Children cannot always help their behavior.  While we must communicate to them responsibility for their actions, we as parents need lots of wisdom to know how much correction they need given situation.  variables such as fatigue, improper diet, stress at school all add up to less than desire performance on their parts.  Like us, they require understanding and patience and lots of overlooking of things said or done out of human shortcomings.  A warm embrace so often does more good than all our words could ever hope to produce.  (Gail Signor)

Taken from Encouragement a publication by Angela DiCicco and Gail Signor