“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.
