SPARE THE ROAD AND SPOIL THE CHILD?????

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 & 4

I know many parents have never spanked their children and do not believe in spanking children at all.

Infertility was difficult, as I have said over and over but raising a child, especially a boy,(I have heard these are harder) is now the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I hope I am not scaring anyone.

My son is at the stage which is termed the ‘terrible two’s,’ where he does not listen and throws tantrums. When he is doing things where he would hurt himself, climbing flipping etc., and I tell him to stop, I find myself sounding like a scratch record, telling him over and over to stop, to the point where I have to resort to physically stopping him or removing him, only to see him return to doing what I just tried to stop him from doing. By this time, I can hear my father’s voice, saying, ‘what is wrong with you parents these days?, you are allowing the child to rule you, you need to let him know who the parent is, meaning that he needs a spanking.’ Not wanting to feel like a total failure at being a parent, I am left with no choice but to give him two slaps. Then, the voices of all those parents who do not believe in spanking seem to chime in immediately thereafter, why are you spanking the child, do you want him taken away from you?

On Sunday, my son wanted to be with his father in the sound room, where he helps to operate the sound on Sundays. It would be difficult for my husband to carry out his duty because our son would be getting into things, as he is at the curious stage. He was so mad, he refused to sit quietly in church, instead he was throwing the program and hymn books on the ground, then he himself ended up on the ground. He was being a distraction so I took him outside. He lost his spine the entire way outside so I had to drag him like a ragged doll. By this time I was flushed with anger and embarrassment, I gave him two slaps. Junior church is usually held for them, but there was none today but he still wanted to go into the room. I went to the room with him where he kept himself occupied with the items used for Junior Church.

In episode two, I was sitting at the back of church with a friend waiting for church to end. We had just left the Junior Church room and he wanted to go back. I tried to stop him because I had no energy left to clean up after he had had his way in the room and that was when he ended up on the ground again. I decided to leave him there to cry out the tantrum. He cried and cried until his face was soaked with tears and mucus was coming for his nose. My friend attempted to pick him up but he did not want to be picked up. After crying for a while, he came towards me and I tried to pick him, he resisted and ended up on the ground again. I had had it, and so I gave him two more slaps. I regret having to do this in front of my friend as my husband and I had made a promise that we would not attempt to discipline him in the presence of other people, but I felt he had asked for it.

He soon calmed down enough that I could pick him up in my arms. At this point I felt like crying, having to see my child fall to pieces like this and worst, in the presence of someone else. I also felt inadequate as here I was unable to calm him and give him what he really needed. He soon completely calmed down and was about to go to sleep, but by this time, church had ended and soon as my husband appeared, I handed him over to him. For the rest of the day, I felt like I had ran a marathon, I could hardly find the strength to cook dinner.

This is the first time he had ever behaved like this at church.

I am very grateful for my son and it goes without saying that I am very much in love with him, but this is a very challenging time. Worst, I am from a background where our parents, especially our Dad, would just have to give us 'the look' and we would fall right back in line, fearing the spanking that would follow if we did not adhere. I wish I could do that to my son and then spanking would not be an issue at all.

I tell you and I can understand why some parents do not believe in spanking children because you can get really angry and hurt them, not really meaning to, especially when they act up in public and cause you embarrassment. This is especially so if you have other things going on in your life which is causing you stress and for mothers especially, we are often victims of our hormones. Little wonder, there is so much news out there, about parents who hurt children. I often wonder how a parent could hurt a child, but having the experience now, I can see why. This is why, when I am going through anything emotional, I try not to spank my son at all and I believe all parents should try not to do this.

Our son cries when his favorite cartoon ends, he cries when he cannot have his way and he cries of course when he is spanked. Many times I actually feel scared that my neighbors might send the Children’s Authorities on me, thinking that all those cries was because we were spanking him, to the point where the other morning I saw a car parked close to my home and a little while after that I saw a lady slowly walking by my house and looking over the fence, I felt really uncomfortable, what if my neighbors had done what I had been thinking? Mind you, my home is being sold by my Landlord, so it could be that this lady had seen the for sale sign and was checking out the property.

If you are a parent reading this, and you do not believe in spanking, please, please, give us some advice on how to discipline our son effectively, without having to spank him. He is our miracle baby and we really do not want to spank him at all, but on the other hand, we love him too much and really do not want to ‘spare the rod and spoil the child.’ I am thinking time outs could work but I do not think he is at the stage where he can understand what this is about, but I will definitely do that when he is older.

You may notice I use the word spank in my post. This is because I strongly believe no one should beat their children as this is child abuse.

Looking forward to your response.

Disciplining our ‘miracle baby’

“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 & 4

During my journey of trying to conceive, I often came across kids that were rude, would not listen to their parents and even hit them back when they try to discipline them. I said to myself on many occasions that no way would I allow any child of mine to do that to me, especially in public.

When we took our son home from the hospital, he was so defenseless, so calm. We were on cloud nine and did not even bother to think that soon things would change, as we will be faced with the challenges of disciplining him. He is now at the age where he is defiant and is throwing tantrums, when you take things from him he throws himself on the ground and how we usually deal with this is to just walk away from him and let him cry it off.

A few weeks ago, he threw a new one and guess what, we were out, we were around people. Apparently someone had taken something from him that did not belong to him and he was upset. I was frightened and all the thoughts I had of not allowing any child of mine to get away with being rude like this in public, went through the window, as I was now the parent in the spotlight being subjected to scrutiny and faced with the challenge of doing the right thing. This child began the worst cry I ever heard coming from a child, while scratching at both myself and his dad, with nails that he would not allow us to cut unless he is asleep.

The situation turned into a nightmare as a male parent who was there, saw what was happening and said his son tried that, and he was only allowed to try it once. The tone he said it in made me flush with embarrassment and a little anger as I thought to myself, ok, what does he want me to do abuse my child and worst of all publicly? I also know disciplining them in public is not the best either, as it causes them embarrassment and might actually make the situation worse. We decided there and then to take him aside and managed to muster up enough courage to give this out of control child a slap and he bawled and scratched for the better. Everyone’s eyes were glued on us and all of them knew that this child was special, our miracle child, and I could see in their stares that they were not impressed at how we were handling the situation. We probably did not seem serious enough about disciplining our son. I decided to lighten up things a bit by declaring that this was a new tantrum, one that he had never done before. I don’t know what I really wanted to achieve from saying that, maybe that we were not prepared for this one.

Upon reaching home, the tantrum was obviously one that he had planned to reserve for when we are out in public, as he never repeated it.

That was a lesson learnt and even though it pains our hearts deeply to have to slap him real hard at times because he does get defiant, we know we have to do it, because we really do not want a repeat of that situation. He has the habit of cowering so much, when we attempt to slap him and that makes it a little difficult as well, because you then begin to feel sorry for him. I remember saying to my husband that this child will get us into trouble if he does that in public because it might seem as if we are abusing him at home. They know how to get to you.

I am told that you cannot be too easy on especially boys because they will test you to the limit and so we have to make the effort daily to keep him in line, knowing that we are doing it purely out of love for him and he will be a better man for it one day so that he too can be effective at disciplining his own children. I also know that the journey to conceiving him was by no means easy and therefore we will not settle for less than a disciplined and well-placed child.

I know some of you who have such miracle babies can identify with us on this, therefore your comments and any advice are welcomed.

Until next time, others of you struggling to have your miracle babies, keep clinging to hope and do take lessons from this.