Balance between being a friend and a discipliner?

Hello dear all, first of all I would like to thank you for being such an inspiration and helping hand whenever I ask a question. I feel very blessed to be part of this forum even though I don’t use it regularly (no internet at home) but I love reading through the different topics and getting inspired and encouraged!

This time I have a question that has occupied me quite intensely for some time: My dd is five years old (Feb 2009) and I am pregnant with my 2nd child (we had a still born baby in Aug 2010 who would be nearly 3 years old), so my daughter has grown up as a single child so far. Recently she has started taking on an adverse attitude towards me as her mother. She feels treated unjustly and often answers me in a rebellious way, just firmly saying ‘no’ if I ask her to do thing. I have read some of Jean Liedloff’s works and felt very much inspired and also convicted. She basically states that our Western modern way of brining up our children is often in an adversary way – too often we are against our children, we are their enemies, our rather they are ours and we fail in being their friends and loving, tender, patient mothers. She also believes that the parents’ attitude of expecting their children to not fulfil their expectations (or to fulfil their negative expectations) is the very reason for children to actually act the way that they shouldn’t. On the contrary, naturally expecting the children to be social beings, to behave well, to actually want to do fine and fulfil their parents’ positive expectations has a very positive effect on children. Her thoughts have encouraged me to have it as my first priority to NOT be an adversary to my daughter anymore and to deal with my l (often present) lack of love for her that is caused by my ambition to discipline her, to get her “do the right thing”, behave in the right way, (as said above) fulfill my positive expectation but actually in the back of my mind expect her to fail. This is very subtle but I totally felt convicted in this. I have now tried to observe myself carefully ‘checking my own heart and intentions’, which has been utterly helpful and healing to my relationship to my daughter. I achieve it much better to be of a gentle and soft, kind and positive spirit (also towards my husband).

Now what I find hard is to find the right balance between gentleness, softness and friendliness and discipline and firmness. I try hard not to lose my temper, not to raise my voice but to be firm in a peace-making way, which is totally my heart-desired goal. I realise now that my daughter mirrors my own behaviour (and weaknesses) in the way she responds to me, but I feel it’s “not too late”. She is still very cooperative and teachable, a very joyful, fun-loving and innocent child but I do see traces of hardheartedness and stubbornness in her that I have traces of.

I grew up in a strict, humourless, success-orientated Swiss household (I’m overstressing the negatives a bit) while my husband grew up in a very relaxed, humorous, emotion-showing, but tough’n’rough Australian family. So we are utterly different but we try to just focus on the positive sides of our upbringing and try to find a balance. My husband encourages me to pass on the positive sides of the education I received while working on my weaknesses, while he is supplying our daughter with the Aussie relaxedness and love for fun and peace. It is theoretically a good mixture, just sometimes (well, often) hard for me to not get discouraged and resentful regarding my upbringing and the negative effects it had on my personality. But then again – God’s grace is endless and new every morning and it certainly helps to always remember this!

So I would love to read how you do it?? How to you find the right balance in your role as a mother – a loving gentle friendship-orientated mother – and – the one that holds the responsibility to discipline and train (lay down the rails for) your children?

Do you, too, find yourselves (sometimes or often) being against your children and getting into that mindset of not trusting in their goodness and willingness to obey (mostly unconsciously)?

I’d love to hear about your experiences and thoughts!