There are lots of things about parenting that are hard. Among those are the sleepless nights, nighttime feedings, seeing your child hurt or sick, trying to give that hurt or sick child medication, and not throwing up when that hurt or sick child projectile vomits on you. Then there are the more abstract things like being a good role model, teaching values, and raising a nice child with good hygiene who makes excellent choices. But, while I have only been at this parenting gig for a couple years now, I have to say that discipline is one of the absolute hardest parts about parenting I've encountered yet.
The first difficulty with discipline is determining when, how much, and how often to administer it. I have been adamant that I would not be one of those moms that just says "no" all the time "because I said so." When I say "no" I try to have a good reason and try to explain that in terms she can understand.
And I must give a caveat before I delve any further into my anecdotes. Pumpkin is a wonderful girl. Really, I'm not bragging, but we have been so blessed to have a genuinely sweet hearted and mild mannered child. She does have a touch of stubbornness, however (and I have absolutely no idea where that comes from) and it has lead to some head-butting in our house, as you will see.
The only real discipline issue we have had with Pumpkin is that, occasionally, when she doesn't get her way, she hits the offender (usually me). The hit isn't even so much a hit, as a swat at the air to demonstrate her disgust, which just so happens to occasionally make contact with another person's body. In any event, it's a terrible, bad, frustrating thing that we have been trying to put to a stop. The question is "HOW."
In my former life as an employment defense lawyer I gave seminars on Discipline in the Workplace and the first slide in my presentation always showed that the word "discipline" comes from the word meaning "to teach." In other words, the goal is to instruct, not to punish (although when you have been shamed in public by a face-slap from your two year old, punishment is tempting). With this in mind, it seems counterintuitive to spank (i.e., hit) the child "to teach" her not to hit.
So I've tried all of the non-physical, new age, hands-off approaches to discipline. I've tried to reason with her (if reasoning with a two-year old is even possible); I've explained the consequences of her actions; I've told her hands are for hugging and all that other feel good stuff. Guess what? She still hits. Once she does, she generally gives me a hug and says "no hitting," as if to let me know she "gets it," but the bottom line is she is still hitting. We then went from new age to time out. We would send her to her room for a few minutes until she was ready to apologize. Like before, she would come out, hug me, say "sorry mommy; no hitting" and we would all go about our day. However, the next time she didn't get her way that little hand was back swatting at me.
The perfect example of the ineffectiveness of my discipline was just a couple of weeks ago when we were preparing to leave town for the weekend. Hubby was out gassing and oiling up the car when Pumpkin smacked me for some reason and I sent her to her room and shut the door. She cried dramatically for a moment, but was then silent. I flung the door open and asked her if she was ready to apologize. She said no. I shut the door again. Silence. After counting to 100 I again opened the door to find her standing there with no diaper on and as soon as we locked eyes the child actually urinated on the floor and pointed at it with a devious look on her face (the only time I've ever seen her look devious). I was appalled. I asked her whether she wanted a spanking and she said YES! I popped her little bottom (not hard enough to even phase her) and she just stared me down. I left her in her room, butt naked, standing on the pee-rug and sank against the hallway floor in disbelief and despair. After I collected myself, I opened her door for the third time to find her coloring on the wall. I was about to lose my mind. I angrily told her if she did not listen then we would not be going to Houston. She gave me an "I dare you" look.
That was when I realized how ineffective my discipline was and that discipline requires so much...discipline. Of course we were going to Houston, why did I even say that. I mean, for goodness sake, I wanted to go to Houston. I had been looking forward to our trip for a week. We had people expecting us. We were packed. I didn't mean that we weren't going to Houston, but I blurted it out in a meaningless threat and she saw right through me. If I was really going to carry through with that threat, maybe it would have been effective, but there was no way I was foregoing my trip (and, as seen in above photo, we did go and have a great time). I then remembered back to a few weeks prior when Pumpkin was in a terrible mood while I was trying to get some shopping done and I continued to drag her from store to store treatening that we would not go to the next store if she didn't start to listen. Not only was she probably hoping we would NOT go to the next store, but she seemd to know that I never intended NOT to go to the next store. Why did I even say that? Without the follow through my discipline is a joke.
Speaking of being a joke, I've now found myself doing that "count to 3" thing that I used to HATE seeing mothers do. I start counting and when I say "1", Pumpkin says "no 1." Then "2", "no 2." What is going to happen when I get to 3? Pumpkin doesn't seem too concerned and, quite frankly, I have no clue. How did I become this crazy 3-counting woman with no control over a tiny child? When I said before that we were blessed with a well-behaved child, I should have said damn lucky since I am a complete failure at discipline. Unfortunately, this blog doesn't end with a neatly packaged resolution of this issue because I still haven't found it. Nope, just this morning there I was holding a pull-up in a face off with my pant-less toddler counting to three like some Rainman-esque version of my former self, just kneeling on the floor counting to three over and over again with no point.
I say discipline takes a lot of discipline, but it is parenting in general that does. This seems to be particularly true for parents with big mouths like me. Now, you're probably thinking, oh Somer needs to watch her mouth around Pumpkin because Pumpkin is repeating bad words or something. But that isn't it at all. Instead, what I have to watch, is my talking about Pumpkin in front of Pumpkin. I often underestimate just how smart she is and start lamenting stories about her right in front of her. Well, when she hears me laughing on the phone (long after the fact) about the pee-rug situation, she starts to think it's funny. You can see where that leads.
Then, the other night, Pumpkin was very seriously explaining to me how she didn't like "salad" but she like "lettuce, matos and kumbers" (read: lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers; however, according to Pumpkin these three things combined are NOT salad). I laughed. She shot me the most angry, go straight to heck look I have ever seen and said "don't laugh mama." Boy, did I feel about an inch tall. Why did I laugh? It might have been funny to me, but it wasn't funny to her.
So, the bottom line is that parenting is hard work and before I start administering discipline, I need to work on some of my own. Luckily for me, while she obviously has a few things to learn from me, Pumpkin is also a pretty good teacher.
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