There are things you learn along the way in parenting… you think “I wish someone had told me that”, but if someone HAD told you, you might not have been able to apply it until you had walked down the road a ways. I’m a big believer in having high expectations. In any situation in which one is in a position of managing a person or group of people, you generally will get what you expect. In conducting a choir, if you don’t expect them to all cut off at the same time, they won’t. If you expect them to, and demand they do, they will. So, of course I applied this to parenting and have been really frustrated. This frustration leads to anger and makes for some long days around here.

I have mentioned that Jack enjoys all his schoolwork except handwriting, and for a while I was pushing him to do at least 2 pages a day in his book, and we were getting bogged down in procrastination, goofing off, frustration, etc. Then I realized, who really cares how much he does each day? If he writes a couple of words, fine, it really doesn’t matter. We’re working steadily and he WILL learn to write quite well in the end. There’s no sense getting all frustrated when he’s not meeting some arbitrary expectation of mine each day. I maintain the long term expectation that he will learn to write successfully and legibly. My short term expectations are relatively low: a little bit each day, encouraging him to do his best.

Epiphany!

The same thing applies to all that stuff I’ve been getting so wound up about.

They fight. Some sets of siblings are worse than others, but it’s just a fact of life. I can’t MAKE Jack and David stop fighting. I can separate them if it gets too bad. I can encourage them, and help them to learn to manage conflict, and eventually, years from now, they’ll stop. My long term expectations are high, but my short term expectations need to be pretty low, for my own sanity. I’m not going to say just the right thing or apply just the right discipline and expect any kind of short term results. In the end it doesn’t matter. They fight. One day they’ll stop. Getting upset because they fight is foolish.

They scream. Jack because he has a very short temper and everything he feels comes straight out his mouth, and David because he’s two. They’ll learn not to scream. David will get older and learn more effective ways to communicate with encouragement. Jack will, Lord willing, learn to manage his anger better. I don’t have to go along for the ride on his little emotional rollercoaster. That just makes it worse (obviously… duh).

Etc…….

I’ve been focusing WAY too much on relentlessly pushing and prodding them into correct behavior, and far too little on just loving on them and enjoying them.

It’s amazing how letting go of those short term expectations has caused my own anger problem to evaporate. I’m not letting go of the consequences for disobedience. I obviously expect them to be respectful and obedient, I’m just not all that surprised when they aren’t.

“Your sins will always find you out.”

I don’t remember when my mother first said this to me, but I remember doubting whether it was true. How would anyone know what I did if no one saw it? I believed I could cover up the mistake and no one would be the wiser. It never worked! I couldn’t figure out how she always knew when I’d done something wrong! As I got older, I just gave up trying, for the most part. I remember a time (I was maybe 10 years old) when I was horsing around near the piano and broke one of her little wooden angels she had bought in Germany. There was no one around, so I put the angel back up on the piano, towards the back so it would be less noticeable and went on about my business. There was no reason to tell that I had broken something, right? It might be weeks before anyone noticed, and then how could they pin it on me? The rest of the day, the phrase echoed around in my mind: Your SINS will ALWAYS find you out! Your SINS will ALWAYS find you out! Finally, I just had to go tell her, because I knew she would find out anyway.

I appreciate the fact that there was no punishment for wrong-doing as I was growing up without the reminder that it’s always better to just be honest and straightforward when you make mistakes. This advice is as applicable in the playroom as it is in the boardroom.

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2. I started out taking all the advice about developing a bedtime/naptime routine, and just have gotten away from doing anything at all and found that it doesn’t make any difference. I now try never to get in the habit of doing anything at bedtime or nap time. Maybe some kids need routine, and maybe Jack’s just not one of them, but even with Emily, who I have during the day – I put them down, say “night night” and leave the room. No problem.

3. When there is crying, which happens every couple of months, unless it is screaming because something is wrong, I do not go in Jack’s room. If I think something might be wrong, I feel for a diaper leak, comfort him for a minute and do not go back in again. When Jack started testing the sleep thing at about 15 months (“hey, maybe I don’t have to listen to Mommy after all. Maybe I don’t have to go to bed when she says or stay in my bed all night.”) because he had been such a good sleeper, I thought something surely is wrong with him. By the time I finally realized he was just testing, I had made the problem worse by going in several times and even laying down in his room on the couch trying to help him understand it was night-night time.

4. I try to put Jack down for a nap with a full tummy.

5. Crying it out works. Every person I’ve ever known that did it says so.

6. I try and go into Jack’s room as quickly as possible when he does wake up. (He’s not one of those kids who will play in their crib for a while before really wanting to get up) This way, when he does cry at 5am because he thinks it’s time to get up, it’s relatively short because after getting no response and knowing that crying is not going to accomplish anything, he goes back to sleep. This also is keeping him from trying to climb out of his crib, which I’m sure he could do if he really wanted to.

7. Using a cloth diaper (the thin kind) to put over Jack’s face as he was trying to go to sleep worked great. I guess this is pretty common- for some kids just a light breathable cloth over their face as they’re fussing, trying to get to sleep is just what they need to “turn the lights out”. Cloth diapers make perfect “loveys” as well. Jack always asks for his “night-night” when he’s getting into bed.

What are some sleep tips that have worked for you? I’m particularly interested in what will work as Jack transitions out of the crib into a big boy bed some time in the next year.

Find more helpful hints at “Works for me Wednesday” over at Rocks in my Dryer.