September 18, 2011
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Our journey with a strong willed child
I have had several friends ask me recently if I had any advice to share on raising strong willed children. I don’t have much advice, really. But maybe I can share the story of my journey and perhaps it will help some of you parents out there with strong willed children of your own! Here is what I shared with a friend today:
With Caleb, we knew we were in trouble before he was born…he was very strong and very active. At just 23 weeks pregnant, he kicked so hard that he tore the muscle along one side of my belly…this shocked even the midwives! But you don’t know that you’re child is disobeying until they can move around at will. He started crawling at 4months…the ‘honeymoon’ was over! He would crawl up to an outlet and play with it. I would pull him away and say ‘no’. He set his face, pushed out the lip and crawled right back. This amazed me! We are born with a sin nature! We began disciplining right then, at just four months. We didn’t want to use the rod, but we found discipline ineffective without it. We purchased a very small, slender rod from the craft section of Wal-Mart and began giving him gentle swats on his upper thigh. This was not hard enough to make him cry, but just enough to sting and make him pause. I had read a book called “To Train up a Child” before he was born. It advocates training a child rather than simply disciplining. Training a child is teaching them to do what is right. Discipline is giving negative consequences when they disobey. If you lovingly train, the book reasons, you will spend less and less time in the future on spankings and discipline. We got to try it out when he crawled all the way up the stairs at just four months. This was a matter that HAD to be dealt with! We started swatting each time he tried to climb the stairs. We left a rod in the crack of the stairs and, within just a few days, he had learned to not go up them at all. We never had to have a baby gate! In this way, we were able to work on training him to do the right thing before he was old enough to reason with.
There were months it felt like our whole days and weeks were filled with training and disciplining! But by the time he reached two, we had already dealt with the ‘terrible twos’ and he was greatly improved. One note about ‘To Train up a Child’: though I love it and agree with much of it, I find that with strong willed chilren, you cannot be too severe. This will only make them rebell more. I tried to put too many rules on Caleb all at once…he reacted with anger and fierce tantrums (ie holding his breath till he went limp, banging his head on the tile till he bled, etc) In “The Strong Willed Child” (James Dobson) He says to “pick your battles carefully, win decisively”. I learned to evaluate whether this was something that was really ‘wrong’ or if it was just inconvenient for me. I asked myself if he could injure himself or others or if it was disrespectful of others. I tried to say ‘yes’ more often and to say ‘no’ only when necessary (and then be willing to stick to my guns on the issue) A lot of discipline with boys centers around them being too active, too rough, too loud and too messy. These are just part of a boy’s nature! I learned to give him grace, to let him be rambunxious when it was appropriate. This helped to relieve the more severe tantrums, which came as a result of his frustration over me being too strict. And it also let him know that when I said ‘no’, I meant it and would not back down (another EXCELLENT book on this topic is “Grace Based Parenting”, by Ted Kimmel) More than anything, it is important to realize that how your children relate to you, is how they will learn to relate to God. We are to point them to God through our discipline and training. If you can only read one book, read “Don’t make me count to Three” (Ginger Plowman). She talks about getting to the heart of the issue….instead of saying “Don’t hit your sister” think about why it is wrong…you will then say “Are you being kind to one another?” This deals with the heart, not just the outward behavior. We use scripture verses to back up our training these days. “Be kind to one another” “Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth” etc.
Although Caleb improved dramatically with careful training, discipline, and a lot of grace, we couldn’t expect him to have a change of heart unless he had Christ in his heart. When we disciplined he would scream in anger, he NEVER cried! I spent many nights on my knees, praying…tears streaming down my face, begging God to soften his hard heart, to call him by name. Slowly, we began to see a change. He started screaming less. And then, he started to be more upset about the fact that we were displeased with his behaviour than about the spanking he knew was coming. He began to hug us back when we hugged him after a spanking. One miraculous day, out of the blue, he asked where God lived. We told him he lived in heaven. He asked if he could go and see God.:) As if it were a trip to Granny’s house! We explained that you had to be without sin to go to heaven…but that we all have sinned. We told him that we could never be sinless….we said that Mommy and Daddy had asked Jesus to pay for our sins and to make us clean, so we could go to heaven and be with him. And then, he prayed for Jesus to come and clean his heart and pay for his sins too, so he could go to heaven with Mommy and Daddy and see God! Wow! He had just had his third birthday and I was skeptical that he could really understand what he was doing. But we decided to look for fruit, and for a change of heart to see if this was genuine. At first, his behaviour got worse…I think he may have been under a spiritual attack. We began praying harder. This battle for the heart is best fought on our knees. In just a few months, we saw dramatic changes. A boy who had been so terribly hardhearted, became softer. He had never let us hug him much, not even when he was only a few months old. But suddenly, his heart was sweet and soft, and he was even initiating hugs. He started sharing toys and having compassion towards others. A shocking change from the stubborn strong willed child we had come to know. It is sixteen months since he prayed to accept Christ and we now believe that his decision was real. We see the fruit of his decision. In the end, this is the only ‘cure’ for the strong willed child. It doesn’t mean we don’t still struggle, but we have seen great improvement and we see in him a heart that longs to do what is right. And that, my sweet friend, is a miracle!