It could of course be simply down to the fact that all children are different, but what worked for us is honesty and the closeness that brought.

I've see parents "talk" with their children, where it seemed more like they were talking _at_ them. I could see in the kids face he was putting on a show of listening (and pretending to go along with it), because that was the fastest track to going back to doing whatever he liked when they weren't watching.

Where it worked though, was getting closer to my children by admitting where I was at and where I was coming from. When they feel like you're really connecting with them.

I'm sure my kids still get up to much I'll (hopefully) never hear about, but that's normal. As long as the big overarching stuff is understood, I'll take that as a win.