further thoughts on Decision Making

Howdy - Chris here.
I started this bit as a reply to Sharalea, but it was too big for the reply box so it gets its own post now.

Well, this "decision making" thing isn't recommended by "some people" in our parents generation. They think we're just screwing things up by not teaching a "do what I say because I say so" line of thinking. That never worked on me - I rebelled against that my whole life, and still do as a matter of fact. I see "because I say so" as possible through two different ways. One would be fear of the person giving the order, the other would be trusting the person giving the order. I don't see how the fear option fits in with anything in the scriptures, or how it would be sustainable without giving increasing reason to fear. The trust option definitely sounds like the way to go, but it's going to mean enough self-restraint on our part to NOT give reason to fear us, which is not easy, because that not only means controlling our tempers, but our emotional response in general. I don't know if you're familiar with the phrase "emotional blackmail", but it's when one person, knowingly or otherwise, manipulates the response of another by reacting extremely to something.

E.g. - Let's say Lucy decides not to join us in family prayer in the morning. There are lots of ways I can react to this, but if my reaction was to be really upset and hurt, the next time she had the choice, if she joined us because she was afraid I'd freak out, well, that's not what I'm shooting for. Additionally, I've just handed her "a button" that she can push whenever she wants. Double Whammy there. In contrast, if I keep my cool, she's going to think through things a bit.
- sidenote - "Emotional Blackmail" probably gets used just as much with adults interacting as with kids. Another example would be if I freaked out every time Deana brought up "subject X". Well, if it's something that needs to be discussed, I'm not being very fair (or mature) about it. But she then has to weigh whether or not she's up to putting up with me freaking out to get the discussion to happen. Most of us do this some of the time, and some of us do this all of the time I think.
Now, there are times when Lucy wants to do something different than she needs to do, like running out of the house to run down the street. That's not an option, and if she fights it, we'll go as far as physically constraining her, or even spanking her. But the spanks are very few (it's been months I think), but when she gets spanked, we do it immediately, and we try really hard to not have it be us punishing her because we're mad. If we're too angry to have it go right, we skip the spanking and put her in her room until we cool off, and then handle it some other way. We make sure she knows WHY she's being spanked, or all the spanking would be is retribution, which just goes back to the fear thing.
Lucy has a fairly good mental list now of things that are dangerous, and some of those were learned by her getting spanked when she disobeyed orders, but the rate of those versus her believing us that something is dangerous has continually increased for the better. Lucy having been to several funerals now has helped, because she has a fairly good grasp of what death is. She's also sustained or seen enough painful injuries to know that there are some serious consequences short of death.
The only confusion with death right now is that she knows they'll live again, but because duration of time is still a concept she struggles with, she wants the deceased back immediately. Right now, everything in the past is yesterday, and everything in the future is tomorrow. The future has become a little easier to describe, either because we're having to teach patience frequently, or because it's easier to have her count repeated events between now and whatever point in the future we're describing (e.g. - "daddy's going to go far away for work this week, so you'll have three more bedtimes before I'm home again" That version is starting to sink in.

Anyhow, some of this stuff we learned in some family classes at school, and some of it is just figuring it out on the fly.