On Child Training

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these days on raising my kids. Part of it is because where my kids used to be my “pride and joy” six months ago, I’m realizing little by little how frustrated I am that they are slowly slipping out of being “ordered” and acting what we consider “well mannered” to taking over our house and our lives. It seems in the last six months that something has sort of “snapped” in me and I’ve lost my way, and I’m only now beginning to put my finger on what happened… thankfully before it’s too late.

I got a wake up call the other day when Peter and Andy sort of accosted me with this “what’s the deal with the change in your parenting” moment I was NOT prepared for at all, and now after last night’s throwing the fish across the room incident I’m pretty much convinced that I’ve lost my way and I need to find it again.

I think a big part of it was that Peter took this job where he isn’t home during the week. This gave me a lot of freedom to order the day how I wanted, etc, and that was good, but in that I completely flew off the social side and started being gone from morning ‘til night more than three days out of the week. I was escaping the “quiet,” and that caused the kids to see and experience some things that were less than ideal alongside our outings… For one thing, I was putting them in the nursery a lot and for another, I was ignoring their naptimes and eating times--- or accommodating them but in a way that suited me—and consequently not giving them the training, discipline and attention they need to thrive.

Also, I’ve gone from hanging around moms who are SUPER pro “The Rod” and “breaking wills,” etc to moms who are WAAAAAY crunchier in their parenting, and that has made an impact, believe it or not, on my own parenting because of the simple fact of association--- I’m more prone to respond in one way if another mom I’m with would do the same, either out of laziness, a desire not to offend the other mom, or even just a complete forgetfulness because other moms aren’t into the parenting style I have carefully selected with my husband. It can be so frustrating!

Let me be clear--- each person has different goals for their parenting, and each parent must choose what they will do and say based on those goals. I’m not saying any one parenting style is BETTER than another, I’m saying that there is a particular parenting style that is better for our OUR FAMILY, because its goals and outcomes match up with the goals and outcomes we have. Nevertheless, I know that kids are not machines, and that no amount of “tweaking” will simply “fix” them--- each child is an individual and I expect to see that more and more as time goes on.

That being said, those who read my blog know that I’m a big non-AP person. (Although I am obsessively pro-breastfeeding, baby wearing! Go figure)
My big parenting tips which I’ve gathered from a dozen or so interviews of what I would consider “successful” parents (parents of large families who have kids that love God, are respectful, kind, and well-balanced) alongside various books and websites written by what I would consider “successful” parents, all sort of float around the same idea… my theory of biblical parenting that I’ve written and re-written several times can be found here on my old website: http://www.freewebs.com/shekinnah/theheavenlyfamily.htm along with the full text of my favorite parenting book ever, To Train Up a Child.

The main points of it are that in our family we want to emphasize: Love of God and each other, servanthood, fruitfulness, and obedience. These are the things we think will later form our children into fruitful people in God’s economy. Some ways we do that are not to force them into prayer and worship time but to enjoy it with them and to make Jesus real to them by incorporating His presence into everything we do. (We even give Him a chair to sit in at the table right now!)
We try to give them chores and jobs that help them learn not just responsibility but pride in their work. We have expectations in them. We don’t advocate silliness but rather productiveness and seriousness—we want kids who take themselves and life seriously. We ALWAYS have fun, but we have fun while working, and work is what we do all day--- from sunrise to sunset, even playtime is work…. We “play” at cooking , building, cleaning, driving, doing chores, caring for others, and things like that. We teach them to REST. We try to cultivate gratefulness (although with toddlers, that’s not so easy!) and we try to teach them that consequences are real.

In all of that, the main thing I’m trying to get in the habit of doing right now more than ever is to consistently follow through with every limit I set, and to consistently reward every positive behavior that is done of the child’s own accord. I don’t think people should be applauded for “doing the right thing” (like, Peter and I go totally crazy when we catch an Oprah or Dr Phil clip where everybody in the room gives a standing ovation to a guy who pays child support. We’re like, uh yeah. Why are we clapping. That’s NORMAL.
In the same way, we don’t want to make a big hooplah over our kids eating all their peas or picking up their room, but we also realize that kids respond very well to praise and so we praise them ESPECIALLY for the good they do of their own accord—nothing warms my heart like hearing “look mommy! I’m cleaning up!”

Hanging around with more AP moms than not lately has done two things for me: first, it’s opened my eyes to the “Gray areas” – the fact that what works for ME isn’t necessarily going to be what works for someone else just because God’s doing it in me. In other words, just like both of my kids are completely different and require completely different ways of handling them, my friends and I, as God’s children, are unique and require different types of handling to bring us to the same result. Thus, I’m learning a lot about the “Grayness” of a biblical worldview through this experience. Likewise, It is solidifying that the parenting choices Peter and I decided upon are really good for our family and our goals. They WORK for us, and more importantly, they suit us and our ideals and our worldview. They fit.

For example, I was recently talking on the phone with a friend who shared her frustration over her own friend's reactions to her daughter's willful spirit! She was surrounded by women who told her: "What you need to do is you need to is, you need to get a rod, and you need to break that will!" This dear woman's concern was that in the process, she was going to somehow injure her beautiful daughters' spirit, and that, for her, was a no-go. She shared with me that she wanted her daughter to remain completely willful and spirited--- for her, it was a gift of strength of character and one she didn't want to spend hours breaking/destroying.
Funny thing is, she doesn't know this, but she might as well be talking about me! I'm TOTALLY of the "break the will but not the Spirit" variety, and I am a complete loudmouth about the importance of breaking your children's wills. I believe it would have been a gift to me if my own parents had figured out how to give me self-control and obedience as a present, and I hope to be able to give that to my own kids as well. I really, really, really really want my kids' wills broken BEFORE they hit five so that they experience the joys of obedience, trust, faithfulness and submission as they grow old, and I KNOW that freaks a ton of people out, and I'm not really apologetic about it. I'm a believer, and for me, that's that.
Nevertheless, in listening to her tell her story, I couldn't help but smile at how God keeps bringing me face to face with the grey areas of life: In my house, an unbroken will causes misery, but for her family and to hear her talk, it obviously brought her great joy! So even if God has given me the answers for ME, this prayer warrior across the globe had searched and recieved different answers for now, and that needs to be OK with all of us!

Anyways, all this has made me realize that in the last six months my kids have REALLY not been given my best as a parent. I have failed to follow through in my commitments as a parent, in the things which I have promised them and myself, and more importantly God, that I would do!
I’ve been neglecting my duties all the while feeling justified in it because I was “protecting them” by being an extra –attentive mother--- I just wasn’t paying attention to the right things, and honestly? I’m so excited that I caught it now.
Last week, I was given a wake up call and a warning, and last night’s meltdown really showed me that the warning was 100 percent justified…. So now I’m rolling my sleeves up and getting to work, and hopefully that struggle will pay off in the long run. Please pray for me as a mom, for my husband who is the hardest thing ever: an absent daddy, and for the kids, who need it most!<3