There will always be an ongoing parental challenge to stay balanced between over- disciplining and under-disciplining your children. If you over-discipline your children to the degree that you are telling them how they must think, feel and speak, this type of behavior is called domination, not discipline. Over-disciplining your children to the degree that you are dominating them will contribute to their feelings of inferiority and insecurity (poor Self-esteem and Self-image) because they will feel that, "No matter what I do, it is never good enough."

If you are unconsciously "caught" in a parental "fear identity" of over-disciplining your children and as such you are constantly correcting, ordering and telling them what to do, think and feel, you are teaching your children that they can’t do it alone and that they must depend on you to survive, which will make them feel incapable and not good enough.

Paradoxically, however, your job is to be your children’s parent, not their friend. They have enough friends. What they need is an authority figure whom they can depend upon, someone with whom they feel safe no matter what. The most important (and most difficult) parental word to learn to say is "no," while simultaneously validating your children’s hurt feelings. It is normal and natural for your children to feel sad or angry when you tell them "no" because anyone would feel that way. This is a difficult learning paradox that many parents never master, so their parental actions polarize between being too lenient and too strict.

Domination is the opposite of the Self-parenting objective to teach your children how to parent themselves. If this fear identity is causing you to "rule over" your children because of some unconscious unmet needs of your own, I want you to take a deep, hard look at how this behavior is affecting your children’s Self-esteem and Self-confidence.

"When disciplining your child, avoid blaming, accusing, name-calling and threats. The goal is to engage cooperation, set limits and teach your child Self-discipline—not to breed resentment and rebellion. You can do this by describing the situation that needs attention, giving your child information about cause and effect, discussing your feelings honestly and showing the big picture of a process." - WAYNE DYER

If touching, holding, kissing, and being physically demonstrative with your children is difficult for you because of your own unmet childhood emotional dependency needs, its important for you to own right here and now that it is rooted in your own poor Self-esteem and Self-image. If you have core fear beliefs such as: "It’s just the way I am; I can't help it; I’ve always been that way," then dis-creating these dis-empowering beliefs needs to be high on your list of holistic parenting priorities.

Wayne Dyer taught me some of the more common practices that contribute to lowered feelings of Self-worth and a depletion of Self-confidence in our children.

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