Parenting: More Things That Seem To Work

Some of you have been walking together with me on this parenting road for quite some time now. You’ve patiently endured my laments about the potty-training nightmare, the Butt Paste catastrophe, and the breath-holding spells.  I know there is nothing necessarily remarkable about these tales, but it sure is fun to share them–to know that though we often feel alone, we’re really among a great throng of other faithful mommies who are daily seeking grace to raise our children in the ways of the Lord.  And, if my low points can provide a spot of laughter for your day, praise be to God! 🙂

I share a few months ago some nuggets of parenting wisdom that I’d found  particularly helpful at that time. Well, it’s time for more.  As I mentioned before, I don’t have the perspective of one whose children are grown, so I share these simply as a friend walking along the same road as you.  As I glean nuggets from those older and wiser than I I’ll share what seems to rise to the surface. Hope it can be helpful.

1. Give the right of private property. In one fell swoop this solved about a 100 problems in our home. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but it totally makes sense.  I never wanted our kids to be possessive of their belongings–so when they began saying “mine” I was quick to correct them or distract them or something. I’m actually not sure what I was doing.  But now that they are preschool age (2 & 4), I still sort of had a common-possession of all toys.  Both kids could play with whatever, I didn’t want it to be “Dutch’s” or “Heidi’s” because you want your kids to share, right? Plus, because Dutch is older he had probably 90% of the toys, so I figured it was fair that everything just belong to both of them.  Well the problem is that the concept of sharing and generosity makes no sense whatsoever if you have nothing to share, or nothing to be generous with.  That’s like trying to teach Dutch about tithing without ever giving him any money! I was making my home into a little socialist society, and therefore robbing my kids of the opportunity to be selfless and to truly share.  The beauty of Acts 2:44 (the believers having all things in common) was that the people had belongings to share, it was a freewill generosity not an imposed obligation or forced offering.  The love of Christ compelled them to give up what they owned. You can’t give what you don’t own!

This plays out so many times at home and teaches such valuable lessons! A few things I’ve noticed:

• Quickly ends bickering. Who does it belong to?  That person has the right to hold onto it or share it. Discussion over.
• Builds Sibling Relationship. Now it seems as if this would not help siblings get along. Seems like letting them each have their own stuff would cause distance, not love.  But the opposite is true. When the child is secure in knowing his stuff will not be taken away against his will all the time is free to let a sibling play with it. Think about it, if your neighbor constantly just came over and stole your lawn mower (or worse yet, the government forced you to give him all your stuff), would you naturally have good feelings toward him? If you are happily secure in knowing the lawn mower is yours, you are more likely to offer it freely to someone else.  Similarly, let’s say an older child is playing and the younger child whines and cries to have a toy. You tell the older child to give it to the younger. The older child becomes resentful of both you and the sibling because every time the younger one whines you give in and take away his stuff.  Plus they are both learning that whining works!  Instead, we can refuse to listen to any kind of whining. Each child has the freedom to play with their own toys and share if they want to. It won’t take long to learn that it’s a lot more fun to play with their toys together when they are sharing!
• Ends the Fairness Fallacy. I think this will be a whole post because there’s so much here!  I realized that much of why I wanted them to share everything was that Dutch has a ton of toys and Heidi has virtually none, in comparison.  When we buy into the fairness fallacy we think that we need to manipulate circumstance in order to make things fair for our kids. Not true!  Yes, right now Dutch has a lot more toys. That. Is. Life.  If my neighbor has a boat and I don’t do I march over and demand that we share it 50/50?  Of course not.  The people down the road have big huge houses. Mine is medium-huge. The people down the street have tiny houses. Some people don’t have  a house at all. That’s life. What a great opportunity to teach Heidi that not everything in life is equal. And, I can say from experience, as a girl with an older brother–it won’t be long before her room is overflowing with toys and Dutch’s looks a bit bare in comparison. I dare say she’s not in for a life of want. I’m afraid we’ve become so devoted to making things fair for our kids that we’ve neglected to train then for the real world–what a rude awakening when they leave our warm nests and discover life isn’t fair!

Wow, ok, that one was long. We’ll move on. 🙂

2. Let them struggle… and succeed. Again, I see how much I’ve been a softy.  While Heidi’s a go-getter, Dutch can be a bit of a … momma’s boy. 🙂  He likes me to do things for him.  And, how can I resist with that puppy breath of his and those great big blue eyes? Well, the key is that it is because of those big blue beautiful eyes (i.e. because we love our children) that we will let them struggle.  We have to let them learn!   I’m trying to take the time to more and more insist that he do things on his own.  Yesterday he whined and cried because he couldn’t get his shirt off (I’ll admit, it was a tricky one, the kid’s got a healthy-sized head).  I felt like such a meanie, but I refused to help him.  Heidi and I sat in the bathtub playing while he struggled … and struggled and struggled and struggled.  But you know what? He did it!  And you better believe afterward he was so proud and confident and happy, he was flexing his little muscles and telling me how strong he was.

Here’s the tricky part though–knowing which struggles will build confidence and which will just cause defeat and discouragement. Of course a little discouragement is all part of the process, but pushing too hard or expressing frustration or disapproval will just cause our kids to be afraid of failure.   For example, I’m letting off on pushing Dutch with his writing. He was getting so frustrated that he didn’t want to try at all. So I decided he can play Legos instead. He’s 4 years old for crying out loud and I dare say he’ll be able to write his name by the time he applies for his driver’s license. We have time.  At the same time I insist that he clean up messes, make his bed, get dressed, etc. by himself. As with everything, we have to know our kids. I guess that’s why we need to spend a lot of time with them! 🙂

3. Make every negative behavior counter-productive. This is just a basic foundational rule of discipline, but it’s helped me so much to have it summed up so succinctly. It makes it so much simpler to think of what to do in the moment. If Dutch whines about picking up his toys, he loses the toys altogether. If Heidi screams to be let down from her chair, she stays in the chair longer. It’s so easy, when we’re not careful, to be inadvertently training our kids into bad habits. I do it way too often. We don’t pay attention to our toddler until they fuss and whine. I don’t look in Dutch’s eyes until he misbehaves. All those things teach our children the very opposite of what we want.  It takes SO much effort to diligently reward every (or many) good behavior and make every negative behavior counter-productive. But how worth it it is!  I’m trying to work just as hard at “catching” good behavior as I am about catching the bad.  Lots of work, but no one said parenting would be anything less!

Final thought: Parenting is a full-time job. I know we always say that but more and more I’m seeing it’s just so true!  Simplifying my schedule and greatly reducing my outside commitments is helping so much. I know it’s hard, but I recently read this simple statement that struck me as so profound and is proving to be absolutely the truth:  The more time you spend with your children the less you will need to discipline them.  Not that all naughtiness comes from us being there or not, but I’ve been so amazed at just how true this is.

May this oh so sacred and oh so mundane task of parenting be your holy calling this week.  Hang in there!