How to Gain Your Child's Respect: Establishing Parental Authority & Discipline

She was asleep on the couch, taking a short rest in the comfort of her own home. This was her bed for the minute but became her last resting place alive after her 14-year-old son shot her because she forbade him to associate with alleged gang members. In another case, a 15-year-old boy stabbed his father to death as the father tried to physically restrain him from leaving the house to hang with gang members. Both these incidents happened a few weeks ago in Michigan but we too often hear stories like this across the nation where children have taken the lives of the very ones who gave them life. What is it that would make a child kill a mother or a father, the ultimate act of parental disrespect?

Barring the child being sexually, physically or emotionally abused or having substance abuse or mental illness issues, perhaps the one reason a child would cuss out, strike at, steal from or kill a parent is simply not respecting their parents’ authority.

“Respect is not given but must be earned,” goes the old adage. Though some of us would like to believe that respect automatically comes with being a parent, that simply is not the case. We see the disrespect with the three-year-old cutting up in the grocery line, the 12-year-old with the attitude at the mall. or the 16-year-old who refuses to come out of the bedroom because of conflict with a parent. We see parents (and we ourselves may) negotiate, ignore or just accept this type of behavior, but this shouldn’t be the case. As our children’s first teachers, no matter how we may have messed up in the past, we have the responsibility to raise disciplined children and that works best when our children respect our authority. We must earn our children’s respect by establishing our authority in their lives. Doing so will curb this ill behavior until it becomes practically nonexistent.

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