Yesterday I received some much-needed encouragement from my daughter. Without being asked, she picked up all her blocks and put them away while singing up the "clean up song" (keen bup! keen bup!) and then asked for help to get her coloring book and crayons down. Then she sat down for 5 whole minutes and colored very happily, and cleaned up her crayons with a happy heart when I asked her to.
And just now I heard a giant CLUNK and looked up to see that she had just put her milk cup in the sink! Without being asked!
This doesn't happen every day, but it's happening more and more. Yesterday I felt like God gave me her peaceful behavior as His way of saying "Keep it up, it's not in vain."
I get a lot of criticism, especially from one neighbor, about how strict we are. One day we wouldn't let Joelle eat any bread when she refused to eat her noodles and vegetables and I'm pretty sure the woman thought I was the devil. But we patiently explained that we do not always have the money to make her something else if she doesn't like what we put before her. "Children will eat when they are hungry!" She gave me a death stare and said "We don't do that here." I wanted to say "I can tell. All your children are candy-eating, toy-stealing, fit-throwing hellions." But I restrained myself.
It's easy for me to question myself and wonder if what I'm doing is truly the best for our daughter, but when I have days like yesterday I become more determined than ever that the time-outs, spankings and supervised play times are not for her good, they are for her best.
Joelle knows how to play with toys, they are not broken and destroyed. She can sit with one toy for sometimes up to ten minutes because we don't let her drag out every toy at once willy-nilly. Self-control and attention-span training can be started now!
We've started enforcing a 30 minute quiet time on the carpet each morning where she can only look at her books so Mommy and Daddy can finished their quiet times uninterrupted. We don't let her leave the table until every one is done eating so that Mommy and Daddy can eat in peace without constantly going to check on what mischief she is getting into. In the afternoon she has "sofa time" with a quiet toy, training her to someday be able to entertain herself for 30 minutes so that on Sundays Mommy and Daddy can both participate in worship and fellowship . People think this is too much to expect from an almost-two year old, but what they really mean is that's too much to ask of a parent to teach a two year old.
These are some things that we have succeeded at, but I am certain our failures can sometimes outweigh these successes. I know that my first responsibility to my daughter is to love and respect her father, and about once a day I fail to do that right in front of her (sometimes very loudly). I also tend to care less about her heart attitude, and more about her behavior. It's so easy to get frustrated at her childishness (spilling milk, dropping dishes and other things she can't help because of her developmental level). But I hope those things will change as I pursue becoming a more gentle, gracious and patient mother.
I write this to remind myself to be encouraged, but also as an encouragement to the other mommies who have had it "up to here" (wherever that is...). These days are not training her behavior. They are teaching her the skills she will need to learn for the rest of her life: self control, patience, imagination, to have a longer attention span, and to be "happy with what ya got".
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Our most recent "family purchase": a bike with a kid's seat. We took out the belt from her old car seat and put it on her bike seat! haha. Now a "quick trip to the market" is much quicker, and I have a way to exercise with Joelle in tow.
This just cracks me up. Scott stretches each time before he goes to play basketball, and Joelle likes to use him as a jungle gym!
One morning during her "Quiet Time" on the carpet- I just loved the look of her hair falling in her face and her books scattered all around!
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