“Parents are sinners as well as children, and under the hand of the Lord, parents are children as well as children. This means everyone in the household, not just the kids, is under discipline. The kids must see this reality and not just acknowledge it in an abstract, doctrinal sense. Parents often fail at this point because they refuse to make restitution to their children. Let’s say there’s been a family quarrel and everyone loses their respective cool. Mom gets angry and yells, and the child is angry and defiant. Now what? Obviously, the object of the discipline is to get the child to seek forgiveness for sinning in this way, and there is someone there (mom or dad) to make sure it happens. But who will make mom confess her sin and seek forgiveness from the child? The answer is that the Holy Spirit does this. If parents never apologize, they are resisting the Holy Spirit.
“Sometimes parents don’t seek forgiveness because they believe to do so would diminish their “moral authority.” The truth is the only thing that diminishes moral authority is sin, and sinning without seeking forgiveness afterwards really puts moral authority into the tank.” (My Life for Yours, p. 119-120)
You Think Too Much! 