Parent Extremis

I took over this site back in February and I have always felt a little guilty for not posting more about, oh … those controversial parenting issues, you know, like bottle versus breast feeding and attachment parenting and the dreaded sleep-issues. I haven’t been living up to the TITLE of this blog, writing about parenting EXTREMES. Personally, I don’t parent in any of the extremes, at least I don’t think. I have my nuttiness, as my husband likes to remind me, but for the most part I dabble. I make some baby food, I buy some baby food, Noah sleeps alone, in his crib and he does get a little fussy sometimes and I don’t rush in to grab him, I do use Tylenol for those teething moments and post-vaccine fevers, I do use a sling and a carrier but only BEFORE he reached 20-pounds and mostly for convienence, not because I thought we weren’t bonded enough. So, I don’t really fall into any of the strong beliefs about attachment parenting and authoritative parenting and cry-it-out (Ferber/Weissbluth) versus Sears-method sleep training.

But! Some of you do! And I’d like to get some of those debates out in the open here at PARENT EXTREMIS. It’s what we’re all about, when I’m not writing about nose-picking and Cabernet play dates.

TypeAlice recently had a down and dirty comment war with another blogger about letting a baby cry and where to draw the line at ABUSE and WRONG. It is hard to hear your baby cry but sometimes when they are really tired they cry for like 30 seconds before they fall asleep, after you have fed and comforted and rocked them. Is that BAD? To me, that isn’t crying, its more like, fussing. Each parent has a different tolerance for hearing their baby cry and only each parent knows the line of a distress cry versus an I’m-annoyed-come-entertain-me cry. And to some parents, it doesn’t matter, a cry is a CRY.

I think the problem comes when one parent thinks THEIR way is better and RIGHT for someone else. But, who am I to judge? I buy baby food and put my baby in a stroller??

What are your thoughts on these extremes? Food, sleep, etc … do you dabble in the “methods” or do you follow one more than another?

Children know who really wears the pants in the family. Well, that’s an antiquated figure of speech. Actually, in most families, both the father and the mother wear pants. But you know what I mean. You’re fortunate, even rare, if either the father or the mother has real authority (not just power) in the family. Many children have as much authority (not just power) as their parents. They run the family as well as they can, poor dears.

Ironically, as you’ll read on Mom Is Teaching, parenting requires giving your children progressively more authority. Hopefully, by the time they really are smarter than us, they’ll at least be humble about it.

But for now, when they are not yet as smart as us, we need to protect them from themselves. We need to prepare them for a world where a tantrum has very little power. We need to prepare them by not giving in to tantrums now.

Other than that, is there anything beneficial in submitting to the authority of another? What if they aren’t smarter or wiser than we are? I heard a Bible teacher say, with almost a straight face, that the Apostle Paul commanded wives to submit to their husbands precisely because women are superior to men. If wives didn’t have someone to submit to, all that superiority would go to their heads. What self-control it must take to submit oneself to someone who usually has no idea what’s going on? I can only imagine. My wife knows, though, from personal experience.

God understands the benefits of humility. That’s also why he gave us children. When they’re too little to understand the idea of submitting themselves to someone else, when they’re too little to understand the idea of someone else, period, they’re already forcing us parents to lower ourselves, sometimes literally and physically. My legs are getting sore this week from picking up my son from off the floor.

When I read To Train Up a Child, published by
No Greater Joy, I was struck by the claim that the child training methods taught by the Pearls could result in less anger, less yelling, and fewer spankings. That’s not the reputation the Pearls have in the media. When someone tells you they use a switch on their children, you assume they do not live in a gentle home.

I contend, for several reasons, that corporal punishment is not necessarily violent. For one thing, the Amish practice it - a people whose ancestors died because they refused to practice violence. For another, dealing with your child before you become angry can prevent you from losing your head and becoming abusive. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. I told a story last month about a non-spanking mother who caused more damage with her words than if she had been willing to spank her daughter. And, dealing with your child before your child becomes angry also makes for a less violent home.

The Pearls condemn child abuse, they oppose disciplining in anger, and they positively affirm that when children are well-trained, they are happier and more peaceful.

One message I got from To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl, and probably one of the main messages I was supposed to get, was that there is a difference between training and punishment.

I confess I don’t really resonate with the idea of punishment. I don’t want to say to anybody, “I don’t care if this helps you, but you deserve to suffer.” But the Pearls deal with this issue too, in a very interesting manner, by arguing that punishment takes away guilt, that children actually feel better knowing that justice is done. I know that young children - probably most of us adults too, aren’t very good at repenting and receiving forgiveness. So punishment deals with guilt feelings when there is no other way of dealing with them.

But tiny children don’t need to be punished. They don’t know what they are doing. They aren’t disobeying you; they aren’t even listening to you. The Pearls explain how to train a child to listen, to understand what the word “No” means, to learn to stop what they’re doing when they hear that word. That’s training. The Pearls are controversial for suggesting that a small switch can be used to assist in that training.

But what is more merciful: to teach a child to avoid trouble and danger by applying mild physical pain, or not to teach them at all? Childish disobedience is cute until it leads them into a busy street. Which consequence for disobedience do you want your child to face : a small switch or a large truck?

I’ve been enjoying the controversial parenting book To Train Up a Child by Michael and Debi Pearl of No Greater Joy. A friend of ours gave us two copies: one for my and one for my wife.

I was tickled at how Michael refers positively to anti-spanking arguments (pounding on a child’s lower back with a flat hand could throw it out of alignment) and says that his methods actually result in less spankings. Once a child knows that there really are limits, maybe he won’t cross them.

Some consider this book as a tool of fundamentalist indoctrination and an invitation to child abuse. But its emphasis on never disciplining in anger, and never using religion as a disciplinary tool, makes me think otherwise.

I’ll tell you more next week.

I’ve just discovered Kindling Publications, a website which belongs to a family that I actually met once. They have developed some homeschooling materials and even a music CD or two, but I like the cheerful but extremely challenging parenting articles of Maranatha Chapman (what kind of parents in the 1970s would name their daughter “Come quickly, Lord” - sounds deliciously extreme to me). Maybe I shouldn’t be reading advice for mothers, but it challenges fathers too.

Maranatha’s article Learning to Flow asks parents how they react to messes and spills, to changes in plans, to having to wait (and needing to wait), to being at rest, to having things go the opposite way from your way. You might not like her answers, but from the time I spent with her, they seem to be real answers and not sham answers.

So much parenting advice seems to center on how to protect yourself from your children. Websites and books tell us, in veiled terms or blunt terms, how to preserve your own rights and feelings - while still being a good parent, of course. But what if you give up your rights to someone else, and let Him defend you? What if you could teach your children how to give and how to forgive, not because that’s what nice people do, but because that’s what God does?

What really bugs you as a parent? Maybe you will never be able to change them. Maybe you can only change yourself.

Kelly Mills, the SF Chronicle’s baby blogger, is now dealing with a six-year-old who appeals to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to protest parental privileges being withheld from children, specifically six-year-olds. She points out her mother’s hypocrisy and responds to her mother’s commands with, “Or you’ll do what?”

Most significantly, this six-year-old girl asks her mother, “Why?” Her mother admits, “The problem with this question is that often the truthful answer would have been, ‘because that sounds really, really inconvenient for me’”

Here are some answers I wish I could give to the question of why my child should obey me:

1. Because I follow that rule too. I’m not a hypocrite. It’s a good thing to do, and I do it. Or, it’s a good thing for six-year-olds to do. I did it when I was six. Or, I should have done it when I was six. I would have been better off.

2. Because it’s right. It’s not merely convenient for me. It’s honorable and noble and someday you will learn to do what’s honorable and noble even when it’s not pleasant or convenient. If I wanted convenience, I would give in to your whims and save my breath.

3. Because there will be consequences if you don’t. And if you don’t see the natural consequences to putting yourself higher than the authorities over you, you will later. If you don’t see the consequences now, I’ll come up with some consequences real quick. I’m creative.

4. Because in the real world, you can’t get everything you want. If you don’t learn delayed gratification, you won’t know true gratification. Sometimes I tell you No simply to give you practice in hearing it. Because I love you more than almost anyone else in the world.

Story 2:

My car broke down in front of a house, so I knocked on the door to ask to use their phone. The woman showed me where the phone was, then proceeded to continue putting her six-year-old daughter to bed.

Of course, as a visitor, I was a distraction, and the little girl began showing off for me. Specifically, she began showing off how she could keep getting out of bed and her mother couldn’t stop her.

Instead, her mother yelled at her, calling her stupid and I don’t remember what else. The girl just smiled. I think I left before she finally went to bed.

Oh, but her mother didn’t spank her. That would have taught the girl hatred and violence. The mother would have seemed non-modern. So yelling and insulting was preferable.

But I would prefer my mother not call me stupid, quite desperately. I would have been willing to endure lots of things before I would want to endure that.

Let me tell you two stories about mothers disciplining their children. You tell me which mother you would have rather had:

Story 1:

This isn’t a first-hand story, but it was told to me by my roommate, who used to live with one of the our pastors. So I knew him a long time, he knew their family a long time.

The pastor’s son was four at the time. Active, intelligent, with his own agenda. You know four year olds like that, don’t you?

He crossed lines fairly often, which must have been frustrated. But his parents didn’t punish him for frustrating them. They only punished him for crossing the line.

His mother was a short, thin woman with a soft voice. My roommate would often hear her speak her son’s name quietly, yet with finality. Then he would hear her in the kitchen preparing to wreak judgment on her son. Her son could hear her too.

She caused her son physical pain. But did she cause emotional pain? Did she violate his dignity? Did she humiliate him or did she appropriately humble him?

What do you think?

When I was a child, I read child psychology books. Just to make sure my parents were raising me correctly.

One of them said you should never discipline children in anger. You might hurt them.

Another said that you must always discipline your child in anger. How can they possibly understand why you’re bringing suffering into their life, unless they can see that you’re angry with them? Cold, calm discipline would warp their tiny psyches.

How about another alternative? How about disciplining your children in righteousness and justice? Parents should be able to say, “You’re not getting my goat. You’re not getting control of my emotions. And my emotions aren’t controlling me. But I need to correct what you did. Because it was wrong.”

Tomorrow I’ll tell the first of two stories to illustrate what I mean.

If children don’t learn to obey their parents, they won’t learn to obey themselves. Self-discipline is a form of discipline. Discipline has to be taught. Or as an adult, the child will still be unable to choose what is necessary over what is pleasurable.

We have to prepare our children for the world they will be living in. When you ask your supervisor for a raise or a promotion, your request won’t judged by whether you’re a nice person or whether you tried hard. Not if your company wants to profit. Your request will be judged by whether you can do the work.

Are requests for graduation are treated that way? Can you graduate from high school or college without being able to do the work?

It’s so easy to grade your parenting skills on a curve, like your math teacher used to. Or to grade your child’s behavior on a curve. If my child is no more spoiled or undisciplined than other children, I tend to feel satisfied as a father.

But I don’t want to do that. I want to reject that attitude. If tuberculosis were endemic in my town, would I be happy if my child didn’t cough any more than the other children? Society has problems: chronic, possibly fatal problems. And I don’t want my child to have them too. Even if every other child does.

I’ve seen an illustration that shows a pair of scales with the words LOVE and DISCIPLINE. Parents are supposed to keep the two in balance.

But why does love need to be kept in balance?Real love should infinite, powerful, unbounded. The Bible never says “God is discipline.” Even Shakespeare wrote that “the quality of mercy is not strained.” What is the value of discipline if it has to temper love, if it isn’t itself a part of love?

Maybe the scales should have said something like AFFECTION and DISCIPLINE. Or positive love and negative love. Or pleasant love and unpleasant love. But if it’s not love, I don’t want to give it to my child.

Should you only spank your child when his life is in danger?

I’ve talked to some authoritarian parents about this. The question is, what kinds of things can put your child’s life in danger? We all agree that cars and trucks in the street can do it, so we all keep our children out of the busy street. In high-crime neighborhoods, some parents keep their children off the street even when there are no cars, if you see what I mean.

Some conservative Christian parents insist, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that they would never spank their child except when the child’s life is at stake. They quote verses such as Ezekiel 18:4, which says, “The person that sins will die.”

Does disobedience itself put your child’s life in danger? Is disobedience itself a “dangerous behavior”? In a dangerous world, it becomes more obvious. In a world of flash floods and wild predators, disobedience can be deadly.

Is it as obvious in our world?

Parenting styles really do come from different worldviews. Some parents seems to believe that children are basically good. In fact, one parenting blogger says that it’s possible to make your child love you so much that they will never disobey you.

Other parents say that children are not basically good, the world is not basically good, nobody is basically good. There is hope for everybody, and God’s image is stamped on everyone, but left alone, people will gravitate toward the easiest path. So will children. They may love their parents to pieces, but if they know they can get away with something, they will try it.

Maybe I tend toward the second style of parenting because I was the second type of child.

Plain Jane Mom writes about Elizabeth Pantley’s No-Cry Discipline book, which she describes as saying that “making a positive emotional connection with your kids is the way to bring order to chaos and leave the screaming behind.”

I agree that screaming is not an effective method of discipline, but ironically, it seems to be more common among parents who don’t believe in (formally) punishing their children, who don’t want their children to experience unpleasant consequences because they don’t want to see them cry.

Consequences teach children. The goal of the parent should be to allow their children to be taught by natural consequences if possible.

But some natural consequences of the actions of children include death. Sometimes children are killed or crippled because of things they do. So maybe the goal of the parent should be to teach the child by providing consequences that are less permanent than natural consequences. The consequences of not disciplining children can be severe.

What do you think about that?