So, finally after a busted waterline under my kitchen which resulted in my having to re plumb about 70 percent of my house including the gas lines, and a lot of remodeling in my kitchen and dining room (about 70 percent), I think I'll be able to get to some of this tonight! It has been a few weeks since my conversation with Andrew so I'll try to post it as I think of it.
Disclaimer: this is just what has worked for us. If you don't like it, don't do it! Eat the meat and spit out the bones. Our children and family are far from perfect. This is still a work in progress till we get them all out on their own. So far, with God's help, I feel cautiously optimistic.
Some family history on us. 17 years ago, our first daughter was born. We were a young couple starting out somewhat early and had come up in different perspectives on child rearing. We were very blessed to be in a church body with many good successful parents of large families who were very helpful. We also had an assistant pastor who taught a lot on the family and child training and really stressed to start with the end in mind. What kind of child do you want to end up with?
We had several other references that we used in those days to give us some guidance. One of the ones that made a big impact on us was the book "Baby Wise" by Gary Ezzo M.A. and Robert Buckham M.D. Another was "To Train Up a Child", by Micheal and Debbi Pearl. Another was, "Do You Mind if Your Children Don't?" by Bill Rice (the third). There were a few others but I can't think of them now.
A lot of our takeaways from these references had to do with early child training and scheduling. I will be forever thankful for the time and effort that my incredible wife invested in our children's training. Long story short was that we were determined as young parents to train our children early and our goal was well rounded, well mannered young adults that would bring honor to the family name, to the Saviour's name, and to be able to function well in an adult world.
We began after our oldest was about 6 months old. Not because that was a magical age, just because that's when we realized that something had to change, and looking back, she was our easiest child. The initial goal was just to get her to sleep on a schedule, and our family doctor introduced us to the Baby Wise books which were very helpful. In no time, she was sleeping on a schedule, going to sleep when she was put down with hugs kisses and being tucked in with pats on the back, not rocking her to sleep. There were about 3 nights of pure misery for all involved until she learned that when she was put down, she might as well go to sleep because when she would cry, she would just be tucked in again, told quietly its time to sleep etc. and left in her bed. In retrospect, those 3 nights were worth every minute of misery because not only did it train her, but it trained us and confirmed that it could be done. All of our other children were sleeping on their own, through the night by 6 weeks old and we would start training about 3 weeks old. This paid off big in many ways through the years. It also had the added benefit of knowing that if they were fussing, it was due to legitimate issues, hungry, tired, dirty diaper, hurt. I can still vividly remember taking a trip to visit my grandparents and some other family members had come over to see us. When bedtime came around, (8:30ish) Charity told the kids (7, 5, 2 and toddler) its time to get ready for bed. The other family members made a comment about heading home so that we could get the kids in bed etc. My grandfathers response was, "Oh, you don't have to go, it'll just take her a minute. Those kids go right to bed with no fussing or anything! You've never seen anything like it in your life!" Sure enough, when Charity came back in about 10 minutes later after teeth brushing, pj's, potty and tucking in, they were totally amazed. I couldn't have been prouder of my wife and family.
I can recall hearing someone say, there are no bad children, just bad parents and untrained children. How true this is IDK but I think it bears repeating.
A phrase that we used as our standard was, Anything less than immediate obedience is disobedience! With a good attitude.
Teaching our children NO!
This is probably the most important thing we ever taught our children. It would be said once, in a normal tone of voice, and the answer would never change. Repeated attempts to change the verdict would have an unpleasant (for them) outcome as would attempts to get a different answer from the other parent when they got older. We would start teaching this as soon as you could tell that they understood what you were saying. For example, if they were reaching for something, and we said no, it was almost comical to watch the decision play across their cute faces. The hand would pause, they would look at us and then look back at the item they so wanted, and then continue reaching for it while watching to see what we would do. This is rebellion in its earliest form. If you make the appropriate course correction here (in the same calm voice alongside whatever the 'course correction' is) you wont have to make major course corrections later, at least not in this area. To this day, our children even find it amusing when a new friend will want permission for them to do something and tries to get us to change the decision by asking repeatedly or changing the format of the request or whatever. They know what the result will be. Often, we will take a minute to train their new friend in our format. It's amazing how they learn so fast and yet their parents will not be given the same courtesy because they will not train and be consistent. The other aspect of this is to not allow any kind of attitude or form of disapproval because they do not like the answer given. The answer has been given, accept it and move on.
Teaching immediate obedience.
One of the things that made a lasting impact in my mind was hearing our lead pastor tell the story about a friend of his when they were both in seminary. The friend and his young son were driving around with the son in the front seat. This was before seat belts were mandatory or provided in many vehicles. Somehow, the car went off the road and rolled through a telephone pole. The father was ejected with minor scrapes. The boy, miraculously, was unhurt and still sitting in the passenger side front seat. As the boy reached for the door latch, his father yelled one word, "NO!" Then, "sit still, don't move." Some twenty minutes later, the emergency responders arrived and began to take care of the live electrical wire that was laying across the car. IF the boy had not obeyed his fathers command immediately, he would have most likely not survived the electrocution. The question presented after this story was this, If the boy had not obeyed his father, whose fault would it have been?
This story and question prompted me to make sure that my children would be trained to obey. This took several tries and phases. It began with teaching them to come when called. Though this seems simple, try it. Wait until your children are in the other room or across the house and call their name. What is their response? For us, the acceptable response we were comfortable with was for them to answer and come find us to see what we wanted. They couldn't just holler back across the house, and they must respond promptly. This was then put into practice in the stores, parking lots, after church etc. and all at a very young age.
Teaching them to sit!
Another very simple thing that had an incredible impact on our children's training was when we taught them to sit. Yes, it seems simple, and yet it is anything but. The impetus for this training was that our church supplied childcare for young children up to age 2. On Sunday mornings, they could go to children's church, but that was not available for Sunday evenings or Wednesday evenings. By the time that they were 2, the leadership believed that they should be old enough and trained enough to sit through a service. Seems incredible, right? However, my wonderful wife managed to achieve the "impossible" in about 6 weeks time. She would begin by instructing them that we (they) were going to be training, then explained the boundaries. They had to sit up straight, feet out front, with their hands in their laps for two minutes to start with and no talking. There were no colors or books or anything to entertain, they simply had to obey for two minutes. They could look around but that was about it. After the session, she would praise them and sometimes give them a skittles or m&m or something. It took a day or two, with 2-3 sessions a day, and her within eyesight, for them to understand our expectations and learn how to sit. After a week of 2 minute sessions, she increased it to 5 minutes for a week, then 10 and so on until they could sit for 30 minutes, unsupervised. This would take about 6 weeks but the end result was that our children were sitting quietly with us in adult service by the time they were about 1 1/2 years old. This is no exaggeration, and very doable. I cannot begin to tell you how many compliments we received on the children because of this. I'd always tell them that it was Charity's fault! Though I didnt realize the importance of this one simple aspect of training then, the unintended results for this simple training exercise has been overwhelming. Our children have benefited from this so much.
Teaching boundaries
Another aspect of training that Charity would do was to teach boundaries. She kind of stumbled upon this one day when our son was just beginning to crawl. She had taken him outside and put him on a blanket in the grass. When he had crawled to the edge and first touched the grass, he really didnt like the feel or texture or something. After making a circuit around the edges of the blanket, he was pretty content to stay on the blanket to play. She decided to train the babies to stay on the blanket and used the edges for boundaries. It did take some time, but it wasn't too long before we could go anywhere and put down a blanket, and the kids would play happily within their boundaries.
Something else we did was to use what we called a cry corner. If the kids got their feel goods hurt or fussing or whatever, after about 1 years old, we would put them in the cry corner. The trick to this was that they could get out whenever they were done crying. There was no time limit that they had to be there, it was totally dependent on them. After a bit, all we had to do was to ask them if they needed some time in the cry corner and that usually would change their priorities very quickly.
Don't confuse 'discipline" with training! They are NOT the same thing. Typically, discipline is what happens when children reveal the level that they are trained to! (Or not) An untrained child will receive much more "discipline" than he or she is entitled to. A trained child will require minimal discipline.
Training is when you have a goal in mind, communicate that goal, along with acceptable and unacceptable means of achieving the goal, and apply supervision to the process until the child is able to function independently to achieve the stated goal.
In our home, the terrible two's never showed up! I think the reason why is because we began training in various areas as soon as possible. The will was shaped from an early age to reflect our priorities, so that we did not have to do battle with a two year old who had already been taught (by default usually) that his or her priorities could take precedence over ours.
Hope this has been a help. If not, sorry, this is all I got!
If I missed anything
@andrew please refresh my memory.
