Several months ago I wrote a post that summed up my parenting style at the time very well: https://foundmercyrambles.wordpress.com/2018/05/13/discipline/

A few months after writing that, a friend invited me to come along with her to a parenting class she wanted to take as she is preparing to adopt from foster care. She is single and the class required a partner. I’m still flattered she thought of me.

The class was nine weeks long. It was grounded in the work of Karen Purvis. I started reading The Connected Child and — Honestly? It seemed a little much like attachment style parenting. That “let’s all baby-wear and hold hands 24/7” hippie dippie crap. That came out a lot harsher than I really feel about it. I actually do like baby-wearing (although I really dislike the name of it; who wears people? Is this Silence of the Lambs?). It’s just that I just go a little bananas when I see parents abdicating their God-given authority over their children, which seems to go along with the attachment-style philosophy, in my very limited life experience and therefore humble opinion.

So I’m reading The Connected Child and vacillating between sighs of, “Well that’s just common sense” and “Well that’s just stupid.” I’m probably exaggerating a bit here for the point of the story. I like to do that. Just roll with it.

After I’ve read most of the The Connected Child, a bit of The Whole Brain Child, and some Parenting is Your Highest Calling, I go along with my friend to the first class. I leave shocked to find out how little people know about kids. That was my takeaway: people are idiots. I heard three families all give their own version of the same story: My child had a meltdown and I don’t know what on earth is wrong with him (or her). She shouldn’t get so upset over something so small. He should know better. She should understand that it’s unsafe. He shouldn’t need my help with that.

For an embarrassingly long number of classes, I would carpool home with my friend and I don’t know how many times I said in every conceivable manner, How can these people have kids and not know this? My wonderful friend listened and applauded my insight and congratulated my self-aware approach to parenting. Not once did she point out that I have a two year old and a four month old and no real experience. This is the kind of friend everyone should have. 10/10 recommend.

But somewhere along the line, as I kept reading these books and continued on with Nurturing Adoptions, The Out-of-Sync Child, and finally getting around to reading The Soul of Shame, something began to click.

I had a lot of built-in trust with Littlefoot just because I’d always been there for him, never let him go hungry or ignored, tried my best to make sure he had a stable routine. I wasn’t at risk of losing that trust by asserting my authority in ways that weren’t always empathetic or respectful. Before reading all these things and going to these classes, I saw obedience as a “win”. It didn’t matter to me if he was crying while he obeyed; he was doing what I asked and that was the goal.

My goal has changed dramatically as a parent, and I can’t even tell you when exactly this  happened. Sometime over the last nine weeks, I stopped seeing obedience as the goal. I stopped wanting to raise an obedient child; I started desiring most to raise a child who was secure in my love for him so that when God came calling for him, it wouldn’t be this huge leap of faith to accept this Heavenly Father who loved him when he was obedient, disobedient, or even apathetic.

The soil was ripe for this heart change, because looking back on the names we chose for our first versus our second son, it’s clear how our focus shifted. Love and I see names as our first gift to our child, and our personal blessing and hope for them. What we call them by every day, many times a day, we know they are more likely to become. So our firstborn child, we desired most for him to become a man of integrity and thus named him. But by the time we had a second child, we saw a greater blessing we could give, and so we named him after one who calls on the Lord from an early age. I joked with Love that by the time we hit the terrible twos we gave up on such lofty ideals of integrity and in exasperation just prayed our second would find the Lord early.

While it’s fun to joke that way, the truth is finding the Lord early is a greater blessing. But we bless with what we have, and we knew nothing better than integrity when Littlefoot was born. I still highly value integrity, but I know more now than I knew then that only the Lord can give this.

Only the Lord gives us anything good we find in our lives and in our hearts. So why did I think it was my job to teach my child to be obedient? The Lord will give the harvest; my job is to keep tending the soil. How do I do that? Listening, protecting, guiding, correcting.

If I could have a do-over of that night, I might have sat with Littlefoot for a minute, gave him some milk, let him calm down and tried again for putting away toys. I would not have gone straight to spanking when he refused to clean up. I would not have left him alone in his room, even for those few minutes. I would have (as I’ve done since) firmly placed him in a chair in the same room and picked up the majority of the toys for him, then asked him if he wanted to try picking up the rest of the toys himself. But my entire approach back then was set up in such a way that if I picked up any toys for him, I would be undermining my own authority with him. I was Mama Drill Sergeant.

I’m no longer Mama Drill Sergeant, and I no longer come to parenting armed with tricks and tips and a will of iron. I come to my child as a fellow human being who has been given the hugest honor and responsibility of being his mama.

The irony of the Dunning-Kruger effect is you can’t see where you are on it until you’ve passed the peak of “know-it-all”.

As I post this I hope I’m past that peak.

What I do know, without a doubt, is that I ended up learning a lot more than I let on during those car rides. Thank you, V.