- Make children eat
- Make children sleep
- Make children be quiet when quiet is required
- Make children come when called instead of running away
- Potty train children
- Etc.
I wonder if I'll feel confident in these little matters by the time my first born is grown and moving out of the house. Some days are just so hard. (Unlike the easy days when I lay around eating bon bons with my angelic children, right?)
I feel this way everyday...then I remember that kids are intelligent, independent creatures who think for themselves and MAKING them do anything they don't want to do is as challenging as making adults do something they don't want to do. But (most) adults have the impulse control and sophistication to realize when they *should* do something when it's for their own good. It gives me *a little* peace.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm finding age four to be extremely difficult...I honestly feel like I have a miniature teenaged girl in my house!!!
Yup, still feel like that sometimes. It's usually when you need cooperation the most that they decide to test you.
ReplyDeleteIt should get easier when there are older kids who set a good example, so you're doing a great job training them. It's so labor intensive in the beginning!
I liked what that one author said ... that we need to start messing with thier minds. When Mary flops down on the floor in a tantrum, throw her a towel and thank her for volunteering to clean the floor.
ReplyDeleteMake em think we are crazy. If they think we are crazy .. they will fear us. wooohhaahaahaahaa (evil laugh).
Thanks for this. I frequently feel like I still know nothing about ALL of the above!
ReplyDeleteHa! I am TOTALLY borrowing Chris's tantrum idea!!
ReplyDeleteThough I'm a relative newbie to this parenting thing, I have realized that there's absolutely no way to MAKE Theo do anything. My best strategy is to somehow trick him into thinking it's something HE wants to do, rather than what I want. That still works fairly well at the moment, but I have no doubt that he will soon figure out my tricks...and then I'm ruined. :-)
Katherine - I remember when Allen was 2 and Aaron 5 months feeling completely puzzled at how a woman at my church had her 7-8 children standing perfectly when we could barely get through a Mass together in one piece. She said she'd rather have her 7+ kids than go back to having only 2. Some things truly do get easier as they get older, and you see that some things are transient, and others change, and the older ones are able to help... Remember you are at the end of a pregnancy, you are tired, your children are still very young and don't sleep well. All of this will change. You may be missing the forest for the trees. I bet you have a lot of successes, but it's easier to forget those when you are faced with a particularly difficult (day, afternoon, week, month, etc.) The more experience you have, the more confident you will feel. Some children truly do require different approaches than others, I'm sure you know there is no one-size-fits-all approach to successful parenting!
ReplyDeleteBTW - Andrew ran away from me today as we were loading up the car to leave playgroup. That doesn't mean he's an undisciplined boy or that I've failed him. It means he's an engaged 2 year old who wanted to play in the snow. That doesn't mean that at 34 weeks pregnant I'd feel thrilled about him doing that, or not want him to immediately respond when I called him over. That's just not the nature of children that age, though, no matter how well they communicate (IMHO, and again, in my limited experience with having 5 2 year olds so far)
ReplyDeleteYup. Just about every day!
ReplyDeleteWhat? You haven't been raising perfect little children? I thought that was JUST ME! I do think the feelings of inadequacy are worse when you have hordes of family to remind you that child A behaved this way and *should* be behaving that way so I should step up my parenting of the child. Now why didn't I think of that?
ReplyDeleteKatherine, these are definitely hard days. You're not alone.
Chris is hysterical! LOL Too bad, though, I think little Mary is too smart for that advice.
Katherine if you do manage to figure out how to make the children eat please be sure to share the secret with me!
ReplyDeleteAs for potty training I am convinced no woman ever knows HOW to potty train. I just put Ben in underwear and hope for the best. I have to assume he will either figure it out or get the clue eventually.
Keep the chin up!
Thank you, ladies. Part of the frustration is that children *are* so different. So now I have a 4-y.o. who is basically obedient and sweet during this phase. And that could lead a parent to think she had "figured things out." But I simultaneously have a new 2-year-old and I can't "make" her do anything, which reminds me that I didn't make John do much of anything, he mainly grew up (or grew old enough that discipline works).
ReplyDeleteYesterday I was pondering if I need to adjust my expectations of a two-year-old. For example, I mostly am very calm now about infant behavior: they cry a lot (especially mine for the first three months), they spit up and make me change shirts five times a day, they wake up every 90 minutes for 18 months to nurse: to me, that is all normal and it would no longer occur to me that I could change it. So I just do the mothering and it's okay. So maybe I need to think of two-year-olds as just DOING these things that they do, like the normal response to my calling is to run away. It doesn't mean I should fail to discipline the action because that is the beginning of learning, but that I should be calm about it and expect that the discipline won't start to take effect for about a year. Maybe I need a major attitude adjustment.
I have recently decided that I won't actually get any satisfaction from being a parent until, God willing, I get to Heaven. Yeah, there are those little moments along the way, but it is so easy to get caught in the trenches of all the things they won't do or do wrong at this age. I try to focus on the bigger picture and know that in the grand scheme of things I am raising great kids. And just think, all this earthly refining fire has GOT to count for something later!!
ReplyDeleteIf all else fails there is also the satisfaction that we can look forward to when our children grow up and they have children of thier own ... we as grandparents get to sit back and watch them struggle. :-)
ReplyDeleteSweet justice here on earth!
Revenge is a dish best served cold!
ReplyDeleteHave not figured it out yet. My little one somehow potty trained herself. But the rest - I am totally clueless
ReplyDeleteOh Katherine, I just had one of these days where I realized my almost eight months of parenting means nothing. I don't know how to do anything. So, no you are not alone, and I might borrow Chris' idea!
ReplyDelete