Hi Shortstop - congrats on your sober time.
I don't have children but if I did and my family was to offer a load of unsolicited advice or criticism I'd probably say 'thanks for the input' and try and stop the thing dead that way.
Writing email essays in my experience didn't do much to quench the fire...and may have added to it in my case.
I wanted my family to say yeah we were wrong, we're sorry, and you know best but that never happened then - and its not likely to happen now..
I don't like conflict either, although I'm better at dealing with it now....but my family is never going to be conflict free and I have to decide if I feed into that or stand apart from it.
D