A friend of mine has a rare opportunity to visit his birth Mom for the first time in his life. But it ain’t cheap. That’s where you and PayPal come in handy. You can read the story here.
If this wasn’t coming about all of a sudden for him, and right smack dab in the middle of the holidays, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. I doubt he’d even have posted about it. Under normal circumstances even ministry people can save money and cut expenses to get something they want.
But, the circumstances are what they are. And I encourage you to help if you are willing.
We have a time-tested routine for discipline in our household. First we administer the consequences, this is typically a timeout, and then we follow this pattern:
1. We get down at eye level with our little one.
2. We ask her to explain what she thinks earned her a timeout.
3. We praise her when she gets it right. If she gets it wrong, we explain it to her in as simple a way as possible what her real offense was.
4. We have her repeat back what she just heard.
And then something wonderful happens. At this point she usually relaxes visibly and starts grinning or smiling. I’m not being sarcastic here, she really does. She knows what is coming next. She knows step #5, and it is this.
5. We give her a deep, reassuring hug and kiss and whisper softly into her ear that we love her so much.
We want her to know without question that our love for her is not contingent on her good behavior.I think I’ve written that down somewhere. It has been my hope that this will also help her realize that being put in timeout is not something I do because I want to. That it is not something I do because I am angry or mean or in a foul mood. That it has more to do with her than it does me.
Apparently I have been naive.
Something interesting happened this weekend, Sydney blamed me for her timeout! She didn’t use those words exactly, but I know that’s what she meant. I had to sit down and explain consequences to her.
Disciplining a child in a consistent and patient manner is a real challenge sometimes. Mostly because I’m selfish and I just want my way immediately. But our girls are worth the time it takes and Dewdette and I try and keep each other accountable.
On Sunday, our younger daughter Savannah was thoroughly inconsolable. Now, I’d like to think that Dewdette and I are analytical people. I write software and she is a research associate for a bio-tech company. I do my best to eliminate virtual problems (bugs!). She does her best to eliminate physical problems (bugs!). Surely, SURELY between the two of us we should be able to properly troubleshoot a fussy 1 year old, right? I mean, it’s not like she’s our first kid. We’ve been through this before!
It wouldn’t be so bad except our weekend was packed with stuff to do. Both of us were running ever-which-way. The last thing we needed was a fussy one year old tugging on our pant legs all day long. Aside from being distracting, we wanted her to be happy! We knew something was wrong and we wanted to solve it for her.
In the latest video I cover all the stuff we tried, and what finally worked. I totally broke format and just talked into the camera. I hope you don’t mind.
