the next stage

This face has reached the Terrible Twos 7 months early (or is just warming us up for her version of Terrible Twos!).  :) This face has been testing and trying her parents. This face has discovered throw-yourself-on-the-floor tantrums. This face loves to test her boundaries.  This face hates time-outs and knows she's in trouble, but if you swat her hand or spank her bottom, she looks at you like "you're an idiot and what are you doing?".  This face has caused me to do a lot of "soul searching" and thinking and pondering the last few weeks.

So we reach the fun stage of figuring out discipline. 

Nick and I have always said that we aren't against spanking/swatting. My thing was, that we could not do it out of our own anger or frustration. 

Anyway, we quickly have learned that that is not what Adelyn responds to.  Time-outs, on the other hand, are the key for this kid.  She's usually pretty good at listening to the first warning of "no" and usually I'll distract her with another activity or move the temptation (like the remote or blinds cord) and we move on.  However, lately she has been more "bold" and keeps going for what she isn't supposed to, and she looks at me while she is doing it. She gets a firm "no" as a warning, then if she keeps at it, a swat on the hand and time-out it is. I hold her in "the corner" for 10 seconds and she flips out crying b/c she knows she is in trouble. Then I'll leave her sitting and go back to what I was doing. She usually comes over to me crying, so I'll kneel down, hug her and remind her why she got in trouble and I love her anyway.  I know she's only 15 months and doesn't fully understand what I'm saying, but it's not a bad habit to start now, right? ;)

Proverbs 23:13 "Do not withold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die". This verse makes me laugh. It's like "hello, your kid isn't going to die from a swat on the rear!" I just think it's funny the way it's written....anyway. :)  Again, I think swatting/spanking should not be done out of our anger or frustration with her. What will that teach her but to hit when when she's mad or frustrated?

As I'm typing this, I'm wondering how many people are critiquing and picking apart my discipline method. I get so frustrated with myself that I care so much about what other parents think of our parenting.

I started reading (or should I say started re-reading) Raising Your Children with no Regrets by Katherine Hickem. I've picked it up a dozen times and there's so much in just the preface and first chapter that I keep reading them over again.

One thing she said struck me:

"While mothering is the hardest job we will ever undertake, our Creator designed it to be the most rewarding, most powerful, and closest to grasping God's heart of any relationship with our lives"

She got the "hard" part right :), but it made me realize that this journey of raising kids shouldn't be so terrifying. I'm always wondering if I'm going to screw up my daughter and I'm afraid of what I may be doing wrong, or not doing all together!  

I've realized that discipline is one of those things. I need to trust my instinct as a mom and stop wondering what everyone is doing or thinking. I need to rely on God that we are doing the right thing, or if we aren't, then we can learn from our mistake and grow from that.  I want to be a mom who has no regrets when I'm dropping my daughter off at college. I don't want to walk away thinking "I wish I would have done this or that different".   I know that there are going to be mistakes, what sort of journey would parenthood be if there weren't? Why would I need the Lord's help if I didn't make them as a mom (or just as a person in general)? Mistakes and regrets are two different things. I'm okay with mistakes because we can learn from them, but I don't want regrets.

We want our children to grow up knowing and loving the Lord. We want to see Adelyn become and amazing woman after God's heart. I've "known" this for a long time, but it's just hit home that the example starts with me. Right now.

I kind of went off on a tangent there, but I'm realizing how much I need to rely on God to make it through each minute to be an intentional, loving mom to Adelyn....to be the mom she needs me to be. 

I love my daughter more than words can describe, even when she's being naughty, it's fun to see her learning to test herself and her boundaries, to know she's developing and learning is such a neat thing. She's just amazing to me and I can't get enough of her. Mothering has been such a learning experience for me. God has taught me alot about myself, shown me that I'm a pretty selfish person, shown me how much I need Him and my husband to do this right.

 What a hard and interesting job it is, but now that I'm realizing that I can do it with Nick's support and God's help, I'm not so terrified of it :)