The Work of Discipline
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Thursday, August 07, 2008 8:30 PM
Yesterday, Camilla and I did not have an easy morning. I was struggling with more nausea than usual, and Milla decided to do her part to contribute to the household happiness quotient by not listening to a single thing I said. She’d throw something on the floor, I’d tell her to pick it up, and she’d turn away or run into another room to show me how dedicated she was to ignoring me. After a few hours of this I was incredibly tired of chasing her, making her listen, making her pick up the stupid whatever-it-happened-to-be already. I sat her down to have a little chat about Listening to Mama and Obeying, and she did not take it well. The whole thing culminated with her standing on a kitchen chair where I’d put her to calm down (she thinks she can’t get off the chairs, so they’re perfect for time-outs), wailing at the top of her lungs while I tried to breathe deeply and focus on cooking the macaroni for our lunch.
Camilla eventually did calm down, and apologized in her sweet little way with hugs and kisses, and the afternoon was better. The rest of the day, though, I was thinking about discipline and how the grind of it really gets me down sometimes.
Whenever I am feeling overwhelmed by the job of disciplining, I remember something my very wise father once told me. He was talking about how some parents opt out of the job of disciplining their children because disciplining feels like being “mean” to your kids, and they want to be nothing but loving, all the time. He pointed out that actually, failing to discipline your kids is very un-loving. The most loving thing a parent can do for a child is to say to them, in essence, “I care about you too much to let you grow up into the kind of person who doesn’t know how to behave properly.”
A lot of the time, I have to admit, I really don’t want to take disciplinary action with Camilla. It would be so much easier to let her have the things she wants, not to make her do the things she’d rather not do. But then I remember my dad’s words and how much I want my daughter to grow up into a loving, well-behaved person, so I grit my teeth and discipline her anyway. It’s worth it.
Also, it’s occurred to me that there is an analogy here to the way God loves us. He could make it so our lives were easy and carefree, but He knows that it is through trials that we are perfected, so He allows us to undergo them so that we might have the chance to be more like Him. He loves us too much to let us have what we want all the time.
If my husband and I can manage just a small echo of God’s perfect love as we raise our own children, we’ll be doing well.
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