I think there is one concept that â if adopted as fact by us mommies â will make parenting a lot easier. And that is this. Children donât really know whatâs best for them. Someone somewhere started a rumor that, even from babies, we know whatâs best for us. This rumor was based on the fact that, even from babies, we know what we want. Kids know what they want and they know what they think they donât want. They have opinions â thank goodness for that â and they want you to know them. This happens long before they can talk.
The goal is to shower our children with love, fun and attention while doing what is ultimately best for them. This doesnât mean no chocolate, missed naps or late bedtimes ever. It also doesnât mean we donât listen to their opinions, desires and preferences. It does mean, however, that we know the buck stops with us and that itâs our job as parents to think long-term. We want to Start out how we can Hold Out and do whatâs best for them. This will not always necessarily be whatâs best to them. Some areas where this plays out.
(1) Sleeping habits. From an early age babies will fight sleep if we donât orient them in the right direction. Iâve written on the Importance of Sleep and boy, is it important. I use Babywise but there are probably a thousand other methods of training our little ones to sleep and to sleep well.  But there will come a time when your baby will just fight sleep. Then â long before they are old enough to drop naps â theyâll try to stop napping. Then at bedtime, theyâll stall and talk and linger and ask for water and do any manner of things to postpone bedtime. Why? Because they donât want to sleep. Do they understand that sleep is good? No. Do they understand how desperately weâd like to have naptime and an 8pm bedtime? No. They are too young and immature (not in the negative sense, but in the sense that they are not yet mature) to understand how important it is for their brain, mood and development to sleep. Sleep is an area early on a mother will have to know deep inside that she does what she does for their best interest and when they try to convince her otherwise â not to relent.
(2) Eating. Dinnertime can be a battlefield in some houses. You make dinner, they donât want it. You bake some fish sticks, they decide they want banana. You give them banana, they throw it on the floor. Or, they want to stuff themselves with candy and chocolate and skip dinner. Shoot, sometimes I want to stuff myself with french fries and Reeseâs and skip dinner. Even from birth some newborns just want to snack a minute here or two and stop. Then 30 minutes later do it again. Some mothers donât mind this, but this would have sent me to the insane asylum in 3 weeks. Then comes puree hell when you spend time roasting pumpkins and squash and give it a dash of cinnamon and pray like crazy theyâll eat it. You walk sombrely to the high chair with your plastic cup and spoon and hope the baby will eat the veggies. When theyâre older they may start refusing to eat at all if you let them. Or, if they donât love it theyâll take a bite or two and beg to get down. This is when a mother learns to balance cooking things that taste good with things that are healthy, and where you donât become a short order cook whipping up whatever they request on a whim. Throw out the circus act. Make food, let them eat it. If they donât, let them wait until the next meal. This way you can ferret out their actual preferences vs their attempts to use meal time to assert their growing independence.
(3) Health, safety and hygiene practices. Toddlers donât innately know that walking into the road is bad. Children donât understand that playing with knives is dangerous. Some kids would never take a bath if you didnât make them and all out refuse to let a toothbrush in their mouths. Kids have opinions and desires â which weâve agreed is a good thing â but these opinions and desires must be tempered by your wisdom and care. When they climb onto the top of the couch and look as if theyâre going to superman dive on to the tile below, we mothers readily step in to save the day. Why? Because we know they donât understand. They will think they donât need to take their vitamins, that doing a cart-wheel down the slide is safe, and that shampoo is just for dogs, but we mothers know better. And this is the time when we enforce certain things on our children not out of an attempt to dominate, but out of an attempt to teach them the things that come naturally to us, but that they donât yet know.
(4) Instant gratification vs delayed gratification situations. One thing that children are not good at â and many adults as well if weâre honest â is delaying gratification. Kids want to play first and do homework later⌠if they feel like it. They want to buy aisle 3 of Toys âR Us on your credit card and then work it off dusting their bookshelf once a month. Working for something and getting rewarded later is difficult. Letâs face it, itâs difficult for us grown-ups too. But, I assure you, it is a quality that will pay your children dividends for the rest of their life if you work this right. You will teach patience, hard work, saving, prioritizing time, etc. Of course theyâll fight it. That is to be expected. But, the more you more delayed gratification for them and the more you implement things into your parenting that build this level of self-control in children the more natural it will become for them. A friend of mine said she taught her kids the importance of Finishing what you Start. Now, at nearly 10, her daughter finishes one task before moving to the next, cleans up one area before dirtying the next, etc. She has a certain built-in level of self-control that will surely serve her well later. Your kids will not naturally want to delay any type of gratification, but it doesnât mean it isnât good for them.
We parents have an aerial view. I heard an illustration one time that we are like people in a car driving down the road. We see whatâs ahead of us, and not even that far ahead. God is like the pilot in the helicopter who has an aerial view. He sees the accident ahead, the brush fire on the right, and the step cliff on the left. If we follow His advice He can lead us through to safety. We parents are in a similarly privileged position. We can see how our little onesâ choices â if left unguided â will drive them right off a cliff, into a brick wall, or get them stuck in a traffic jam. This is where we have to make decisions based on their best interests, not the things that interest them best.
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my girl is at a stage of kindertude. she thinks she knows what she wants and what is right, whether to take meds and how much or what kind or what time to sleep, types of books to read, you name it, she has an opinion for it. I am simply going bonkers!
Ha. Mine too and I hope I survive it!