Chewymom

I know it seems I go on these “Ezzo tangents” every so often. I truly am not out to get them. But things will come up on occasion in my parenting where I can’t help but go through a “then and now” scenario in my mind. It happened again recently.

DD3 and I were driving home from a trip–it was about a 5 hour drive. She was bored to tears and kept wanting to roll down the window. I said no because first, it was almost 90 degrees outside (what’s up with THAT in April??), so it was almost unbearable to have the windows down. But besides that, I have pretty bad asthma and allergies. At the moment I’m on an antibiotic, prednisone, Claritin, eyedrops, nose spray, and Qvar, just to keep me breathing well. I don’t need to encourage pollen to find me right now. So when DD3 would not heed my request to leave her window up, I locked it. She pitched a royal fit and declared that I am VERY MEAN to her.

So I had my flashback, as I was trying to ignore her cries and just DRIVE, darn it! When DS13 was 3, I was still controlling every choice he made. The old “red cup/blue cup” thing I’ve referred to before, where the Ezzos taught people to choose the cup color for their kids. The reasoning behind this was that you teach your child to submit to your choices so that you don’t have these outbursts when they don’t get their way. If they get used to making choices, then they don’t understand when you tell them no. So this trains them to accept what you say, to respect your authority and all. And when they show they are “wise” enough to handle choices, you open up the funnel and give them more choices. But ONLY after they’ve proven they can handle the freedom.

So, with DS13, I’m sure we would have never had that fit over the windows. But now, after five kids, I’m thinking, “WHO CARES???” I had a battle either way! DS13 learned artificially that he could not make choices…EVER. (We actually had to retrain his brain to trust himself and his instincts, but I’ve written about that in another blog.) DD3 is learning in real circumstances that sometimes she cannot make a choice. It means that sometimes she has public outbursts, which probably ought to embarrass me more than it does. But it isn’t like DS13 never fought for choices. He did. It was just in the privacy of my kitchen. Which was nice, because when I was out around others, he was well-behaved and people thought I was a wonderful mom. But in terms of the long-term training on choices, the only difference I really see is that DS13 learned that making choices was actually morally wrong. Always. DD3 is learning that I trust her to make good choices. And when she does not, or when I truly need to control the circumstance, I do. Either way is difficult at times, because at some point there will be a battle over a choice. It is the nature of a toddler. In fact, I believe it is how God has designed a toddler, so that they can learn about consequences and confidence and control.

Frankly, having done it both ways, I prefer the latter. I find my previous methods to be silly, mean-spirited, and more time-consuming in the long run as it requires retraining in decision-making skills later in life. The first way saves face, makes me look better as a mom and all. But is that really my goal in parenting? Um, no. I’ll take the occasional public humiliation, a few more tantrums in a store, embarrassing moments, and shrill screams from my child, but in the long run a more well-rounded individual who is confident in her worth as a person with an opinion!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 9:53 pm and is filed under GFI/Ezzo/Babywise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.