Confessions of a first time mother

I confess that before I became a mom I would watch other people struggle with their kids and think of a hundred things I would do different or better if I were in that situation. I would see parents letting their little kids talk back to them, hit them, walk over them, etc... and think to myself, "There's no way I'll ever let my kid do that! My kids will respect me! I won't be afraid to discipline in public! When I say 'if you do that again we're going home' then by golly, we're going home!!"

Fast forward to my life with a 2 year old. The other night I had a two-part experience that made me realize that this parenting stuff is harder than it looks, and that I have a long way to go as far as learning how to effectively discipline my child.

The first part happened when we were at dinner at a friend's house. Teya climbed up on their coffee table and was scooting around all over it which is totally rude and out of line, but for some reason I just kept visiting and didn't make her get down till Taber gave me the "are we seriously gonna let her do that" look. So then I said, "Teya, get down from the table" to which she sassily shouted back, "NO Mommy!!!" Now this isn't the first time that Teya has said that to me, so that wasn't the big wake-up call, it was seeing my friend's face when she heard Teya shout at me. Her eyes just popped out of her head and she looked at me like, "There's no way that would ever fly in my house!" If the "pre-motherhood Becca" had witnessed that scene, I'm sure she would've had a thing or two to say about everything "post-motherhood Becca" did wrong. How the heck did I become such a pushover?

So part two of my wake-up call comes later that evening when I'm reading a parenting magazine article that says that giving children external rewards for expected behavior is lazy parenting. It's a quick fix in the short run, but in the long run will teach children to ask "What's in it for me?" if every time they do something good they get a treat. When I read that it seriously took the wind out of me. I've always been more of a reward the good ignore the bad kind of person, so with Teya that's what I've done. But lately as she's gotten more strong willed, I've resorted to giving her treats to do simple things like letting me change her diaper, put on her shoes, turn off the t.v. etc... I've become a bribe-aholic and as a result, Teya knows that acting up will get her a treat because mommy just wants it to stop.

Well after these two revelations Taber and I had a really long discussion about discipline and where we've gone wrong and how we can do better. We put our plan into action today and amazingly we made it through an entire day of church and dinner with another family without one bribe or treat. That may not sound like a big deal but it's pretty huge for me. The amazing thing was that even though Teya had a couple of meltdowns, I was amazed to see that they were resolved as quickly without a treat as they would've been with one. Sure I had to be more creative, but in the end it was nice to see that Teya is still capable of intrinsic motivation and can actually be reasoned with without resorting to bribery.

So thank goodness for wake-up calls, parenting magazines, late night couple chats, and mommy perspective. Now when I see a kid giving their parent a hard time in public I only feel empathy and understand much more clearly that parenting isn't black and white, and takes a lot of trial and error before you finally (if ever ; ) get it right.