It's kind of funny in this life sometimes. I'll see or hear something and then that's all I seem to hear or see for a while. And it takes over my thinking. Then I think I'll write a blog about it one day.
I watched an incredibly disturbing youtube video which I KNEW I shouldn't have. I couldn't watch it all; it devastated me too much. It showed a mother hurting her child. So I guess that framed my thinking for a bit. Even so, I have seen and heard several discipline related conversations lately.
I smacked my kids; looking back now, I think I smacked too quickly. I never 'beat' my kids but I did smack. I regret the smacks I gave; except those that stopped potential harm - like kids running towards the road etc. I admit I often used that form of discipline because it just seemed easier. I can give you a litany of excuses, but you know what? They're excuses.
The perfect mother would have had a tidy house, home baked treats for the kids and hours of time to spend lovingly coaching their homework after school before feeding them a healthy wonderful tea, reading them stories and popping them into bed full of warm milk and smothered in love and kisses.
I always had a house that looked like a bombsite, unmade beds, shop bought treats, unironed clothes in piles around the house, a houseful of other people's kids as well as my own plus the pets and the half made craft and Lego...and after my husband cooked tea I would change the clocks to get the kids to go to bed early. (well it was really only that one time)
The perfect mother would have fondly gazed upon her children's cherubic faces as she played in the cubby house with them, coached them to slam dunk a basketball (gracefully) and made daisy chains as she sang about Do-Re-Mi.
I usually found my baking trays in the cubby caked with mud and gravel (at least someone was using them) and the basketball deflated along with their bike tyres and the pump has lost the doohicky connector thing again and we had weeds and dirt not daisies in the yard.
The perfect mother would have lovingly chided her children and, if necessary, popped them into a brightly painted naughty chair that felt as good as eating chocolate chip biscuits does, and one lift of her eyebrow would have the children beautifully apologising to her and the sibling they were with.
Mine got sarcastic comments ("yeah that's right, the skipping ropes stay up in the trees, guys, not in the toy crate, well done"), 'The Chair' didn't exist because all the chairs kept mysteriously breaking, and if I could drag one off the others before they got the final barb or shove in, I thought I was doing well. Trying to discreetly raise an eyebrow to discipline while at a friend's house resulted in one child loudly proclaiming "what's wrong mum? What happened to your eye? Have you got a headache?"
So I'm afraid to say I was far from being a perfect mother. Instead, I shouted, smacked, sent to rooms (where notes got pushed out from under the door telling me how "maen" I was), put in time out (accompanied by the loud repetitive chant known as "isittimeyetisitimeyetisittimeyet") and tried all sorts of disciplinary measures. None worked for me.
Many people quote the scripture "spare the rod and spoil the child" - to defend smacking, but you know what? That's not actually in the Bible. Proverbs 13:24 actually says 'Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them' (NIV).
You are of course free to disagree, but here's my take on it. Sparing the rod = hating your children tells me that I need to discipline. The rod referred to is actually a small switch off a tree, not an iron rod or club, as some like to think. So this in no way should be read as "corporal punishment" or similar. . In fact discipline and punishment are, in my book, different things. It's discipline, teaching the correct way. It involves justice grace and mercy, not anger and shame. It's from a place of loving someone enough to want them to be their best and fit in with society. And it is meant to hurt - not necessarily physically, so it has an effect.
There are some verses in Hebrews which talk about discipline as well, and that to be raised without discipline makes you like an illegitimate child (nobody cares enough to be responsible for your upbringing) so it is important. Nobody would deny that. In John 14:18 God tells us He will not leave us as orphans. We are owned and loved.
I just think there are better ways. I said earlier that nothing I tried worked for me. That's kind of true; my problem was having four kids around. Not that I'd change that either, mind you, but I'd finally work out which discipline method worked best for each one - (one only needed a nudge from me whereas the other needed me to have a megaphone and dancing girls to get the same message across) - and then another would pipe up "well that's not fair I lost pocket money for that, they have to lose pocket money too" and then it would be on for young and old. Losing pocket money didn't affect one child in the slightest yet devastated another.
Hindsight is 20/20 but I think if I'd had time to catch my breath, I'd have done things differently. Maybe I just wish that I had and that's clouding my vision, albeit hindsight. I don't know what I wish I'd done, but there had to be a better way for all of us. I didn't do the "catch them doing good" thing often enough. I'm sure they were behaving at some point, but I was probably so thankful for the few seconds of quiet I almost fell asleep instead of saying "wow aren't you playing beautifully?"
Nobody ever said parenting would be easy, but I think maybe we have our rose coloured glasses on before we have our children and assume we will just "know" and be so in tune with our kids and so organised in our homes we won't need to be like other people and naturally don't want to hear their advice. Then we turn into those other people!
Maybe in my fantasy child rearing world my kids did stop nagging me or asking for food or could they take the cat to bed. Maybe I wasn't bone tired and easily frustrated. Maybe my last nerve lasted longer before it got stepped on, maybe I didn't use the TV as a babysitter so much and maybe I developed a fondness for housework. Woah, back up...Scrap that last bit that's insane. I can't define what I wish I'd done instead.
I might look back at my time with my kids and wish I'd done more to help with homework or picked up a health issue earlier. Maybe even developed a talent of theirs more. And you know I see those things, and look at my now grown kids and can see where I didn't follow through on things. And it pains me to see it. As a Christian, though, my biggest regret is that maybe I didn't follow through on the "God stuff" enough. Did I really tell them what they needed to follow Christ? Did I model Him? Did I answer their questions well enough? I believe that has an eternal value, not just an earthly lifetime value, so that hurts even more.
Believe it when people tell you the time goes quickly. It seems like forever when you have toddlers around your feet or you're trudging in the frosty morning from one sports game to another, but overall, it's way too quick. I remember thinking the night before my oldest daughter left home "but i haven't even talked to her yet".... of course I had but in the "busy-ness" of life, I didn't feel like I'd had long deep and meaingfuls with her. (And she's probably very thankful)
I got to wondering what I would have liked to have someone say to me, here it is:
Cherish them, love them, discipline them and give them to God. They were His first.
Make the most of every second you have with them. Housework, facebook, other distractions - pale into insignificance when you look at the fact that you're preparing this wondrous being to become an adult who'll one day also become a parent of a wondrous being.
And just "be". You are enough, so just..... be.
I used this site for reference.
http://www.bibleanswerstand.org/discipline.htm
