Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.
Children born to a young man are like sharp arrows in a warrior’s hand
Psalm 127: 3 and 4
“HOPE MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE"
Over my approximately ten years of struggling with infertility, I had enough time to learn from parents who desperately tried to do their best at parenting and as a result of what I saw, I created a blueprint of what I wanted my child to be like, and the parent I want to be, if and when my children did show up.
Now that I am a parent, it turns out that I cannot always use what I learned over those years, I have to totally abandon some things and tweak others, so that they work in my situations, because let’s face it, it really seems as if children are in a conspiracy to have us parents look like we are not doing a good job at parenting at all.
Our son is now developing his own personality and I tell you, some of his tendencies seem to be picked up from other kids in pre-school and they are frightening.
What I have seen though and cannot help but take notice, is that some children behaves very well in public and when strangers scold them, most actually do listen, and when we the parents do this, it takes a much longer time for them to adhere, sometimes leading to us to having to spank. Case in point, the other morning while we were taking our son to the car to leave for school, he was quite persistent that he wanted to sit in his booster seat and have his dad carry him to the car in the seat. He began crying and our neighbor who was nearby, saw what was happening and said to him, “stop, its too early in the morning for this behavior.” He stopped instantly and walked to the car with no further protest. I was grateful to our neighbor for stepping in, as my husband was getting no where close to restraining him, but on the other hand, this is something that I have to get used to, because the first thing that came to my mind was to feel that we are doing a poor job at parenting. Upon careful thought though, (and this has caused me to feel a little bit better), I have come up with the analogy that probably the reason this is so, is because our children are so close to us, we shower them with so much love and attention, (as in our cause, and understandably, due to our long and intense struggles with infertility) and so they see us as only figures of love and therefore does not take us too seriously, when we attempt to scold them.
There are however instances when we do not hold back scolding, for example, when we spank him and he attempts to hit us back, or when we scold him and he retreats to his room and slams the door (can you imagine a three year old doing this, I tell you, we are living in such different times, because as a child, one look from our dad, when we were being less than good, jolted us back in line). For behaviors such as this, we instantly react in no uncertain manner, to let him know that these behaviors will not be tolerated.
All parents out there and others, your comments are welcomed.
