"Because I said so"

I grew up in an environment where "Because I told you so" was the answer to a lot of my "Why?"s. Since I believe I am a decent enough human being, I decided that was the perfect approach to bringing up my own children. My older one who has Asperger's constantly heard me saying that. After all I was him Mom and what I said was from all the things I have learnt in life and that is good enough for him to blindly obey. I would of course never do anything that would harm him. I am his mother after all!
I threatened and cajoled Sam into doing a lot of things. As he grew up, he grew more defiant. I was puzzled and ashamed. I must be a really bad parent if I could not make my kid listen to me. While my self esteem as a parent went downhill, my obsession with making Sam do what I said steadily climbed up.
Sam didn't talk till he was in first grade so the lack of feedback didn't help much either. He started the Asperger's program in second grade and had an extremely competent teacher who made it her business to make the children succeed. In the years that she was his teacher, she was my teacher too. As she shared her thoughts and concerns and hopes, I learnt. I was like a sponge because here was something that made sense. She didn't tell me I didn't know how to take care of my child but she did talk to me about various ways how kids think and how important it was to respect their thoughts and feelings. I never thought of the word respect when I thought of children. To me children were to be loved. I didn't think of associating the show of respect with the show of love.
As I learnt, I learned to swallow my pride and ask Sam to do things and explain why I asked him to. So now when I said "Sam, do your homework" and he looked at me, I elaborated further with "Once it gets done, you will have more time to play". That made logical sense to him. My child who thinks in "black and white", "no and yes" and for whom life is a logical puzzle, it is easier when he can fathom the whys of some request. To him, be honest doesn't have any circumstances surrounding it. Honesty means just that - speaking the truth at all times. You don't say "You look great" when someone doesn't just because it would hurt their feeling.
I was blessed with my second child and he was lucky that I had learnt the "Because I said so" was not the best way to teach the child to do right. I put in a lot of effort to change my thought process to accommodate this simple concept but it is totally worth it. Today i sometimes hear "Gosh, my mom shouts so loudly" instead of the quiet ignoring I used to get. I love it and it helps me to grow a bit when I have to swallow my ego and calm down. It definitely has "forced" me to be a better person. :) Mel Lazarus said it best in his comic strip -

"The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent."