I've been spending a lot of time lately working out my beliefs regarding disciplining my children. Actually it's been an ongoing process since before M was born, and it's changed a lot in the last five years. However, it has not been until recently that I feel comfortable with my methods and confident in (most of) my decisions.
Before I had kids, I worked with children with autism in a program that used ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis). It was tough but very rewarding work. I started out not knowing what the heck I was doing. However, by the third year, I felt confident in my ability to handle young children. I also felt like I was completely prepared to discipline my own future children. I was very patient, but firm, with the children I worked with while still being fun. I got lots of compliments at work from my employers, and my head got big (like only a non-parent's head can).
It was around this time that I really got the desire to start having my own kids. I started researching anything and everything kid-related. Somehow I happened to find the Mothering.com discussion forums. I was in heaven! A whole forum just about being a mom! (I didn't know that there were several other discussion forums out there that were also about parenting.) What I really liked about this forum though, was the fact that the central theme was parenting naturally. Most of the parents there were interested in living in a way that didn't do too much damage to the earth and raising their children in ways that were sustainable and respectful.
Even though we weren't even trying to get pregnant yet, I read those forums every day. At first I couldn't believe what I was reading: these moms were extreme. They had their babies at home; they didn't circumcise their sons; they didn't let their babies cry themselves to sleep; they breastfed for years(!); they homeschooled (or unschooled) their kids; they let their children sleep with them; they used cloth diapers; and many of them did not use time outs, rewards, punishments, etc. for discipline. Despite being pretty natural-minded myself, I thought they were all a little nuts! But I couldn't stop reading because it was all so interesting to me. And a lot of it started making sense. I decided that I wanted to breastfeed and co-sleep and use cloth diapers. I eventually decided (after a lot of research and discussions with J) to have a homebirth.
In July of 2007, my first baby was born – my beautiful daughter, M. Her birth at home was a little difficult, breastfeeding got off to a bit of a rocky start, and I didn't cloth diaper for the first month. But after that, it all came pretty naturally to me. I'm not saying that it was easy, I am NOT a baby person. I don't know what it is, but taking care of babies isn't something I'm really good at. What I did find was that cloth diapering, breastfeeding (after the first six weeks), and co-sleeping were enjoyable and pretty easy.
After reading so many gentle discipline threads on MDC, I thought I'd try that out too. Now there are lots of definitions of “gentle discipline.” It seems to mean different things to different people. Some think it means you just don't use corporal punishment. And to others, it means consensual living. I guess I was planning on being somewhere in the middle – maybe unconditional parenting, in which the use of the word 'no,' rewards, and punishments are all to be avoided.
It worked for a while. Then I became pregnant. I was tired and sick to my stomach all the time. And M hit “the terrible twos” (I know, it's an awful name for a really cute age) a little early. Those things combined with the fact that I didn't really know what I was doing with the whole unconditional parenting thing made for some bad parenting days. I found myself losing my temper a lot. And M was just so irrational, and it felt like she didn't care about my feelings at all. (Hello! She's only one and a half! But I was new at this...)
I finally decided to give in and give time outs a try. But I didn't feel good about it. I felt like a failure, and I felt so guilty. I kept reading the gentle discipline threads on MDC hoping to find the missing piece of information that would make unconditional parenting work for my family. Of course this made me really wishy-washy about the time outs and being “strict.” And that meant I was really inconsistent, which made things worse.
I was so confused. What was I doing wrong? Why wasn't it working for me? I thought maybe it was just that I was pregnant, and so I just wasn't at my best (this, I'm sure, was part of it). Also, it is so different being patient with a child for four hours each day (my previous job) versus being patient with a child 24 hours a day, seven days a week (my job as a mother).
I read book after book after book. Many of them had some good advice, but they all conflicted each other at least a bit. I read books from one extreme to the other (which was really interesting by the way). And I became more and more confused. One book said timeouts were okay. The next said do not use them at all. The next book said that they were only okay if done a specific way. One book said rewards and punishments were the only way to go. The next said to only use them for certain situations. One book said no punishments or rewards, even natural and logical consequences. The next said my child would become a criminal if I didn't ever use them.
The more books I read, the more I doubted myself. M's behavior worsened and I was less happy as a parent the more I doubted myself. I went from feeling over-confident in my discipline skills pre-kids to feeling like an awful parent!
Then two things happened.
First, I decided that I know my children best, and therefore I should be able to make decisions regarding discipline without first consulting the entire parenting section at the library or an entire discussion forum. I tried to remember back to before I had children when I felt so confident about how I would discipline. I thought about what worked and didn't work at my job working with young children. I decided that I would stop reading those threads on MDC and start listening to what my heart told me my children needed from me. The threads gave me lots of ideas, but they were getting in the way of my instincts.
Once I started listening to myself a little more and took a break from reading so many threads and books, I was able to go back to reading some parenting books; but this time from a more grounded place. I wasn't swayed by each chapter I read. I found that I could quickly decide whether or not what the author was telling me was going to work for my family.
Second, I found three books that I've combined to create my own discipline philosophy and strategies: The 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting, 1-2-3 Magic, and The Secret of Parenting. Yes, they conflict with each other a bit sometimes, but I take what I want from each book, and, for the most part, I really like each of them. No, a couple of them would not put me in the popular crowd at MDC, but I am not losing my temper very much or yelling anymore. And I am still not spanking. I am feeling confident in, and enjoying, my role as mother. And I've noticed that my kids seem happier lately.
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