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Take a page from the whale trainer's handbook
There was an article recently called "How Shamu Saved my Marriage", and its premise is equally useful for parents. The lady who wrote the article took the principles of behaviorism used to train Shamu to improve her marriage.
Shamu (and many other animals) is trained by positive reinforcement, one part of operant conditioning. This means that when Shamu does something right, he gets a reward. When he does something wrong, nothing happens to him. Nothing bad or good. This helps the trainers to pinpoint the behaviors they want, because Shamu isn't afraid to try new things because he's been punished in the past, but he's also going to be looking for ways to earn that reward.
It boils down to this: reward the behavior you want in your child. Spend at least as much time doing this as punishing behavior you don't want and you'll start to enjoy time with your kid a lot more.
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