Why Aren't You Punishing Me?

My daughter spat at her brother. I charged in, took away the thing she loved most, and she slammed her door, screaming, "I hate you!" Later, I found what she'd done while we ate dinner without her. This is the story of what happened when I sat on the hallway floor and stopped seeing my failure, and the five words she said that I still think about today. We talk about why consequences given in the flood almost always land as punishment, what a child's silent destruction is actually saying, and what repair looks like when it's nothing like the parenting books describe.

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