When you are a grandmother, you know so much more than when you were first a mother.  Specifically, what doesn't work.  And a lot of what does.

If I sent my daughter Becky to her room, she was in agony.  Begging for mercy.  But if I sent Pat to her room, she  was in heaven.  She loved to be by herself,  and kept a room full of books.  

I went out to eat last night and there was a couple with a little boy around five years old.  The father kept screaming at him, and telling him "No" and yelling for him to eat his food.  The little boy was crying, screaming and nothing that the father was doing was working.

The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.

You can't treat children alike--because they aren't alike.  Raising children is hard.  You have to learn a lot about interaction patterns.  One day our youngest who was three, (born 9 years after Scott) was flipping the light switch up and down watching the light go off and on.  A friend who was there asked me why I didn't stop him.

"Well," I told her.  He isn't hurting himself.  He isn't hurting anyone else.  And in a minute, he will get tired of it.  A light switch is cheaper than Legos.  If I tell him to stop, then I will have to get up out of my chair and enforce it.  It isn't a wrong thing to do unless I tell him to stop.  And when I tell him to stop something, I better back it up with action or he will learn that "No" doesn't really mean "No".

Ken always said, "Say yes every time you can.  There will be too many times in life that you have to say no.  Don't sweat the small stuff."  He also used to say, "I would rather my children obey me because they love me than because they fear me."

Ephesians 6:4 "And you Fathers (and mothers), provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

Paul said it this way:  Romans 4:15b "…for where there is no law, there is no transgression."  We make up too many rules because of what other people think.  Most of them don't matter.