I am grateful for strong willed children.
When my daughter arrived I was thrilled to have a little girl. She was going to be a sweet little ballerina who loved her parents and was polite and obedient and lovely. Then she refused to sleep, like ever. And cried all day, every day, non stop for the first year. For 6 months she wouldn't eat anything but crackers and then started to say no... to everything. There would be no little ballerina here. She refuses to wear anything with stripes and puts herself in time out because she wants to be able to kick the car and take her brothers toys. I could go on and on.
I was complaining to a friend one day and she gave me some advice..
Don't try and break the will of that little girl. She is going to need it. Find a way to make it work.
It changed the way I viewed her stubbornness and the way I parented. Nothing I read about strong-willed children told me this, but it was the key to working with her. I started giving her choices, allowing her to feel in charge of herself but still accomplishing the parenting goal. I cared less about "winning" and more about shaping her strong personality into a confident leader. My little guinea pig was breaking me in as a parent and paving the way for her siblings without even knowing it. Bless her strong little stubborn self for that.
And she was right. Piper will need that iron will so many times in her life. All my kids will. They will face challenges I can't even imagine. Challenges that will shake them to the core and threaten their faith. They will need to stand up to bullies and defend their beliefs and rights and make their dreams happen despite circumstances and people who delight in their failure. I'm not trying to be dramatic just predicting the future based on what I have seen and know the world is only going to get worse. I often wonder how different my life would have been if I had never been broken.
Today, and everyday, I am grateful for my stubborn, exhausting, difficult, sweet perfect children's strong wills. As any parent with a strong-willed child knows, you have to be on your A-game all of the time. It's exhausting. Parenting solutions have to be tricky illusions of independence and don't always work twice.
But the alternative is a child who blindly follows, doesn't think for themselves, never questions, and can be led to do anything by anyone. I'd rather wear myself out parenting my stubborn little energy-sucker any day.
"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."
10:06 p.m. - 2012-11-16
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