Most of the problems our country and the world is experiencing is due to how the parents have raised their children. I will venture to guess that most thought that they were loving their children and that is partially true, but they were also giving conflicting signals to their children.
Children need to learn boundaries and the parents are the authoritative figures in their lives to teach them. You and your children are not meant to be best friends. A parent is always teaching their children. This does not mean that you will be enemies either, but rather a parent will be the teacher and the child the student. In some cases, you will exchange thoughts and ideas on an equal level, but there will be other times where that is not the case.
When you tell a child to stop or they will be spanked and do not carry through with that action, you are giving conflicting signals. The child learns that when an authoritative figure says something they do not mean it. This could be the very reason why we have so many criminals and why the police are shooting these criminals. The criminals have learned that when the police say stop and they are the authoritative figure, that they do not mean it.
This is also true with God. When God says stop and we do not, we think that He did not really mean stop. However, God does not give conflicting signals. When He tells us to stop He expects us to stop or their will be consequences. Unfortunately, the consequences from God may not be immediate. For example, God has told us that there shall be no other gods before God. Yet many of us worship money. The penalty from God may not be the loss of your money which is what most would think, but rather is might be spending eternity in the Lake of Fire.
We who say we are Christian and want to raise God fearing Christians need to mean what we say. We not only need to stop giving conflicting information to our children, but to the rest of society as well. As a Christian, we need to live more like and behave like Christ. This is not going to be easy, but are you willing to change your life? If so, then the first step is to pray to God and as for forgiveness and to help you with the path of being more like His son. Just so we are clear, this is not salvation, but can lead to salvation.