For the last couple days, driven by my intense frustrations about the girls’ nap time, I have taken time out of my busy schedule of cleaning, cooking, remodeling and all the other things I do around the house to instill some discipline into the lives of my daughters. AKA: sitting in their room for upwards of 2 hours in order to not allow them to climb out of their beds until they fall asleep. Actually, I guess a strong argument would be that instilling discipline into the lives of my children should be at the top of my busy schedule!
Anyway, during these times of discipline, I have brought books in with me..you know, to catch up on all my reading. Appropriately, the books that I have brought with me have been parenting books..ones that I either haven’t had time to read or haven’t read in a long time. Yesterday I read through the book “Taming your family zoo” which I thought was very good and balanced..a lot of parenting books are not balanced..”It’s my way or the highway” type of attitude. Today I read (again) through “Babywise 2″ and began “The Strong-willed Child”.
For the past several months I feel a bit like our family is out of control in some ways. I mean, comparatively to maybe a lot of other families, we maybe rate pretty high on the scale of “good family life” but neither Josh or I are satisfied with the level of obedience or respect we get from our kids. While reading through all these books (in particular the Babywise book today) I realized that not only are there problems with what we’re expecting from our boys, but I’m sorry to say, I have barely even begun any sort of discipline with the girls. I think upon some self-examination, I have realized that my longing for so long to have a daughter, coupled with the fact that these are my babies..my last biological children.. has created a permissiveness in my parenting style that in no way would I ever have accepted with the boys. Also added to this is the fact that there is three of them and I am grossly outnumbered and the thought of disciplining them is overwhelming!
However today as I was reading through the book, I am newly inspired to do what it takes to be a good parent. At least when it comes to the girls, I am in familiar territory..with the boys..Bryce in particular, I am in unfamiliar waters and sometimes just stare dumbfounded at him because I have no earthly idea what to do when he spouts off in some disrespectful manner. In some ways I feel like I’d like a do-over. You know, the ball has gone out of bounds so you need to start over. Unfortunately there are no do-overs like there are in grade school four square. I’m not saying at all that Bryce is a bad kid..don’t get me wrong. In fact, it’s just the opposite, I think that he’s such a great kid that I don’t want to fail him and screw him up!
Anyway, I’m not quite certain what my motivation in writing a blog about this is..I guess in some ways I’m sort of working all my thoughts out in my head. But also I think I’d also like to ask for a little accountability in this area..parenting is hard. Duh! It’s really hard. And for me it’s complicated by the fact that I have triplets. Which means that disciplining them is more than triply hard..and having consistent discipline for the boys seems to be put on the back burner a lot because of the amount of energy that the girls take. So I definitely need to step some things up..make some changes and stick to my guns. Guns..hmmm maybe I need guns…
Sounds like you’re heading in the right direction, Kristi. About the only thing I can do at this point is pray for you. I can’t start spouting advice until I get some of my own kiddos, huh?
I have read “Creative Correction”, and enjoyed that. I have some other recommendations too, ask me if you’d like and I’ll send them your way. 
Good luck super mom! Love, Heidi
HEY! I was just thinking today about all the unralistic veiws I had as a new mother. It was WAY easier for me when all the kids were four and under…..it gets (for me anyway) so much more complicated around age 7. I know I didn’t fully comprehend what parenting was all about in the early years. All this to say, you’ll have company in this unchartered territory!
Thanks for the honesty. And, thanks for the GREAT SALSA a few week-ends ago. It was completely gone the next day…..let’s just say my breath was less than kissable:) Love and praying with you.
I have heard time and time again that it is easier to train/discipline NOW then when in highschool. ??
I’m proud of you. Proud of you for a)not sleeping when in the girls’ room! he he
b) choosing good books to read as opposed to magazines (not that they are bad)
c)Loving your kids so much
d)Putting first things first
I’ll be praying for you.
xoxoxo
Love this post! As a triplet mom coming up behind you in the ranks it’s nice to know there are others who struggle before me. I have started to think a lot about discipline, but certainly don’t have any answers yet. I think it may be the hardest thing about parenting so far–figuring all this out knowing that it has such an impact on our kids.
Great post! Parenting is hard, and I am learning with having a second one that there is just no cut and dried way to parent. I wish that there could be a formula that was a one size fits all and we all would have respectful, obedient children. To me it seems that as soon as we have figured out what works, B grows and changes and isn’t motivated by that form of discipline any more. For us it has been a lot of trial and error, and I should probably just dig out my parenting books again and get a refresher.
I will be praying for you, keep us posted!
Oh, Heidi..I’m afraid you have inadvertantly opened a can of worms..I actually own the book Creative Correction and I read it not too long after it came out. At first I was so excited to try it out..but since there is no real rhyme or reason to the ideas and they’re scattered all over the book, I would be faced with a parenting challenge of sorts and then have to spend 15 minutes looking through the book trying to figure out what to do! Not very effective, if you ask me. But that wasn’t really the worst part…the more I thought about it, the more legalistic the book began to feel to me..I mean, for example one of her “favorite” disiciplinary tactics is to make the children write or memorize scripture as a punishment for their wrongdoings..what a great way to make your children resent the Bible and God and make them think that Christianity is just a bunch of rules and restrictions..that really rubbed me the wrong way. There definitely are some nuggets of wisdom in the book, but overall, I didn’t feel like it was something that I could do..Just my 2 cents.
One thing that has helped me a lot is reviewing where each of my children are developmentally. While some of the examples and photos are a bit dated, the developmental info in the Ilg and Ames “Your ____ Year Old” series is really excellent. It helps me keep perspective, incorporate ideas that are age-appropriate, and have high but reasonable expectations.