Thanks for posting this. As a father, I struggle with my roles. There are a lot of them, and "ultimate authority" is unfortunately one of them. I believe most developmental specialists would agree that children do need some negative feedback. The frustrations come in deciding how much? When? Where? Who? For which reasons? When is negative feedback definitely inappropriate? When is punishment delayed punishment confused? When is my spouse or a grandparent disciplining more than I agree with? How to handle that? When is a conversation with spouse, in advance or in review, appropriate. And then trying to separate the authoritarian from the nurturing parent I try to be otherwise.

I'd say these sorts of questions go through my head 20 times a day on workdays and 100 times a day during the weekend. Usually in flurries. Maybe there's only a couple of corrections that actually need to be made, but the introspection goes on.

And what to do when I did it wrong? How to atone to my child? That's perhaps the most important part, I think. To see that wrong is wrong even when dad is the one who's wrong.