Matthew Poole and continuators on Colossians 3:21

21. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger , lest they be discouraged .

And to moderate the Parental authority, that they may exercise it Christianly, he allows not Parents to do that which is in a direct tendency to irritate or move the passions of their Children merely for their own pleasure, without a principal regard to God's glory, and their Childrens profit, Heb. 12.10. Indeed, he seems here more strictly to guard Fathers against Male-administration of their power in this extreme than he doth elsewhere, when writing upon the same subject, Eph. 6.4. considering the original word he here puts the negative upon, to engage them to lay aside rigour in their government (aswell as unwarrantable indulgence) and that upon a very weighty reason drawn from the end, viz.

Lest some Children who might with a moderate hand be reduced to obedience, should be (as it were) dispirited, by the roughness of their Father's discipline, and even pine away with grief, or grow desperate.