Training Baby Thugs
I was working in the living room when I heard a crash and then “Oh Findley, I cannot believe you did this, why did you grab my cup!” Her voice rose into a shriek.
I ran to the kitchen and there it was. A very frustrated girl, a surprised baby who had no idea what he had done and a very big mess of hot chocolate.
“No, stop talking” I said urgently to my daughter, “but MOOM, he dumped my hot chocolate!”
I laughed, “sweetheart just stop and get completely in control of yourself so you can think logically “.
“Why did he do it Mom, I just turned my back for a minute”.
“Honey, he is a baby. He has no idea that it’s naughty to reach as high as he can tiptoe, put his fingers over the cup he saw you drink from and pull it down. Look I will help you clean it up and you can make another cup”.
We grabbed a roll of shop towels and in short order the huge splash of hot chocolate was cleaned up. As we sopped and mopped and wiped we talked.
“This was so good for you that it happened, it is good training for someday when you will be a wife and a mother. Because you will need to learn to control your tongue right in the moment just like I had to learn it.”
“But Mom, it’s so hard” she looked pleadingly at me, a laugh pulling at the corners of her mouth.
I burst into laughter. For one, it was funny, and for two, teaching moments don’t soak in as well with frustration, irritation, and sternness. Laugher does a far better job at lowering defenses, smoothing irritations, and opening the pores of a child’s heart. Of course laughter isn’t always appropriate, but it could be appropriate far more than it is.
Now she is laughing with me as we clean together. Her heart is wide open, and I know this chat will bring fruit. My own heart is full of longing to hand down the fruits growing on my tree, but it’s not possible. Fruit is not earned or grown with hard work. It is not passed down to generations, or saved and kept with bragging rights. Nor is it meant to be saved for the future.
I remember well the day that I first realized how utterly helpless I was to stop walking down the path I was on, to go back, and walk a different path. I was stuck in an awful pattern of herding my children with threats, yelling, and frustration being the number one emotion they saw. I was not nurturing them or raising them by leading.
I called it “mistakes”.
“I made so many mistakes today” I told my husband wearily. “I don’t know why I can’t get control of my voice”. I asked God for help, but I had no faith he actually would.
““The human spirit can endure a sick body, but who can bear a crushed spirit?”
Proverbs 18:14
”
But then I realized, finally, it was not a mistake. It was a sin. Calling it sin was integral to embracing the truth. So I did. “Let me see this sin the way you see it,” I told him. And then I waited.
When he showed me, I was appalled. I was crushing my children. They were being traumatized and felt like they could never be enough for me. I didn’t even have faith I could win this battle but I sure was going to try.
I decided to pretend I had company all the time, because I could control my tongue in front of people. I knew it was a crutch…a bandaid even, but I was determined to break the habit. For weeks I pretended I had company, and after several weeks I realized controlling my tongue was much easier.
I asked God to poke me before I raise my voice. He delivered. I cannot tell you how many times my mouth opened and I shouted “AJ”… ugh, poke! “..I LOVE YOU SO MUCH” I finished while whispering a heartfelt grateful prayer.
I started praying for compassion for my children, and my weak faith grew a little bit when compassion flooded through me rescuing me and them from a tongue lashing.
I practiced and practiced until tempering my tone was instinctual, the louder the crash, the quieter I talked. I was completely done with the stress and strife my tongue was bringing into our home, and as I grew, God revealed more to me.
Is it actually possible that Gods principles could work in parenting, now, year 2010? And if so, how does one go about doing such a thing? I asked him, this time expecting an answer. “I’m not going away, I want to know” I told God as I hung on tenaciously to his sleeve. “I want to win so my children can win.” I was as stubborn as a little donkey as I looked for the truth.
He started to show me.
“And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-7
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.”
Ephesians 6:4
“Don’t fail to discipline your children. The rod of punishment won’t kill them. Physical discipline may well save them from death.”
Proverbs 23:13-14
“To discipline a child produces wisdom, but a mother is disgraced by an undisciplined child. When the wicked are in authority, sin flourishes, but the godly will live to see their downfall. Discipline your children, and they will give you peace of mind and will make your heart glad. When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild. But whoever obeys the law is joyful.”
Proverbs 29:15-18
“Fathers, do not aggravate your children, or they will become discouraged.”
Colossians 3:21
When our babies are tiny, we aren’t prepared for the rigors of raising a person. We hold this little vegetable (as a friend of mine says) and they are wholly dependent on us for everything. Slowly, understanding starts to grow. Needs are expressed and filled. Mama flounders when another child enters the mix and she no longer reaches all the way around. Baby becomes smarter and starts to push mamas buttons because Mama is not giving him as much attention as before. Mama starts getting frustrated and raises her voice. Baby is startled and obeys. Next time Mama raises her voice without getting up to handle the situation, baby realizes it’s just a trick.
Children are rarely tricked.
Children are whip smart without the guile most of us learn from navigating a world full of guile.
As Mama to seven, I believe in this process. The crushing is a good thing. To be stretched beyond your ability creates brand new muscles and strength in places and ways you can’t begin to imagine now.
It teaches you what is actually important, how to prioritize, what’s actually important, what really needs to happen.
Sometimes the best thing you can do is pretend you don’t see the toddler scribbling on the wall with a marker.
I know that just blew your mind. But listen. You are breastfeeding in your rocking chair. Your baby has been on a nursing strike, and finally she is eating. You look up and that’s the moment your little CIA agent toddler has found a marker and is creating a masterpiece.
You have three choices.
Yell….. that brilliant little toddler knows you aren’t going to get up, and he will go right on with his little Bob Ross impersonation. As your voice urgently screams at him, his little ears hear you as if from a long distance, and what he is thinking is …. “let’s put a happy little sky right here, just like that”.
Get up and go handle it calmly and efficiently….. now your baby is screaming and returning to her nursing strike.
Ignore the happy little sky and the mini thug…… the only fallout is you will have to clean that wall. You have not hardened his heart, you have not yelled, your baby nursed well, and peace still reigns supreme in your home.
Of course if this actually happened, you would want to schedule an intervention of training. Leave a marker laying around, sit close by and appear distracted. When your precious little pudding picks that marker up, you get up and immediately teach and train.
The Lord allowed this truth to be cemented in my mind when I was still a very young mother. A friend told me how important family dinner, together is, but the problem, her husband was notoriously late. Always, every day he was late. She never learned from it. She continued to have dinner ready at six o’clock every day, and forced her ravenous, hangry children to wait until her husband came home. She admitted by the time they would eat, she was exhausted and bitter, her children were starving and angry, and her husband was short tempered because everyone was mad when he came home.
Sometimes the right thing to do, does not look as noble as the impressive thing.
Its an upside down world of priorities and what is truth.
The truth is this. Your children are born not knowing anything. You know all the things. You have roughly 14 years to teach them all the things. Everything has to be taught, verbalized, and trained into them.
You will dream of going on a family vacation and not having to tell anyone to put their sandals on, or not lick the tv, please don’t put your hand up my skirt. (not my husband either, that was a toddler)
Talking about skirts. I had an incident at the chiropractor. As I stood talking to my cousins wife who I see rarely but always enjoy, I was bouncing my baby, and my toddler was behind me, I was unaware of what he was doing until I felt a cold draft directly on my bum. Absentmindedly I reached back and was startled to discover he had carefully rolled my skirt in the back all the way up to my waist. I had on thin tights that hid nothing. There I was with my bum hanging out for all to see.
Just out there. All the way out there.
We didn’t move away from this house, nor did I switch chiropractors, which is something I’ve congratulated myself on.
The popular saying is if you don’t laugh, you will cry.
But Moms know better.
If you don’t laugh, you will die.