what if they then don’t like me?

A (Golden Ruler): It’s okay.

Q: It’s so painful, how do I stand it?

A: Well, look, your kids will not like you only because they know you will be caring about whether they like you or not. They can’t help but love you just as much as you can’t help but love them. That’s the way God set it up.

If they don’t like you, they’re using that as some sort of tool against you. They are using it. The first thing you need to understand (or get to) is you don’t care whether they ‘like’ you are not. They gotta do what they need to do to be in your household and to learn what you wanna teach them. They can be happy about it or not. It’s up to them.

Q: What do you have to offer a parent who’s sensitive, who feels sad if their child doesn’t like them or love them?

A: If you can get over old lovers, you can get over this feeling also. Remember, we don’t want to weight kids down with our adult insecurities. This can happen on a couple of different levels and this is one of them. Your kid, like I said, naturally loves you. If your child is not ‘liking’ you, that means that you’re getting through to them on some level about something that needs to happen for them.

Q: That’s good.

A: You see? So, for their long-term benefit, you need to just nip that feeling you have that they don’t like you because they know when you’re feeling that and then they use it, take advantage of it whenever they can. If you no longer react to that insecurity of yours, if that is no longer one of your buttons, the fun goes out of it for them and they drop the bad behavior and move onto something else.

Q: And they’ll find something else I’m sure.

A: Then they will find something else,… that’s the exercise.

How concerned are you that your kids don’t/won’t like you?