Bees in My Bonnet

At Church we are doing a series on Jonah.  And so my mind has wandered, straight to the text, of course, and I have begun to think I can be just a bit inside Jonah's head.  With smug arrogance, I often (too often, I admit) have told my kids I can read minds.  And here I am, centuries after Jonah lived, and thinking I can somehow get inside his mind.  So, pardon my over-confidence here, but I'm just going to take a stab at what was going on with him. I'm going to use some sanctified imagination, and go out on a limb and fill in the gaps with my musings. I imagine that Jonah was raised by godly, somewhat rigid, well-meaning, devout, circumspect, righteous people.  He was probably a first-born: cautious, wanting to please, high-achieving, with keen insight and greater burdens of responsibility.  He took his upbringing well, I suppose, as we can guess because he went on to invest himself in full-time kingdom work as no less than a prophet.  I'll bet h...

Recently I've been thinking through our journey as parents - thus far.  We're still early in the game - our oldest is only 14.  And as I reflect on these 14 years, I realize we have made many mistakes, one of which I want to share with you all so you don't make them too.  The mistake is this:  Modelling our parenting after those whose kids were not yet grown and who we admired for their exterior superiorness in behaviour and respect. You see, we looked around us and picked out people with model children - those kids who smiled sweetly, were well-mannered, polite and obedient.  Emphasis on obedient .  These others were ahead a few years than we were, so of course their model - to produce such greatly performing kids - must be the way to go. Please don't do this. People look at us now and might be in our same shoes 14 years ago - our kids can look so wonderful to those who don't live here with us!  (Of course, they are  wonderful, don't get m...

Yesterday was hard for us.  One of our children had continual melt-downs and wrong perceptions and made our dinner-time almost unbearable.  Another kid plugged his ears and left the table at one point just to get away from the mayhem.   Amazingly , I didn't lose my temper.  (Insert applause here). Admitting this to the public is somewhat bold, and if I was the sensitive type I couldn't do it .  Everyone thinks they know how to handle a special-needs kid...until they have one.  I was confident in my parenting until life threw us a curveball.  I could have advised every parent out there exactly how to handle every possible disciplinary action imaginable.  I was creative, courageous, unyielding, stiff-necked even.   I was a Mom to be reckoned with. And then we had a child who didn't fit the mold.  He didn't roll with the punches.  He didn't 'get' our method.  He didn't conform, submit, respond or seem to even understand th...

Here I am eating humble pie.  If only it would truly make me humble. So much for not having Mommy-guilt. I spoke too soon. Because at supper tonight Timothy was reluctant to eat his refried beans and cilantro rice.  Never mind the leftover salmon crepes.  All he wanted was applesauce and PB&J, which clearly was not on the menu. So then I urged him to eat just one bite.  He would have none of it.  Then the crisis comes.  Is this a battle I want to wage?  Do I really care if he eats the beans and rice?  Is it worth it?  Am I a bad Mom if I back off? The debate goes on in my head: should I make an issue of this?  My instinct says NO.  I wouldn't want to be forced to eat when I don't want to, nor would I want to be forced to eat something I don't particularly care for.  But I am not a child and have developed a wide range of appetites for varied consumables.  Don't I want my kid to be as versatile in epicurean d...

A friend recently asked us for some ideas for parenting reading material.  I shot off a quick email summarizing some of the books we've read, appreciated and used.  I am not promoting any of these, just throwing out my comments for your interest: We started out using 'To Train Up a Child' by Michael and Debi Pearl. It requires wisdom to sift out some things we felt were just too radical.  But some situations call for 'radical'.  It was a good read, but I wouldn't use this as my sole 'go to' book - nor would I follow it rigidly. Reminder: every book we read (other than the Bible) needs to be sifted through the lens of Biblical wisdom.     Our other 'go-to' was Shepherding a Child's heart by ...Tripp.  Again, this is a favourite for many parents we know and seems harmless enough.  I can't fault the book except it being longer and tedious reading.  Some great concepts laid out and I appreciated that the focus is the heart of the child...

I really have a bee in my bonnet this time. I invite your comments and input here - please, share freely your opinions and insights! We started off as parents agreed that discipline in the home should be orderly, un-emotive, controlled, calm, and firm. We read books such as 'Shepherding a Child's heart' and 'To Train up a Child' among many others. We interviewed other parents whose kids we liked. We talked to kids raised in homes we respected. Many of our conclusions led to a non-emotional approach to discipline. We felt that discipline should always be divorced from expressed anger from the parent. Somewhere along the way I lost my convictions on this matter. I began to believe it was important for my kids to understand that anger isn't wrong, that disobedience invokes anger, that anger can be healthily displayed and controlled, that God can be angry at times - while still not treating us as our sins deserve - and on and on... At the same time...