Last night, when we went around to our friends' place to babysit, I finally got over myself enough to say 'hey, do you mind if I try putting that nappy on her?' I figured it would be the best chance I'd get - baby had just come from the bath, so it was clean child, clean nappy - a rare combination. It was fine, of course, and now I can say I've done it so that's all good. Afterwards, J said 'I'm so proud of you for doing that' and i gave him the furrowed forehead, diagonal eyebrows look to say 'watch yourself, smart guy' and asked why, exactly, he was proud of me for doing such a simple thing. He quickly realised he was skating on thin ice and said 'no, no! I meant I was proud of you for ASKING to do it - I'm sure that wasn't easy'. So I said thanks, and then we hugged - it was a beautiful moment.
No more SW appointments for a week. Hurrah! I know that next time, we're going to explore discipline (now rebranded as 'parenting capacity', apparently). We plan on saying that children flourish best when allowed to explore their own potential, emotions and environment without hindrance from adults. Errr... okay, maybe not. Actually we mostly plan on just saying 'firm consistent loving boundaries' a lot, and hope to get away with that. But it made me wonder - if anyone has good books to recommend on this kind of topic, especially (but not necessarily exclusively) regarding adopted kids, I'd be glad to hear of them!
Get thee to Amazon and order a copy of "Shepherding a Child's Heart" by Tedd Tripp and "Disciplines of a Godly Family" by Kent and Barbara Hughes. Our church has talks by the Hugheses online that are pretty much the same as the books - email me for the link if you want it.
ReplyDeleteBtw feel free to nip over to Oz for a bit of nappy changing experience anytime!
Well dare I say that I too am proud of you "for asking" and doing and feeling good about asking...I know how hard it can be when you still feel a bit raw about the childless thing...my sister-in-law got pregnant and had my nephew all during a really hard and horrible treatment cycle...it was an emotional killer...oh, I LOVED that adoption cartoon, I have to put that on the fridge!
ReplyDeleteGood for you for changing that nappy. And as for discipline books: I have found that my friends fall in such polar opposite camps. The "Sherperding a Child's Heart" camp thinks their way is the only way (another in a similar vein is "Growing Kids Gods Way" which may have decent enough points, but I can't see past the offensiveness of the title) while the "Love and Logic" camp thinks the "Gods Way" camp is of the devil himself. Yowzers.
ReplyDeleteWe liked the "Baby Whisperer" books and followed the Eat-Activity-Sleep cycle, especially when Abe was younger. We're really huge fans of Supernanny though--that Jo Frost is a miracle worker. We cry most episodes and have both of her books.
I think the most helpful thing we've done has been to watch the behavior of our friends' kids and then have one-on-one talks with the parents whose kids have the nicest manners, seem to be happiest, etc. We've gotten great tips by doing this, and we even have some friends (featured recently on our blog) who we call/email with "What would you do in this situation?" questions. The proof is in the pudding, I reckon.
Thanks very much for suggestions, I've just gone and ordered about twenty books from amazon marketplace so I will soon have an ENORMOUS body of theoretical knowledge about how other people should parent their kids :)
ReplyDelete(By the way, I have heard nothing but bad stuff about growing kids God's way, so while I ordered both Parenting with Love and Logic AND Shepherding a child's heart, I gave that one a miss).