Enforcing (or not!) House Rules - when is it permissive/punitive?

[HuggaBuggaMommy]

What do you do if a child changes his behavior because you're about to enforce a boundary?

I'll give an example, and this is almost always where the situation occurs (he's 6.5, and I'm learning this mouthiness is typical ). In our house, we have a blanket rule regarding disrespectful speech and attitudes (not just for ds, but for me, too ). If you can't speak kindly to someone, you go to your room until you can. Now, if ds says something in a rude way, I bring it to his attention that he's being disrespectful, and tell him to talk in a kindly manner. If he replies to that again in a disrespectful manner, I remind him of our house rule, and tell him if he continues, he can go to his room until he can speak to me repectfully. So, he says something for a third time in a rude way, and I tell him, "That's it. You may now go upstairs until you decide to speak to me respectfully."

Immediately ds says, "Ok, Mommy, I'm sorry. I'll stop."

Now, my punitive side (which is shrinking day by day, thanks to GCM) rears its head and I feel like I have to enforce the boundary anyway, since I told ds to go to his room and he only changed he behavior because he didn't want to - in his mind - be *punished* (even though the consequence is not meant to be a punishment whatsoever - we don't even use the word punish in our house, though he's picked it up from his grandparents and many of the kids at church)... I absolutely swing to the firmer side of GBD, and the idea of NOT following through on the house rule at this point feels awfully permissive to me.

So, what should I do? What would you do? Do you say, "Okay, as long as you can be respectful now, it's fine - you don't have to go upstairs," and let it go? I imagine that enforcing the rule after ds has changed his attitude would be punitive... but is not enforcing it permissive????

Am I making any sense?????

Help!