Consequences Will Never Be The Same

I got chided by my wife recently for having a little outburst toward the kids.  They had been whining, crying and flat-out refusing to do what they were told for a couple of days and I'd had enough.  I told them that I was tired of the whining and that the refusals were going to end or consequences would never be the same.

She complained that I shouldn't  do things like that and that I didn't offer incentives, etc, and that it's not good for them to see me angry with them like that.  And maybe she's right, maybe there was a better way to handle things.  It's not like I do that sort of thing with any regularity, but then they normally don't run around like a pack of hungry, retarded badgers all the time, either.

Anyway, for all the talk about not letting your kids see you angry, I'm fairly certain that being able to tell when my dad was pissed off saved my life on more than one occasion.  Sitting in time out on the stairs is nothing compared to being asked to go out back and select a stick of appropriate width and flexibility.