11 Aug 2019

Back to School – Preparing your Child

by | posted in: Routine | 0

As the season of back-to-school approaches, parents should be preparing their children for the new school year.  By working through various scenarios, parents can prepare their children for classroom settings as well as new social interactions. This can start with children as young as pre-school.  Preparation will allow parents to work through the inevitable decisions that will arise at school while the child is still at home, thus limiting the impact of potential conflicts.  Your child will then be equipped to act and react appropriately in the school setting.

First, list the behavioral expectations for your child in the classroom.  Your child should:

  • raise a hand to speak
  • sit quietly
  • listen attentively
  • sit, focus, and concentrate
  • take turns
  • wait in line
  • share
  • get along with others
  • cooperate
  • obey authority

…and much more.

Next, evaluate where your child is currently.  At home:

  • Does your child speak out of turn?
  • Does your child have opportunities to sit and wait quietly in his day now? How does he handle these opportunities?
  • How is your child’s attention span?
  • Can your child focus on a task to bring it to completion?
  • In social settings, does your child share?
  • Is your child cooperative or does she usually insist that she has a better idea?
  • How does your child get along with other children?
  • Is your child obedient?
  • Is he submissive to authority … starting with your parental authority?

How to begin to implement change:

Practice these behavioral expectations daily by having structure and a good routine in your child’s day. That means parents say when activities start, stop, or change. Activities like blanket time, room time, independent play time and more (as taught in www.GrowingFamilies.Life curricula.), provide a good teaching opportunity for all of the above and will move you toward positive results.  Children can learn skills like sitting, focusing, and concentrating, as well as self-control through these activities.  Self-control is vital and foundational because it forms the basis for knowing when and how to speak, use time wisely, and appropriately use the space we’re in.  Every classroom has boundaries and  blanket time is a wonderful tool for teaching boundaries.  Room time gives a child the opportunity to focus and have independent thought through play.  Remember, both room time and blanket time are parent-planned activities, meaning Mom or Dad decide when they start and when they stop … not the child.

Be a student of your child: You should be a student of your future student.  You will learn a lot about your child by observing the child in various settings including:

  • social play settings with other children (siblings and peers)
  • interaction with adults
  • obedience to authorities

Observing your child is an education for parents.  Parents can recognize and encourage strengths in their children and, more importantly, notice weaknesses so those can be developed into strengths.  If you speak life into the child by helping him ‘hear’ what he can be (virtue words), rather than repeatedly hearing his particular vice, he will progress toward positive results more rapidly.

Prepare your children for school by limiting choices and working through conflict during times of limited impact.  Structured activities are limited impact activities.  Your child’s teachers will thank you for your efforts.

Karen Kurtz is a mom of 4 Babywise/Prep for Parenting babies.  All of them slept through the night as prescribed in the Ezzo’s parenting books.  As a Contact Mom, Karen enjoys helping other parents train their babies and children.  Karen and her husband Don, make their home in NE Ohio and all four babies are now young adults.
6 Aug 2019

When Their Wills Are Strong

by | posted in: Training | 0

 

You will never, ever hear me say, “If the child is hungry, he will eat.”  While this may be true of most children, this is rarely true of a strong-willed child.  How do I know?  Because I had one.  Well, I have one, but now he is an adult.  And even as an adult he does not often enjoy eating.  But I digress.

 

When a child is strong-willed, it means he will always have a hill he is willing to die on.  It does not matter if that hill is illogical.  It does not matter if that hill is big or small.  Sometimes, it does not even matter if that hill is potentially harmful, physically or otherwise.  If the child has decided this is where he is making his last stand, then that is where he will plant himself.  He will plant himself like a rooted tree.  He will plant himself like a light post in cement.  He will plant himself and he will not budge one inch until he is good and ready to budge.

 

When my son was 10 months old, he clamped his mouth shut and refused to eat.  He planted himself that day and the next 3-4 years were a constant, daily battle between him and me over eating food.  It did not matter to him that not eating was actually harmful.  He had made up his mind and there was nothing I could say or do that was going to change his mind.

 

Please do not make the mistake of thinking this blog is about eating struggles.  I only use the eating struggle with my son to highlight what it is like to parent a strong-willed child.  You can insert whatever your daily battle with your strong-willed child might be into the scenario I am sharing about my son.

 

Notice that the term strong-willed begins with the adjective strong.  The adjective strong can be positive or negative.  We rarely become concerned with the adjective strong when it is used in the positive.  It is when the adjective strong is used in its negative connotation that our feathers get ruffled.  In the early years of parenting, a strong-willed child’s behavior is usually referring to the negative kind of strong.  So what is a parent to do with that strong will?  What did I do with a ten-month-old that refused to eat?

 

  1. You, the adult, need to decide if this hill is worth dying on. It will always be worth dying on for the child, but is it for you?  Hint:  Not every hill is worth the battle.  In my situation it was worth the battle, because eating is vital to life. That meant my child brought on a battle that I had no choice but to fight.  How about you?  Is there a battle that you need to fight?

 

  1. Once you have decided to take on the fight, it is time to learn how to plant yourself just a deeply as your child did. Find those roots, Mama.  Water them and keep them healthy and strong, for the battle may be long and hard.  My battle was about 3-4 years long.  I had to root myself in prayer, the support of my husband, and advice from like-minded friends.  I am not sure I could have won the battle, much less survived it, without these deep roots.  What roots do you need to plant?

 

  1. Decide where the line is. For me the line was not just keeping my son alive but keeping him healthy too.  When he was one and only willing to eat oatmeal, peanut butter, crackers, and milk; that was where I had to stand.  He was given the food he would eat because that kept him healthy (his pediatrician even said so), and we worked on submissive behavior in other areas of his life.  For those of you who think he would have eaten if I only gave him other foods, I can confidently tell you that he would not have done so.  Believe me, we tried.  Strong-willed children do not work that way.  It is not about the food.  It is about the battle and they will fight to win it every time.  Keep this in mind with your own strong-willed battle.  It is not about the object of the battle.  It is about the battle itself.

 

  1. Keep your eye on the prize. The purpose of fighting a battle with a strong-willed child is not to prove yourself right.  I did not fight my son so that he would eat any food given to him.  I fought the battle because he needed to learn that I was the parent and he was the child.  He needed to learn that eating what you’re given is an act of submission, acceptance, and gratefulness.  He needed to learn that there is value in eating and there is value in eating foods that you do not want to eat.  If you are only trying to prove yourself correct in your fight with your strong-willed child, you have already lost.  It is not about you being right and him being wrong.  It is about him being willing to submit to your parental authority.  I know, I just said that dreaded “s” word.  It is not an ugly word.  It is a word that brings order to a child’s life and to the family.  It is a word that allows your child to one day be a productive, functioning member of society that plays well with others.  It is a word that shows honor to others.  What behaviors does your child struggle with that you need to help him submit to your authority?

 

Parenting a strong-will child takes work.  It takes guts.  It takes tears.  It takes long days.  It takes even longer nights. While I would never want to relive the eating battle with my toddler son, I treasure the memory of the day he sat at the dinner table and ate what he was given.  My joy is not because he ate the food.  It is because he was willing to eat the food.  It may seem that I won the battle, but in reality he won the battle.  He won the battle to surrender his strong will in the negative sense, and embraced his strong will in the positive sense.  It is about the battle, the battle to be strong for good.

 

Tricia McDonald is the wife of SGM(ret) McDonald and four adult children.  She is learning to adjust to civilian life now that her husband has retired.  She is also learning to adjust to life without homeschooling, as all of her children have graduated.  Tricia volunteers her time teaching U.S. History to local homeschooled high schoolers, and coordinating music for a local semi-professional youth theatre.  She enjoys blogging from time and time and is trying to figure out what she should be when she grows up.  She wants to encourage all the young moms to hang in there and enjoy the moments, as they will pass far more quickly than you ever thought possible.

 

29 Jul 2019

Who’s to Blame?

by | posted in: Community, Mentoring | 0

 

Are parents responsible if their adult child is wayward?  Who’s to blame, the parents or the child?

We must stay mindful that two forces are at work in the life of our children: the manifestation of parental responsibility to have sufficiently trained, and the volition of the child, once informed about life’s obligations.

What would cause a child to reject the values taught to him early in life? There are many answers to that question, but at the top of the list should be something the Bible calls depravity (Isaiah 53:6). Man knows what is right, but still he chooses to go his own way. Other reasons for the abandonment of values include:

  • fear (2 Timothy 1:7)
  • loneliness (2 Timothy 4:16)
  • greed (1 Timothy 6:9-10)
  • immorality (1 Timothy 4:12 and 2 Timothy 6:9-10)
  • legalism (1 Timothy 4:3-4)
  • disillusionment that Christianity does not deliver what was promised (1 Timothy 6:5-10)

 

The apostle Paul saw many people defecting from the faith and listed the above as some of the reasons why people drift away from God. Some may be the same reasons adult children drift away from their parents. Any relational problem a parent may face may be the result of sin on the part of the child, community, the parent, the world we live in, or a combination of all four.

We live in a day marked by a victimization epidemic. The truth is, in most people-to-people situations, we are both victim and agent. Some children are victims of poor parental choices. Yet it is equally true that they are themselves agents of sinful choices as well. Our perspective would have both parent and child taking responsibility for their own actions to whatever degree responsibility applies. Somehow, in the confluence of activity of parent and child, each will have responsibility for their own actions, in some ways responsible for the life of the other, yet each will stand before God unable to shift the blame of sin to the other.

The defining factor of our children’s success (spiritual, moral, or material) is not whether they have the resources provided by good parents, but whether they were given the gift of resourcefulness. Our job as parents is not to make our child this or that, good or bad, wise or foolish, successful or a wasteful. The only things parents can do is give their children the tools that will help them make good, honorable, and successful decisions in and for their lives. We can equip our children with the source of wisdom, be an example of wisdom, encourage them in wisdom, point them to wisdom, but in the end, we cannot make them choose wisdom. Yet, we still give this warning. It will be to the parent’s shame if the child never knew the way of wisdom.

 

 

*taken from Growing Families International. Used with permission.

 

23 Jul 2019

Punishment versus Correction

by | posted in: Child Training, Training | 0

Are punishment and correction the same thing? If not, what’s the difference? Let’s start by defining the terms: Punishment is the fitting retribution of an offense. In child training, it serves a moral purpose; it communicates to children a value of good and evil by the weight of punishment ascribed to each wrongful act. The administration of punishment is dependent upon and inseparably linked to the proper administration of authority. That means the right of punishment belongs only to those clothed with authority and who exercise such in submission to the wisdom of Scripture. Pain, loss, or restraint willfully inflicted on another person outside of the rightful administration of authority is aggression or revenge, but it is not punishment.

Punishment is one element of correction, but not all correction is tied to punishment. Correction is the act of bringing back from error or unacceptable deviation from the standard. The reason we correct our children is basic–it helps them learn. But in order to maximize the learning side of correction, we need to understand two governing principles.

 

The first one is this: The type of correction depends on the presence or absence of malicious intent. Parents should ask, “Was my child’s wrong action accidental or intentional? Did he know what he was doing was wrong?” The answers to those questions will help determine which type of correction will best serve the offense. This is the dividing line: separating the unintentional from the intentional.

 

The second rule of correction is this: The punishment/consequences must fit the crime. Punishment sets a value on behavior. That is why over-punishing or under-punishing is dangerous; both send the wrong message. When any society establishes a baseline for punishment, it is placing a value on the seriousness of a wrongful act. Punishment places a value on the action.

 

In parenting, a child’s sense of justice is established through punishment, not rewards. For example, if a child hits and bruises his sister with a plastic bat, and then is punished by receiving five minutes in the timeout chair, the parent established in the mind of the child that hurting other people is not a serious infraction. Over-punishments goes to the other extreme. When a parent says, “You left your light on after leaving your room and for that, you can’t have any friends over for a month,” that can easily be considered over-punishing. This fosters exasperation and more conflict.

Stay mindful of these two principles. Before an offense can be dealt with most effectively, the parent needs to ask two questions: “Was what my child did the result of an accident or was it malicious?” “Was it childishness or foolishness?” Second, “What punishment would fit the wrong and convey the right value message?

 

Excerpt taken from Growing Kids God’s Way by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo.

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