My youngest is very soon to turn two. She has always been precocious and filled with personality and opinion. She has been slow to speak verbally, learning first "baby sign language," but in the past month, it has been a joy to watch her spoken vocabulary explode. My husband and I often take note of how this age - from about 18 months to two and a half years - might just be our favorite age of development.
It's a great age for development because the child's real personality, preferences, and thoughts are finally being expressed in a more mature and discernible way. This means they are able to articulate wants and needs, show love and affection without prompting, and play in a very interactive way. However, it also comes with some major growing pains. This newfound sense of self also means testing boundaries and limits, ignoring commands to exert independence, and repeating every toddler's favorite word ad nauseam - "NO."
Today, my daughter climbed on top of the dining room table. She did not merely sit on it, she climbed up, all fours, then laid on her belly. I told her to get down, and she confidently replied, "No." I picked her up, sat her in the chair, scolded her and reminded her the rules about what does and does not go on tables. Then I watched her pull the same maneuver with a twinkle of rebellion in her eye. I told her to get down.
"No."
I told her she had one more chance, or I would put her in a time out.
"No."
I put her in a time out. She got up and walked away. I picked her up and put her in again, and told her to stay. "No."
I sat her on the step of our sunroom, a room-temperature but not very appealing room filled with laundry machines and drying racks, trays of rain boots and hooks overburdened with coats. The door between the kitchen in the sunroom has a large window, so I was able to keep my eyes and ears on her...though her cries were probably audible from the neighbor's home an acre away.
Approximately every minute, I opened the door and offered her the chance to apologize for disobeying me. I'd ask,
"Are you ready to come out?"
She would sweetly and tenderly nod, "Uh huh"
"Okay, then you need to say sorry to mama."
"No."
"You cannot come out of time out until you say sorry to mama."
"No."
At which point I would say, "Okay, you let me know when you are ready." And I would close the door again, which would prompt tears and wails and shouts of "MAMAAAAA!"
The entire ordeal went on for about 40 minutes. It ran into lunch time. In a moment of mercy, I let her come out of the time out space, but told her that her lunch would not be available to her until she apologized. We all sat together, she said grace with us, and as we all began eating, she began bawling again. Finally, during a diaper change, she looked me in the eye, and made the sign with her hands, "sorry." I wrapped her in a big hug, praised her, told her how I forgave her, and promptly got her lunch plated and on the table.
During the process, my husband came downstairs. I haven't a clue what he actually thought about the whole ordeal, but watching him silently witness my callous and concrete expectation, I began second guessing myself. I began wondering if I was being too harsh. I began saying "Oh, Emily, she is only two. Relent! Ease up! She doesn't know any better!"
Thankfully, another voice chimed in and said "That's not true, she just apologized to her sister yesterday. And her brother the day before that. And you the day prior to that. She knows how to apologize, and you know it."
Also thankfully, I had been listening recently to the encouraging likes of Dr. Ray Guarendi and Elisabeth Elliot about their approaches to parenting and discipline. In his talk entitled "Discipline that Lasts a Lifetime" (found here), Dr. Ray mentions how, if asked, a majority of people will say that we want twenty-something year olds to display self-control...discipline....good manners...etc. And yet we live in a society where everything and everyone shouts at us that we need not exercise these things at all, but rather we should pursue whatever it is that makes us feel good, makes us money, or achieves the desire of the moment, however fleeting. He gives an example of a child receiving a cookie, but failing to say "thank you." Despite being prompted, the child fails to express her gratitude. So the parent gives the cookie back to the gift giver, thanking them, and apologizing, then explaining that his daughter had the opportunity to do the right thing as she has been taught, but failed...and therefore should not have the cookie. What do you suppose the response is? I can tell you from experience that, even loving and well-meaning family members (even I, myself!) have responded to scenarios like this with what they believe is mercy:
"Oh no, that's okay! Lighten up, she's just a kid! Here you go honey, you can have the cookie anyway."
It is not easy saying "no" to the angelic face of a child. It takes a bit of hardness of heart. But if we are supposed to raise disciplined, self-regulated children, they are going to have to learn limits, to hear "no," and to have consistent expectations and consequences...no matter how cute they are. And it becomes a far more difficult task when all of us are running around undermining each other's parenting in the name of "mercy."
Today, my almost two-year-old was sounding particularly pathetic in her wailing, and looking particularly cute and tiny whenever I opened the door to offer her another chance at apology and reprieve from her consequence. Believe me, it was very, very tempting to cave in and to do so in the name of mercy. Discipline ain't easy. And it ain't pretty. The one being disciplined tends to suffer until the strength - be it of character or prayer life or body or anything - is developed. Discipline in healthy eating isn't fun, because the chocolate is gone. Discipline in exercise can be painful, with sore muscles and earlier rising. Discipline in prayer means having to learn how to sit in silence with yourself for an extended time, and that can be very, very painful. Discipline in saying "no" to impulse buying means depriving yourself. Disciplining children can mean having to suffer, both parent and child, through a tantrum. We tend to confuse poor discipline with mercy these days, thinking that excusing someone from discipline is merciful when really it is to their detriment. We live in an era when suffering is not valued, but rather we seek to alleviate it at all costs, at every turn, and sparing no resource or backwards reasoning. So witnessing or experiencing for ourselves the suffering of discipline is just plain foreign and wrong, according to our socialization.
I can liken this all to a recent kerfuffle I had while I was driving. We live close to a major state highway. I was travelling home on this route, and needed to turn left into our neighborhood. There were about 4 or 5 oncoming cars before a break, so I stopped and waited patiently for the cars to pass. But much to my surprise, the first car in the oncoming lane slowed down, flashed his headlights, and waved me on. I was so confused and flustered. I just waved him back, directing him to keep driving. He now came to a full stop, flashed the headlights again, and waved back emphatically. I waved again to him, even more emphatically, now verbally saying to my audience of non-driving children how this man was going to cause an accident. He had no blinkers on, because he was not turning. There was not stop signal. He just, out of the kindness of his heart, stopped his car in the middle of moving traffic on a major state road, in order to let me turn left in front of him. Perhaps in his head he thought he was being mercifully kind, sparing me from waiting. But I am certain that the drivers behind him who had to make a sudden and bizarre stop were less than impressed by his kind gesture. I was so shaken, as I envisioned a five car pile up because of this man's "mercy." We need discipline and obedience to certain rules, certain standards, certain morals, or else everything gets jammed up and someone will undoubtedly get hurt. So for parents out there, stand strong and firm in your discipline. Your children and all of society will thank you in twenty years. And for all of us, may we take small steps each day to better train ourselves in discipline and self-control, in a world that has forgotten the value of suffering and self denial, but rather glorifies impulsivity and indulgence in the misplaced name of "mercy."