Myriad of Confessions

I have a confession to make. Well, three actually.

My boys are eighteen months old and still drink from a bottle.

Ah, there. I said it. The first step to healing is confession, right? Okay, here I go again: The boys sleep in my living room rather than their cribs during their afternoon nap.

Okay, that felt pretty good. Just getting it out there in the open is going to help me on the road to recovery!

But honestly, these are the last two "habits" I've had a hard time breaking. It's just so difficult trying to make strides when you're the one that spends the most time with them during the day. Ya know? It's as if any change you are able to make it only because you were willing to suffer through all of the kicking and screaming to get them to see that they didn't really need it in the first place! That is, if you didn't go insane before. I'm working on it. I've got a renewed plan of where I'd like to start this week. I'm dreading it, though. It's. Just. So. Hard.

But I told you I actually had three confessions. The last one (or perhaps I should have mentioned this one first) is:

I have absolutely NO idea what I'm doing.

I know I give the impression that I have everything under control. I don't.

I know it seems like things move pretty smoothly around my house all of the time. Hmmm, not really.

I'm sure you'd think that I had my act together and this mothering thing actually came very naturally. Well, that's partly true.

The truth is, most times, I struggle to know what I do. What's the best way to react when your kids throw food on the floor? Do you discipline them or ignore it? How are you supposed to know? I never seem to make the right decision before his brother decides that's a fun activity for HIM to try, too! How do you know how to respond when your son throws a toy at you? Do you punish him or take it as a sign he just wants to play with you? How do I respond when they laugh at my reprimand? Or how about when he bites his brother for stealing his toy? Do you bite him back, give him time-out, or just remove him from the situation?

I honestly have NO idea.

The only guidance we have as parents is in the long-range. If we did something and stuck with it for a while, we may be able to see the outcome. "I'm sooo glad we finally let the boys just cry it out," we told ourselves a few months ago. "Why didn't we do this sooner?" We could have kicked ourselves for not starting months earlier. But honestly, we were just getting by, day by day! How were we supposed to know exactly which method would work for our boys in our circumstance!?

My husband and I took the boys to an Italian restaurant for dinner tonight. I suppose this is where these thoughts stemmed from tonight. They did pretty well through the meal, so I decided to take them to look at the fish in the fish tank during the last few minutes so my husband could finish his last few bites in peace (he was the one to feed them the majority of their food.) The boys loooooove animals. So the fish tank was a very welcomed surprise. They tapped on the glass, made fish faces and screamed with delight. The other people in the room seemed to be happily entertained by Jack and Ben along with their new friends. When Andy paid the bill, he brought our big bags into the room and the boys had the time of their life sharing their new experiences with their daddy. After a few minutes, we started saying our goodbyes to the fishes and started packing up to leave. One problem. The boys did NOT want to go. If they could, they would have spent ALL DAY in front of that fish tank (except it would have only been an hour before they learned how to take the lid off and climb in there themselves!!) So here's Andy and I at a nice restaurant, carrying our screaming boys all the way to the car. I'll tell ya. Didn't feel like our proudest parenting moment.

What could I have done differently? We let them play, gave them each their own chair to stand on, and plenty of time to watch. We gave them time to transition and tried to be gentle in our commands. But when push came to shove, we HAD to leave! The thanks we got for doing the right thing? The embarrassment of carrying two screaming toddlers out of the restaurant and having all of those people glare at you, wondering if you are taking someone else's child.

There are no manuals. There's not always ONE right way to do things. We get guidance from other people (some welcome, some not-so-welcome) but all we have is our own judgment. We get encouragement from the Bible with a solid example of how Jesus would treat the children He came into contact with, but He never said what to do about letting your kids play with fish behind a glass!

But He did say things like "Let the little children come unto Me" and "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it." I feel like He's leaving me clues. I just have to put them together.

That's the hardest part about discipline. It's difficult in the moment. Horrible, in fact. There will be tears, screams, kicking. It's an all-out battle of wills. Discipline is never enjoyable. For the parent OR the child. But I also remember Jesus saying in the Bible that it also harvests a great reward for those who were trained by it. There's a payout. But it doesn't come right away.

So, here's where I am at the end of my confession. I'm tired. Humbled. And yet encouraged if not just in the smallest way. I'm not alone. I'm not the first one to experience this. I have a feeling that other moms have struggled with transitioning their kids from bottles to sippy cups before, some even beyond eighteen months. And I think we could be doing a lot worse than letting them nap on the living room floor. I'll get there. One step at a time.