I try to explain to my kids the underlying life lesson that <my behaviour | their punishment> is trying to teach them. Don't leave it in a journal, leave it in their memories.
Not knowing how old your kids are, but they understand and can take on advice at an earlier age than you might expect. They may have tantrums about it, sure, but your explanations will stick with them, and consolidate the more explanations you give them.
Expecting kids to have common sense about cause and effect ("well, what did you think would happen?") is just so stupid in hindsight - they don't know because they haven't experienced anything with which to compare yet. I still occasionally make this mistake about my own expectations of their experience.
I think helping your kids to understand your reasons will give them a view into the real world in advance of having to enter it. Fore-warned is fore-armed.
One of the best things that's happened for my kids is having a cousin with learning difficulties. We (myself and my better half) have had to explain in great detail how their cousin's behaviour is as a result of the various defence mechanisms that are symptomatic of their learning difficulties and that 'not understanding' something as quickly as everyone else around you inevitably leads to frustration and anger and lashing out. It's not personal, it's their way of dealing with things, and as (generally) intelligent people, we need to have patience for that, whilst at the same time doing what we can to not spark her off, but also not accepting her behaviour if and when she does ignite.
We've had these conversations with the kids many, many times over the course of 7+ years, so it's not a one-shot deal by any means, but it has most certainly sunk in.
Parenting is ad-nauseum repeated effort, very slowly ratcheting up the level of detail of the world around them to match their level of growth and understanding. Don't underestimate what they're actually able to understand.
(I feel very strongly about this, potentially the most important topic in the world. They'll be running it one day, sow the right seeds.)
One thing to understand though (and people who don't have kids don't understand this at all) is that kids are not robots: they're gonna do what they're gonna do, they will (once they grow up a bit) think you're "out of touch" and "don't understand anything". Any effect you have as a parent is not as huge as non-parents think, even if you do a good job. Conversations do sink in, temporarily, but then a hit of dopamine kids get from doing the things you told them not to do (or not doing things you told them to do) washes it all away from their mind and you have to start over. Ex: soda, sweets, brushing their teeth, watching YouTube for 10 hours a day, exercise, schoolwork, and so on. Some kids are better behaved than others, and you don't know ahead of time which you're going to get. It's the hardest debugging problem in the world, and a significant fraction of well meaning adults completely fail at it.
I heard that 'personality' (whatever that means) is kinda set in stone by age three or four. Not 'set in stone' but it becomes much harder to change beyond that point. So we made sure that, right from scratch, our kids were disciplined as consistently as possible, so that their 'personality' boundaries at age three / four were pretty close to where we'd like them to be (this is all very vague, but, fundamentally, we'd done what we could to have them 'set in stone' from a good base).
This may just coincide with the age bracket at which kids make friends and start spending increasing amounts of time with other people and therefore having 'outside' influence. The lesson being: set them up to know good / bad / appropriate / inappropriate by this time.
Allowing some time to involve yourself in their interests (which equates to their friends' interests), rather than forcing them to conform with your own interests, should keep you somewhat more relevant in their eyes. This is much easier said than done - I've struggled with this the whole time, but Minecraft was a great phase :)
Learn to laugh at what they find funny, just to connect. Look at it through their naive eyes rather than your own broken-by-the-world cynical life experience.
I try to explain to my kids the underlying life lesson that <my behaviour | their punishment> is trying to teach them. Don't leave it in a journal, leave it in their memories.
Not knowing how old your kids are, but they understand and can take on advice at an earlier age than you might expect. They may have tantrums about it, sure, but your explanations will stick with them, and consolidate the more explanations you give them.
Expecting kids to have common sense about cause and effect ("well, what did you think would happen?") is just so stupid in hindsight - they don't know because they haven't experienced anything with which to compare yet. I still occasionally make this mistake about my own expectations of their experience.
I think helping your kids to understand your reasons will give them a view into the real world in advance of having to enter it. Fore-warned is fore-armed.
One of the best things that's happened for my kids is having a cousin with learning difficulties. We (myself and my better half) have had to explain in great detail how their cousin's behaviour is as a result of the various defence mechanisms that are symptomatic of their learning difficulties and that 'not understanding' something as quickly as everyone else around you inevitably leads to frustration and anger and lashing out. It's not personal, it's their way of dealing with things, and as (generally) intelligent people, we need to have patience for that, whilst at the same time doing what we can to not spark her off, but also not accepting her behaviour if and when she does ignite.
We've had these conversations with the kids many, many times over the course of 7+ years, so it's not a one-shot deal by any means, but it has most certainly sunk in.
Parenting is ad-nauseum repeated effort, very slowly ratcheting up the level of detail of the world around them to match their level of growth and understanding. Don't underestimate what they're actually able to understand.
(I feel very strongly about this, potentially the most important topic in the world. They'll be running it one day, sow the right seeds.)