A Parenting Mindset, Part Two: Finding Another Way

Part One Recap: I don't want to spank, Time-Outs a la SuperNanny make me cringe, and I distinctly remember from my own childhood that losing a toy, a privilege, a special outing, or personal property was a supremely ineffective deterrent in the long run.  It usually just made me determined not to get caught the next time.

So what else is there?

There's the "Now, Jenny, you need to use your indoor voice", as the child is standing in her chair in a crowded restaurant throwing a tantrum. The siblings chasing each other through a store and knocking over a display, heedless of Mother's pleas that they stop behaving like wild animals.  The punk on the street corner giving his momma lip, blowing off his school work, and generally giving teenagers a bad name.

Don't lie, we've all seen it and judged. Said to ourselves, "That child is going to grow up to be more trouble than she's worth." or "His momma must not have whopped his butt often enough when he was a youngun'." I'm just as guilty as the next person. And while I now appreciate the potential situations from a new viewpoint, I'm still going to ask for a new seat if there is a screeching toddler at the next table.

So I don't want that either.

It seemed, as I began to read and look, that there really were only those two options.  For the sake of having labels to use, punitive parenting styles and permissive parenting styles.  There's "obey or else" parenting at one extreme, overwhelmed or just uninvolved parents at the other, and a whole host of self-proclaimed parenting experts somewhere in between.  But in the end they all come down to the adversarial paradigm with which our culture approaches child-rearing, either by upholding that constant battle as "the way it has to be", or by rejecting even the language of control for fear of impinging on another's free will.

Well, then.

Par for the course, I decided that since I didn't like either of the two options available to me, I was going to keep looking until I found something better. (Remind me to tell you folks about HypnoBabies sometime.) The Attachment Parenting boards I had already found didn't seem to be much help, since so many of the mamas seemed to run out of useful advice as their kids got older. I was having trouble finding much on how to use AP-style thinking effectively with toddlers, older children, teens, until I clicked a link in someone's signature and ended up on Arms of Love Family Fellowship and Gentle Christian Mothers.

Mind. Blown. Seriously. I'm going to attempt to explain, but please, check these sites out for yourself.

Arms of Love is a ministry devoted to the explanation and facilitation of Grace-Based Discipline, "a parenting style ... rooted in the New Testament teachings of Grace", and GCM is the associated web community.   The founder, Crystal Lutton, is Senior Pastor of her congregation, and let me tell you, this woman has done her research, both in spiritual sources and in the realms of child psychology and development.

The more I read on both sites, the more I found myself saying "YES!!  That, that right there!"  I also began to find more and more of my underlying ideas about parenting and relationships being called into question.  I knew, for example, that I wanted to keep spanking as a last resort but pretty much expected to "have to" issue a swat here or there to nip disrespect and disobedience in the bud early on.  Grace-Based Discipline uses a number of entirely different tools, some of which I knew, others I didn't, but with an underlying philosophy that children are people too.  As their parents it is our job to a) set them up to succeed by seeing to it that their physical and emotional needs are met, b) provide them with tools for dealing with their problems in an acceptable way, and c) model the use of those tools so that our children see that they really do work.

Quick sidebar: This was my problem with "No hitting!" followed by a swat. It's a logical inconsistency, and children are itty bitty learning machines that will default to actions rather than words. To those who say that spanking doesn't teach children to hit, I say this: It sure taught me to hit. A discussion for another time, but I learned that hitting was okay if you were the one in charge, and I learned it so well that I still have to fight that reflex when something doesn't happen the way I think it should.

Now, as I read more about GBD and what it was NOT (time-outs, spanking, shaming, etc), the question occurred as it always does.  "This sounds really great, but what does it look like in practical application?"

It's a lot a lot a LOT of work.

"But parenting IS work!" I hear you thinking. Yup. But some ways are more proactive than others, and GBD is a wear your sneakers, eat your wheaties, and prepare to get messy sort of parenting.

It's recognizing that a very articulate three year old is still a baby in many many ways, and not expecting her to behave 24/7 like the miniature adult she seems to be sometimes.

It's saying "You're frustrated because brother took your toy. You may be frustrated, but you may not hit." and removing the child to a place where he or she can play with a bit more supervision. Reverse to brother: "I know it's annoying when sister keeps poking you with her toy. It's fine to be annoyed, but it's not okay to take her toy. Next time call for mama, and I will help.", and removing sister to a place where she can play without disturbing brother.

It is lovingly returning a potty-training child to diapers after the second accident of the day, without making any sort of "What a naughty boy! Only babies potty in their pants!" sort of comments. Then you take a look at what the kid's eaten, their stress level, if something has changed recently, if they might be getting sick, etc, and see if there is a hurdle or two you can remove for them tomorrow.

It is being prepared to physically step in a LOT when they are small and make your instructions come to pass. Gently and with love, but make it happen, and don't give an instruction you aren't prepared to make a reality. The idea being that the subconscious mind will note that every time a parent gives an instruction, it does eventually happen, and in fact it may be physically impossible not to comply. As one poster on GCM put it, it's kind of like Jonah going to Ninevah. He can go on his own, or he can go in the belly of the fish, but he is gonna go!

It is protecting children from natural consequences until they are developmentally able to process those consequences and learn from them. A toddler can be scooped up or taken by the hand to stop them running on the wet sidewalk. A seven year old can skid out, get a skinned knee, and let the natural consequence teach the lesson that listening to Mama's words did not.

Obviously there is a lot more to it than this, much more than I could ever summarize in one blog post. Of particular interest to me were Crystal Lutton's articles on spanking, it's history, and how she addresses the "Rod Scriptures" so often referenced by Christian parents and pastors to justify spanking, even present it as something you MUST do in order to assure your children's salvation. (Link is to a topic page, several articles are in the associated drop down... oh just browse the site, you'll get the idea!!) It was the level of research and careful thought that went into those articles went a long way toward convincing me that this woman was onto something, and it was worth my time to keep reading. Grace-Based Discipline has implications reaching into all aspects of parenting, with all ages and ability-levels of children, even into the relationship between Mum & Dad!

The end result is that I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for membership registration on GCM to open up on the 16th. I have found another way, one that makes sense to me and is backed by both Scripture and child development research, and I'm going to run with it. I know that as JJ gets older I will make mistakes, probably slip back into the old ways more often than I will care to admit to later, but right now it's enough for me to know that there IS another way, and that I found it in time to start right from the beginning with my babies.

A Parenting Mindset, Part One; Now What?

You know, I can already hear the groans.

Oh, boy... here we go... another preachy judgmental defensive first-time-mom on the war path...

I hate being preached at, judgmental horse poop makes my teeth hurt, and folks who get defensive when I honestly wasn't intending to attack them just plain confuse me, so I really try not to do any of those things to people.  FTM is accurate, so I'll forgive the eye-rolling.

For now. *wink*

But as my little guy gets bigger and starts to show me a little more personality, the fact that one day he's going to purposely do something I've told him not to do is looming ever nearer on the horizon.  So I've had to put some serious work into the "how will I handle ____" sort of thinking.  I'm thinking about this time next year, this time in 2015, Christmas in 2027, you get the idea.  Obviously, I'm focusing more on the early challenges that are fast approaching, but those later hurdles are in the back of my mind and applicable ideas get tossed that direction once in a while.

Those of you who follow me know that I lean pretty heavily toward following my instincts where my son is concerned.  While I've gone through several manure-loads of anxiety and stress over the past four months, every time I step back, take a breath, and just play it by ear, things improve.  Whether that's JJ's demeanor and behavior or my stress levels and attitude, things get better.  Those instincts led me toward things like co-sleeping (even bed-sharing), baby-wearing, leaving my son intact rather than circumcising, using cloth diapers, and never ever leaving my child to cry alone in his crib.    

As I started to think about the coming years, the "terrible twos", the "NO" and "MINE" stages, the inevitable moments of sassiness, I found that the conflicts between my upbringing and my instincts were leaving me very perplexed.  I was raised in a significantly messed-up household, but for the sake of the current subject, I'll leave out the complexities that growing up with an abusive parent added to my particular stew, and address the parenting I received from my mother.  

While I remember my mother as loving and gentle, even occasionally permissive, she soon found herself resorting to the punitive methods which she often professed to despise from her own childhood.  Time outs, spankings, groundings, loss of a toy or a privilege, loss of a promised outing due to misbehavior, etc.  My mother used to carry a kitchen spatula in her purse, to be used as a spanking instrument on the bare behind of the child who dared act out in public.  We always knew it was there, and let me tell you, for something that never left marks, you could feel that sucker for DAYS.  As we got too big to spank, she still had to control her children, of course, but it became more and more about the special things we were denied when we failed to measure up, and less and less about the talking things out that she tried in our early teens.

To many in the United States, that looks like a fairly reasonable approach to parenting.  It looked that way to me... until I was faced with a child of my own.  Suddenly things took on a very different perspective.  I started to remember being confused by early accusations of lying.  Feeling hurt and angry when a punishment seemed unfair or out of proportion.  Getting into still more trouble for refusing to submit to a spanking, or asking for an explanation of exactly how I had sinned this time.  Obeying rules, not out of desire to do the right thing, but merely to avoid punishment.  The difference between "hitting" and "spanking", between "stealing" and "taking away your _X_ because you did _Y_", between "lying" and "editing for your own good", all began to sound disturbingly like those exercises in semantics adults use when trying to justify their actions to the child who has spotted a flaw in the logic.

It occurred to me... I used to be that child.


I really... REALLY don't want to be that grown up.



Crap.




Okay... now what?




Next time... Part Two; Finding Another Way