And by dinosaurs, I mean grace.
Oh my God, grace.
It seems that the greatest recurring theme in my life - the subject I am constantly watching for and dwelling on with hopes to obtain a deeper understanding of is grace.
A few years ago, if I was honest, I might have confessed that I believed I had a decent grasp on the concept and what it meant for my everyday life. That some fine tuning here and there was certainly in order, but overall - I got the idea.
I was living in the thick of God's sweet, powdered sugar mercy, spending all of my time with people who speak the same winding, sparkly eyed language as me. Expecting the best of each other and offering relieved and timely forgiveness in the event of a misunderstanding.
We spent as much time exploring "God's imagination" (aka: the mountains, the forests, the rivers) as we did snuggled in blankets on cozy sofas partaking in coffee and quality conversation.
It was dreamy, you guys. Dreamy.
That was a time of learning to receive God's affection and love. I thought it was grace I was learning about, but it was more like the foundation to build onto.
Because to understand grace - for me to understand grace (even a little, as I realize more and more that understanding grace is something one forever grows in, as opposed to something one suddenly "gets") I had to do something wrong and be able to receive it. To be wronged and be able to give it. And the hardest: to see those that I love - those that I have deep affection for - wronged and still be able to extend mercy and grace to those doing the wronging in my heart.
The precious, syrupy, frolicking season passed and I entered a season full of something else altogether.
People I should have been able to trust as family started wounding each other. The things they did were damaging and made no sense to me.
All things were intensified by pregnancy nausea and hormones, but I dare say had it not been, I would have felt roughly the same.
I maintained a low-grade despair, interrupted occasionally by bursts of white hot rage that were generally followed by (if I was lucky) at least half an hour of hopeless sobbing.
How could they be so cruel? How dare they? Didn't they know what they were doing?
But that's the thing. They didn't. They don't. Jesus asked our Poppa to forgive them, for they know not what they do.
We don't know what we do.
I don't know what I do.
Oh God.
How we all lie to ourselves. How we all long to have value, to be "good" and worthwhile.
And this is what I realized.
I thought this stupid, raw, desperate season was useless and stagnant. It didn't glitter. It didn't dance. It didn't scoop me up and fly me around on a magic carpet singing, "I can show you the world!".
It sat painfully in my hands like a hot coal begging to be thrown in the faces of those I silently hated. Doing nothing to them. Burning me.
I told it I was determined not to be that person. I blew on my coal, trying to put it out, but my strife only fanned it to flame. I read Scripture to it, trying to talk it into going cold because children of God are called to forgive. To forgive the inexcusable. The unforgivable, even.
I figured, "I'm ok. I forgive them. If it were freezing and they were naked, I would give them my coat. And then I would walk away so I wouldn't have to listen to them talk! Jerks! Kidnappers! Abusers of the elderly! Destroyers of family!"
And the coal burned hot in my hands.
But today I stood in church and thought about how stubborn I have been in my passions in the past. How it felt to be convinced I was right and to have others take issue with me, believing I was wrong.
And all the times I *was* wrong.
And I realized that this has not been a stagnant season. This has been a rich, refining season.
Because now I "get it" just a little bit more.
That while there is a very distinct right vs wrong, there is no one human on the planet who has a handle on right and wrong the way God does.
That is why Scripture tells us there is none righteous, no, not one.
When it all boils down, we are left with simple truth, which is that everyone has a reason for believing how they believe and doing what they do.
And everyone is sometimes wrong.
Thank God for grace, for I am wrong.
Thank God for grace, for they are wrong.
I also realized that, for me, anger can keep me from breaking through to forgiveness.
Anger is a motivating emotion - compelling one with adrenaline towards DOING. It is purposeful. It is when there is nothing constructive to DO that anger can begin to fester and become hurtful.
So it goes, like the stages of grief. Because (I think I am figuring out) that forgiveness requires grieving.
Bargaining, sadness, acceptance.
Ah. And there it is. It is not my job to correct those I perceive as being wrong. Once the damage is done, if they are unwilling to move towards health (mental/spiritual/emotional health), unwilling to make amends, unwilling to have grace for others or themselves, unwilling to entertain the idea of coming on over towards my perception of rightness, it is not even my right to push them towards it.
I can let my anger diminish because there is nothing more constructive to DO.
It is ok for them to be (as I see it) wrong.
And then I am free to grieve. And pray that they would be guided into actual rightness, as God knows it and I do not.
Today, in church, I looked down and discovered that my hot coal went cold, and my burns are nearly healed.
Grace, grace, grace.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Monday, August 20, 2012
Adventures in Breastfeeding
Weeeeeeee!
I will warn you ahead of time there will be breastfeeding photos in this post. If you don't wanna see 'em, theeeen... don't! :)
Okay. So.
Breastfeeding is oh so crazy important to me for a great many reasons. Human milk for human babies, ya'll! Easy on their little guts. Full of immune system goodness and germ fighting substances. Helps mama and baby catch that desperately sought after sleep with slumber inducing properties. Makes co-sleeping so much safer. (But of course co-sleeping is it's own lovely can of worms. A can of worms that brought rest back into our home.)
Nursing helps ditch pregnancy weight and lessens a mothers chances of breast cancer.
The list goes on and on. The benefits are indisputably fabulous.
I'm absolutely not here to cast judgement on mothers who can't breastfeed, for whatever reason. Sometimes there are real obstacles that stand squarely in between a mother and her desire to breastfeed and it can happen that there really and truly isn't a thing she can do about it.
I can only speak of my own experience.
So here's how it went (and is still going) down for me.
The little round cheeked child started out nursing like a tiny fiend. It was actually, literally, constant. He would just nurse and nurse and nurse and nurse and NURSE until he would pass out and finally sleep from sheer exhaustion for about 45 minutes and then wake up hungry again.
And Dear God, the pain.
Most people said that if it hurt you were doing it wrong. But I knew what a good latch looked like, and he looked latched properly to me.
Some people said there is a normal period of initial tenderness.
I thought perhaps I was just a huge wuss, and by initial tenderness, they actually meant something more along the lines of bruises and a distinct feeling that I was probably going to pass out and die every time he latched on.
Forget worrying about modesty. I hurt too much to give a rip about that.
Thankfully, we took him to be weighed about a week and a half after he was born.
When my midwife told me to come on back after he finished nursing, and I snorted, "Right. Because nursing ends.", she raised an eyebrow. Wise lady. She knew exactly what was going on.
My little lad had a tongue tie.
That means the muscle that holds the tongue to the bottom of his mouth was too far up on his tongue for him to use it properly. He couldn't even stick his tongue out past his lower gum line.
As a result, he couldn't suck properly, and instead of nursing in a nutritive way, he was chomping. This yielded very little milk for all the work he was doing, and also, I will tell you right now that gums are not soft. Shudder.
I can't even tell you how grateful I am that my midwife knew exactly what to look for. She helped us correct it and then taught us some exercises to teach him how to suck correctly.
I might add that those exercises were terrifying. He was placed belly down in my lap, and then I had to pull his head up/back and put my finger in his mouth to draw the tongue forward to create the action necessary for nutritive sucking. I was certain I was going to break him.
But he didn't break. He learned to nurse.
I will warn you ahead of time there will be breastfeeding photos in this post. If you don't wanna see 'em, theeeen... don't! :)
Okay. So.
Breastfeeding is oh so crazy important to me for a great many reasons. Human milk for human babies, ya'll! Easy on their little guts. Full of immune system goodness and germ fighting substances. Helps mama and baby catch that desperately sought after sleep with slumber inducing properties. Makes co-sleeping so much safer. (But of course co-sleeping is it's own lovely can of worms. A can of worms that brought rest back into our home.)
Nursing helps ditch pregnancy weight and lessens a mothers chances of breast cancer.
The list goes on and on. The benefits are indisputably fabulous.
I'm absolutely not here to cast judgement on mothers who can't breastfeed, for whatever reason. Sometimes there are real obstacles that stand squarely in between a mother and her desire to breastfeed and it can happen that there really and truly isn't a thing she can do about it.
I can only speak of my own experience.
So here's how it went (and is still going) down for me.
The little round cheeked child started out nursing like a tiny fiend. It was actually, literally, constant. He would just nurse and nurse and nurse and nurse and NURSE until he would pass out and finally sleep from sheer exhaustion for about 45 minutes and then wake up hungry again.
And Dear God, the pain.
Most people said that if it hurt you were doing it wrong. But I knew what a good latch looked like, and he looked latched properly to me.
Some people said there is a normal period of initial tenderness.
I thought perhaps I was just a huge wuss, and by initial tenderness, they actually meant something more along the lines of bruises and a distinct feeling that I was probably going to pass out and die every time he latched on.
Forget worrying about modesty. I hurt too much to give a rip about that.
Thankfully, we took him to be weighed about a week and a half after he was born.
When my midwife told me to come on back after he finished nursing, and I snorted, "Right. Because nursing ends.", she raised an eyebrow. Wise lady. She knew exactly what was going on.
My little lad had a tongue tie.
That means the muscle that holds the tongue to the bottom of his mouth was too far up on his tongue for him to use it properly. He couldn't even stick his tongue out past his lower gum line.
As a result, he couldn't suck properly, and instead of nursing in a nutritive way, he was chomping. This yielded very little milk for all the work he was doing, and also, I will tell you right now that gums are not soft. Shudder.
I can't even tell you how grateful I am that my midwife knew exactly what to look for. She helped us correct it and then taught us some exercises to teach him how to suck correctly.
I might add that those exercises were terrifying. He was placed belly down in my lap, and then I had to pull his head up/back and put my finger in his mouth to draw the tongue forward to create the action necessary for nutritive sucking. I was certain I was going to break him.
But he didn't break. He learned to nurse.
It still hurt like the dickens, though, for quite some time.
So much so that I had a routine in place to create a diversion for myself and make it as easy as I possibly could. I would sit down with the Boppy (oh glorious breast-feeding pillow) and send my dear and patient hubby to grab me a tall glass of water, which I would then chug like I had just spent the last few hours crawling across the Serengeti.
I would pull up something on Netflix that was just entertaining enough to be distracting, but brainless enough that I didn't have to pay total attention (enter: Queer Eye for the Straight Guy - which, I might add, is old enough now that the fashion advice is adorably out dated), and then I would wince and swear and remind myself to breathe through another nursing session.
When it was over, I would quickly hand the little squisher off to his poppa and head straight for my hippie nipple balm, crying happy tears that it was over for at least another half hour. Then I would plunk the kid into a sling and go for a walk while he napped.
It didn't start to feel better until he was close to twelve weeks old. Yowza, that was intense. But when his third month rolled around, we felt ready to celebrate. And so we bought some cake.
The wee one shared this cake with us via breast milk ;).
But it was like waking up after a hazy dream, that three month mark. My body was finally beginning to feel like it was mine again. And nursing was becoming a normal part of life instead of something that life had to stop for me to participate in.
I was learning to watch my baby and not the clock. Something I believed in, but that I had been nervous about. I didn't schedule this baby. I won't.
But I was using the clock, neurotically, to make sure he kept on nursing and nursing for at least a certain amount of time. Afraid I wouldn't get enough in him. That my supply would diminish.
I had a long list of silly and outrageous fears.
That, for example, when I felt so irate with one of the many crazy people who have infiltrated my life and the lives of my loved ones, my breast milk would simply turn into white hot molten lava.
(I may or may not have daydreamed about shooting the white hot molten lava version of it at said crazy people, but this did not lessen my fear of what it could do to my child in that state.)
Gradually, as my body had healed in it's own time, my fears subsided.
I learned to nurse laying on my side, so that he could just slip into sleep and not need to be moved. Or so that I could get a little more rest, too, on a sleepy day.
And I, as my latest feat, have finally sorted out nursing in not only a mei tai, but also a ring sling.
They say that a ring sling is easier, but it was way more tricky to me. Also, that picture is awkward. I've gotten way better at it since then, and so has the little child. High five, little child!
Incidentally, that's the other thing. As mama gets better at nursing, so does babe.
This thing that was, at first, so wildly difficult became second nature. I have mastered the stretchy-shirt-under-a-tshirt, pull-undershirt-down-and-overshirt-up method, so that nursing in public is a piece of cake.
Well, almost. We are now entering the stage in which there is much unlatching to look about and grin at everyone.
But hey. Challenge accepted. :)
Monday, July 30, 2012
A person's a person no matter how small.
Aha. Welcome to my long winded "Why I don't believe in spanking" post.
You will soon find that spanking isn't the whole issue with me. I don't believe in punishment at all (GASP!).
'Course permissiveness can be unhealthy as well, so I am setting out on this parenting journey to tread not somewhere in between those two evils, but outside the whole paradigm altogether. Onward, fellow travelers! To the land of gentle discipline! (I'm cheesy and I know it... beeeooouuup beeouup beoup beoup beoup beoup beoup. Girl, look at that baby. He drinks milk! Okay, yes. Too much coffee. I'm out of control.)
Now that you know what you're getting yourself into (should you choose to read on), allow me to indulge in a disclaimer.
And it shall be fuchsia. Which is spelled much more weirdly than I thought.
Ahem.
This is not an attack.
I have close friends who spank, and I adore each of them. I am not insinuating any sort of negativity whatsoever towards those friends and/or their sweet little children. I do not and will not sit around making grim predictions of their futures. They have attentive parents who love them. Their futures are bright!
There is no way around the fact that since I so dearly disagree with punitive parenting, I will disagree with any and every choice to spank or shame a child. And so, it follows that I will disagree with my friends - loving and attentive as I know them to be.
But if you are a parent who spanks and believes it is the right thing for you to do on occasion and you are my friend and you are reading this: please know that I am not walking about dwelling on this disagreement/difference. I have all faith in you and your parenting. I love you, and am grateful for your sweet presence in my life.
And now back to our feature presentation.
Often, it seems, punishment is seen as non-negotiable by many in the Christian community. Being a Christian myself, I grew up thinking that "Spare the rod, spoil the child" was actually in the Bible as a command.
Turns out it's not.
That phrase was actually coined by Samuel Butler, who wrote a poem called Hudibras. He tossed that in there to make fun of the practice that modern day spanking actually originated from: domestic discipline. Oh, barf.
So, fine. But there are verses in there. The rod verses in proverbs. You can find a link to a smart and lovely blog in my shorter winded rant about spanking that details some serious research regarding those verses.
But here I will just, for brevity sake (Ha, brevity. Like I know how to use that.), point out my favorite soap boxes about those rod verses.
I can't remember where I first heard it, but I will happily cite the brilliant and lovely Crystal Lutton, who holds a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. This is her website. It is full of eye opening facts and the like, including a nice little dissection of some of those verses.
I have learned that there are problems with the way these verses have been translated/understood.
Basically, we have a verse that in English is over there saying (Proverbs 23: 13-14) "Withhold not the rod of correction from your child, for if you beat him with the rod he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod and deliver his soul from Hell."
Meep.
I stand corrected.
Haha, juuuuuust kidding :).
To my best understanding, the word "rod" in this verse was translated from the word "shebet" which has three meanings in Hebrew. It could refer to a King's scepter (which was a symbol of authority, and not used to hit people with) or a shepherd's staff. A shepherd's staff was used for 4 things: to gently nudge the sheep to and fro as they traveled to keep them headed in the correct direction, to pry brambles away from wool and free a sheep if he got carried away eating berries and found himself tangled in the thorns, to lift a sheep out of a pit with the hooked end if he fell in as he meandered along aimlessly, or to whack a wolf with if it tried to attack a sheep.
A good shepherd would never hit his sheep, despite that there is a ridiculous myth bopping around out there that shepherds used to break a lamb's legs so that he could nurture it back to health and then the poor creature would follow him everywhere. But this is patently false. A friend of mine explained that away beautifully. And goodness, I know you savvy readers know better than to think an abused animal would follow it's abuser anywhere ever again.
A sheep is, as it turns out, sheepish. They don't do so well when you hit them. Pretty much no one does ;).
Not to mention that if the legs healed but left the sheep lame, it would hold up the whole flock. Like I said, ridiculous.
Ah, but i said 3, didn't I. Shebet has a third meaning, and that is this crazy wooden club type thing with nails and junk sticking out of it everywhere (or something equally terrifying) that actually would kill a child if he was beaten with it. So it is all kinds of unlikely that the club is what that verse is referring to.
AHEM. Also :).
The word "beat" was translated from in that verse was, apparently, the same word used for "beat" in Jonah 4:8 where it talks about how the sun beat down on Jonah. Literally, it meant something to the effect of "To be ever present and not always in a pleasant way - just generally always there".
That was a terrible paraphrase from me, but you get the idea.
So better translated from the Hebrew, to the very best of my understanding, that verse comes out more like "If you are constantly present with your gentle guiding staff, your child will not die."
And that is truth.
There is more. In another verse, it pretty much does sound like it is implying that you must hit your kid if he.... oooooh, if he has committed very adult sins that would bring shame upon the family. The word used for "son" is the word na'ar, which was used for young adults. Not small children. And interestingly, never girls. Only men.
I have heard it argued that we should look at the fact that parents were told to actually STONE their rebellious offspring to death in the old testament and maybe chill out because now we're only taught to spank them.
First of all, what? *Blinks*. Well, then why aren't we still stoning our kids, if we're following Scripture literally?
Oh yeah, context. :).
Second of all, even more context :). For further study will show that 1) there had to be a certain amount of witnesses present and the "rebellion" had to be very serious and essentially the parents had to go before the town elders or whathaveyou and admit that they had absolutely and in every way failed their child as parents. And 2) I need to look into this a lot, lot more, but my very best understanding right this second is that in some crazy way it was actually sort of a mercy. Don't ask me why. I've yet to figure that out enough to utter one single word about it.
In any event, I encourage you to dig in deep if you feel like something in Scripture doesn't fit with God's character of grace, mercy, and lovingkindness. So far, further investigation has always pointed me towards Him being Him. Wild love.
I also need to throw out there another very important fact. Proverbs are proverbial. They are not commands. They were meant to be vivid word pictures used to drive home a point.
I find it very interesting that Christians cling to the rod verses as a reason to hit their children, but I do not know one single Christian who would take Proverbs 23:2 literally and "Put a knife to your throat if you are a man of great appetite". For some reason we can all see clearly that this statement was not meant to be taken literally, and yet whole methods of parenting are built on a few similar verses in the very same book.
Somehow, the rest of the Bible is disregarded.
You thought I was done? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just warming up.
You see, somehow the word "discipline" has become synonymous to many in our culture with "punishment".
Egads!
Discipline really means "to teach". As it came from the word "disciple".
So, I am compelled to look at the way that Jesus discipled his ... disciples. Yes, He was at times firm and to the point with them, but He never once resorted to violence to teach them. And they were grown adults. Just imagine how gentle He would have been with children.
As a matter of fact, the whole message of the gospel is that we have not been given what we deserve. We have not been punished, even though we have done - all of us - a million things wrong in a day. Because punishment doesn't help us learn. So God made a way that we could be spared what we deserve - we could be spared punishment. He'd rather we learn. He'd rather we be taught. He'd rather we'd heal and become whole like He meant for us to be in the first place. And punishment does not accomplish any of those things in adults.
And punishment does not accomplish any of those things in a child.
It is as 1 John 4:18 encourages us. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love because He first loved us."
Love, not punishment, ya'll :).
Even during a time when the cultural predisposition was to send children away rather than risk having to be exposed to a little one's developmentally expected disruptive behavior, Jesus Himself said to bring them straight to Him.
They were (and are) the least of these. When Jesus said to bring the little children to Him, He was validating their value as humans. Bringing them up onto the same level of worth as adults.
That is what God does, you see. He is constantly elevating those that society sees as having of a lesser status to a place of equality and value.
So from a religious/Christian standpoint, I have to say that I am in every way convicted against punitive parenting - especially, but not limited to, spanking or any other form of violence. For me and my family, If I hit my child, I will have sinned. I will owe him and God an apology.
And God would forgive me, because I am already righteous under the Blood of Christ. And from that forgiveness, I would grow more able to be patient with my child. My little least of these. See how that works? :)
Forgiveness is for when someone has done something inexcusable. We are to excuse the excusable. And forgive the inexcusable. And heap grace and mercy on those around us (including our children... especially our children.). We are able to do so because God has/does heaped/heaps grace and mercy on us.
Come along, friend! We have made it through the Sparkly Forest of Scriptural Interpretation and are wading reluctantly into the bog of common arguments. There's one! Straight ahead! (No, I have not eased up on the coffee. Why do you ask?)
I was spanked and I turned out just fine!
Did you, now? Teehee, just kidding. Sort of.
It is a special kind of awkward when someone goes and tries to hold him/herself up as an example of parenting goals well accomplished. We all have flaws. No matter how we were parented.
And anecdotal evidence is not evidence.
And besides, I probably deserved it!
Oh, really? You deserved to be hit because you were in a developmental stage in which it is natural to be literally unable to control your impulses? No. You didn't deserve it.
It doesn't mean your parents are bad people, or that they weren't doing the best they could with the knowledge they had. It doesn't mean they didn't love you or have beautiful intentions, and it doesn't mean that they were bad parents. It doesn't mean that all the things they did right are suddenly void. But no child deserves to be hit for any reason. That includes you. I don't care what you did. You didn't deserve to receive violence in return for it, at an innocent age.
It is the only thing that works! I was the kind of kid that needed a whoopin', and my kid is the same way! Nothing else gets his/her attention!
Oooooookay. Here's the thing. Yes, for some kids, spanking "works". In that it will stop a behavior. Sometimes even on the first try. And some kids will stop a behavior because they are afraid of time out or a mean look.
I see these all (the punitive measures) as parenting "short cuts". A swift and easy means to an end - if the end is simply behavior modification.
Some kids will "stop" a behavior because they were spanked... except they won't. They'll just get really good at making sure they don't get caught again.
I am so much more deeply concerned with what kind of adult my child grows up to be than with how obedient he is as a little one.
That he would desire to do what is right because it is what is right and not because he is afraid of the consequences if he does wrong.
I want him to know that he need not fear being honest with me because I will always be on his side. Helping him learn how to navigate life.
That our relationship would not be injured and re-injured every time he does something developmentally expected - no matter how wrong it is.
Deep in my bones, I have a suspicion that many things that look like short cuts - when it comes to relationships - can easily end up being long and painful detours.
Punitive parenting is adversarial. It pits parent against child. It creates a battle of the wills. Whoever wins hangs onto his/her will. Whoever loses goes away with a will that is either broken or secretly strengthened. (More on this later). But the truth is that when one party wins, everybody loses. Relationship is injured. A valuable teaching opportunity is lost.
Do I want my words to have meaning? Do I want him to listen to me? Yes, of course I do. But there are so many more options outside of the paradigm of permissive vs punitive.
There is this beautiful thing called grace based discipline.
How do I teach a stubborn two year old who can't be reasoned with that Momma's words mean something without violence or over-talking? Oh, there are so many ways :). I only know a few so far. Playful parenting, getting up and moving them to action, redirection, and transitional songs, and simply finding creative ways to set everyone up for success in the first place, for example.
And I know that life can really come at you sideways a million miles a minute sometimes.
And please don't get me wrong. I absolutely expect to do everything all wrong the vast majority of the time. Novice, that I am.
But there are resources! Resources upon resources with different teaching tools to try so that I can find out what works best for my child in any given scenario.
There is all kinds of access (thank you, internet) to clever ideas for helping children learn through their respective developmental stages. And there is information aplenty about those stages, as well.
And I will be very happy to blog about what has or hasn't worked for us in the future, for anyone who is interested :).
But sometimes, my child is directly disobedient. He/she KNOWS he/she is defying me and breaking the rules! And he/she does it anyway! That definitely warrants a spanking. Or a time out at the very least.
There are a few variations of this argument. Some more intense than others. So I shall break it down.
There is the camp of "First time obedience is the only obedience! They must do as I say on the very first try, or else it's like they never obeyed me at all! And if they don't obey me on the first try, they won't obey God on the first try! God calls us to first time obedience AAAAHHHH!"
Okay buckeroo. Have a handful of chocolate chips and glass of rice milk with me and breathe for a second, pretty please.
Ahem, and turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 21: 28 - 30.
"But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, 'Son, go work today in the vineyard.' And he answered, 'I will not'; but afterward he regretted it and went. The man came to the second and said the same thing; and he answered, 'I will, sir'; but he did not go. 'Which of the two did the will of his Father?' They said, 'The first'. Jesus said to them, 'Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you."
Obedience is obedience. No matter how many tries it took us.
Then there is the camp of "A child's will must be broken! That is how true obedience is achieved!"
I won't even go into a passionate rant about this. Instead I will link you to a beautiful post where the argument has been succinctly put already. And I will add a quote from that very post, even, 'cause it's so good (A quote within a quote... a dweam wivin a dweam... I'm doing it again, aren't I? My bad... here's the awesome quote) :
"It wasn't until recently when I was reading about the persecution of Roman Christians under Communist rule that something changed for me. According to the late Patriarch Theoctist of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 'Man has a very powerful will - so powerful that even God Himself does not break it. And by this [God] is actually showing that man is in the likeness of God. Without man's will he could not make any progress on the way to goodness. So out of all the gifts that God grants the human being, we believe that freedom is one of the most important.' (Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer, p. 126)' "
Suffice it to say that I absolutely 10000000% do not believe in breaking anyone's will. Much less a child's.
Then there is the camp full of normal, tired parents who are just over it with having their sweet babies look at them in the eye and do that thing they've demonstrated already a million times that they know how not to do, just to get on Mom and Dad's last, raw, exhausted nerve.
And to those parents, I say this:
I am so sorry, and I am not far behind joining your weary ranks one of these days.
But I still don't believe direct disobedience warrants punishment, and this is why:
I want my children to have a strong will. They will be needing that will in the future, to say no to peer pressures and all the alluring temptations of the world. They can practice crossing their arms and saying no to me as many times as they need to. It is important to me to make our home a safe place to practice saying no.
It is about learning healthy boundaries.
They are learning where they end and where another person begins. And also where other people end and they begin.
Now, of course, if I have told my three year old child five hundred times that the cat is not meant to be a projectile, and one afternoon following an exhausting morning he scampers away from me and reappears from round the corner with the cat in his hands and that twinkle of "direct disobedience" in his eye and then high tails it outside before I can catch him and tosses the cat off the balcony and onto his cousin, YES, I am going to be very upset.
But punishing him would not be constructive. Punishing him would be the wrong thing to do. Even if his cousin has to go get stitches because she tried to catch a creature falling from the sky who had become nothing but a yowling ball of teeth and claws.
I would need to remember to assign positive intent to my child.
A very small child has not yet developed the ability to have empathy. If an adult behaves without empathy - that pretty much makes him/her a sociopath. But a three year old is not sociopathic. A three year old also does not want an adult person much bigger then him/her to be angry at him/her.
Try to remember when you were a child. If you did something in "direct disobedience" to your parents, was it because you wanted to DEFY them? Or was it because you were intensely curious? Were you (as my mama friends like to say) hungry, angry, lonely, bored, or tired?
And if my child is testing a boundary it is not to try to win one over on me. It is literally simply to learn the boundaries.
Punishments are designed to teach through pain. But I don't believe that pain is necessary for teaching, nor do I believe that it will teach without causing damage.
Natural consequences make sense and they do not damage the relationship between parent and child. If the cat must be kept away from the child until the child is able to keep him/herself from harming the cat, that is a natural consequence. It might make my child very sad to lose access to the cat, but this is not pain I am inflicting on him/her. It is me keeping everyone safe.
And so there is no break in the relationship with my child. If he is sad, I can hold him and comfort him without feeling as though I am lessening the pain I intended to inflict to drive a message home.
I can help him make amends with his cousin, and it is much more likely that he will communicate the all important WHY with me so I can know why he threw the cat over the balcony. If it turns out he did it because he was curious how a cat always lands on it's feet, I can teach him about that. If he was angry with his cousin over something, I can address that.
Punishments don't get to the root of the problem.
There is a reason behind disobedience. And it is important to me to figure out that reason as often as I can.
And if I tell them to do something ridiculous and they defy me and then I realize I was being ridiculous, I will be proud of them for sticking to their guns. Because there is absolutely a time and a place for that. And they will begin to learn when and how and when not at home where they are safe.
What about when they do something dangerous? Like running into the road? I must spank for danger!
First of all, spanking for danger assumes that the child first must attempt the dangerous thing. So do children need to try to run into the road and then play with a chainsaw and then walk on broken glass and then stand near the edge of a cliff and then...
and be spanked every time to learn to be safe?
Kids invent new hair raising ways to endanger themselves all day every day, don't they? Should they be spanked every time?
No, of course not.
Spanking/punishing a child for doing something dangerous to prevent them from doing it again takes the responsibility for keeping the child safe off the parent, and places it on the child.
And if there must be a last resort, I will concede that being hit is better than being run over - but so is being a leash kid. There is always a gentle option.
I will add here that many of my college courses were child/human development. I have worked in daycare and in group homes for teenagers and adults with autism.
I didn't punish in any of those settings. Nobody was injured, either.
That is very different from being a parent. I know this. I have only been a parent for 4 1/2 months, and it already is like no other thing I've ever done. Every second. Of every day. And night.
But my point is that there are ways to keep people from hurting each other and/or doing wrong things without the use of punishment. There have to be.
Because you can not spank a child with autism no matter how many times he tries to make a beeline for the road. That child will not be able to process what punishment did to him. Parents of children with disabilities find other ways to keep their dear ones safe, and parents of typically developing children can, too.
My best friend, for example, used to tell her daughter, "Keep one hand on the red car." as she unloaded her groceries. That worked for her. It might not work for my kid or your kid, but this is our job as parents. To figure out our children and what works for them. We can keep them safe without punishing them, I promise.
Also, parents who have not spanked for danger have found that their children are more likely to come back to them when called (because they are not afraid of being punished! Surprise!)
"What if I have tried grace and mercy and the children took advantage?"
We take advantage of God's grace and mercy every day, and yet He does not withhold it from us. Nor should we withhold it from our kids.
What we say to them will become the way they speak to themselves when they grow up. When they are little, they look to us to see what God is like. WHOA.
So I think, for me, I would want to do my very best to continue with the grace and mercy (How many times did Jesus say to forgive? 77 times 7? I believe that applies to our children, too.) and also try to figure out what isn't working if the kids keep acting like banshees. Did everyone get enough protein today? Sleep? Again, are we hungry, angry lonely, tired? Or not tired enough? Should we break out some sensory play or big muscle movement? What developmental stages are my kiddos in? What do they need so that they can feel good enough to be physically able to listen?
I don't even know who started it, but my best friend (and a bunch of amazing mamas I now know) use a "comfort corner" to teach their kids how to put themselves in time out. Not as a punishment - but literally to teach them the life skill of being able to remove themselves from a situation if they are becoming too emotional to control themselves.
Sometimes I think I could use a comfort corner.
I'll let you all know more about that and how it goes when we start using it with our little guy.
Anyway, the point is - outside the paradigm of permissive vs punitive there are whole piles of tools out there to help meet the needs of all kinds of children.
"I have to show them who is in authority!"
They know you're in authority! You already have complete and total control over their entire environment. They cannot eat without you deciding to feed them. Hitting a child only makes them suddenly feel as though you are able to lose control of yourself. It makes the environment they live in feel slightly (or vastly, depending of frequency/intensity/etc) less stable.
Punishment is about control. Control is only healthy when it is exerted upon something one possesses. It is healthy for me to control my emotions. I possess them. It is healthy for me to control my habits. I possess them as well.
It is not healthy for me to seek to control another human being (not that I want my kids to be "out of control" - but that means something different than what I am talking about here). It would not be healthy for me to see my children as my possessions. I do not own them any more than I own my husband or my mother or my sibling.
They have been entrusted to my care, but they belong to the Lord. Just like you and I belong to Him. I desire too greatly to show respect for Him and this gift He has bestowed on my life to seek control. Instead, I will seek relationship and understanding.
...........
Okay I think we're near the outskirts of the bog of disagreements. What say you? I'm trying to think of other's I've heard. Spanking to keep kids out of jail? Too bad 99% of prison inmates were spanked as children.
Eep! I spy yet another on it's way towards us!
"I would never spank my child in anger, so it is okay and safe."
Would you understand it better if someone flew off the handle and whacked you in a fit of rage, or if that angry person went away and collected him/herself and then came back and told you that what you did was wrong, and you deserve to be punished, so, go on and sit right down so I can calmly cause you bodily pain. For your own good.
Please. That doesn't work on kids any better than it does adults. Yes, it might stop the behavior, but again I say at what cost to the relationship? At what cost to actual learning? And sadly, at what cost to the picture they have of themselves?
So many women in abusive relationships find themselves making excuses for their abusers. Their internal voice - the voice of their parents - is in their head saying that they have done something to deserve being abused by their spouse.
Anyone can end up in an abusive relationship. No matter how strong or independent they are. That is another topic all together, but my point is that I would never ever want to teach a child that anything they can ever do makes it okay for another human to strike them.
Spanking in a controlled way says, "It is okay for someone to hit you if they are bigger. If they hold more power in the relationship. If you have done something to deserve it. The person hitting you gets to decide if you have done something to deserve it or not. And that is okay."
Spanking in anger and then apologizing later says, "I am human like you and I made a terrible mistake. You can never do anything that would make it right for me [or anyone else] to do this to you."
Studies have shown, even, that parents who are spanking while "not angry" are often spanking much harder than they thought they were. Bollocks that I can't find you a link right now. I'll add it later if I remember :).
Okay, enough of that. I'm sure I have convinced you, at the very least, that I can ramble endlessly against any pro-spanking argument tossed my way. So I will just add a few more points and then you can all go have a pizza eating contest... or... sit in a tree and silly string unsuspecting passersby .... or... go google what Nessie would look like with a mohawk, whatever kids are doing these days :).
* Spanking/punishing doesn't only harm the child - it also does something really crappy to the punisher as well. I have never met a parent who really feels good about it, and I think it's because deep in their gut, they at least feel a check.
This is because, besides the immediate damage to the relationship, it also changes the way the parent views his/her child. To use terms in one's mind such as "He deserved it!" or "He was directly disobeying me!" or "It's just a rebellious attitude!" paints a hard to handle little one in an even tougher light.
If I instead say of my child, "Wow, he must have felt so hurt/out of control/left out..." or "He desperately needs some one on one times with his momma" or even, "He is experiencing the natural consequences of his behavior and might need some comfort, but next time we can set him up for success by..." it feels empowering instead of bleak. It puts my child back into a human light in which he is truly just a little person going through developmental stages and needing guidance.
* Study after study after study has shown that long term spanking does not work. As a matter of fact, children who are modeled violence are more likely to see violence as a viable option for their own behavior as they grow older.
And why wouldn't they?
If it is never, ever okay for my son to hit a friend or a sibling, then it is never, ever okay for me to hit him.
*Studies have also shown that long term, spanking can result in an adult with mental illness. Depression. Anxiety.
Again, I will add links if I can find them, but if you are so moved to do any research at all regarding spanking and you dare to read actual scientific studies, you will find again and again that spanking has been shown ineffective and damaging for the long term.
* Spanking is illegal in Sweden.
There's a can of worms for ya! Hehehe, noooo, I am not going to try to hash out whether it should be legal here or not in this blog post - or maybe ever. That would be a bit of a red herring, don't you think? Let's not follow that train of thought down the bunny trail.
I only bring it up to point out that in a country where spanking is illegal, somehow everyone grew up without being run over by a vehicle or turning into hooligans. In fact, the Sweeds I've met in real life have been polite and charming individuals.
Of course anecdotal evidence isn't evidence, so never mind that ;).
___________
Okay, so. That was very very long. If you read it all, you can be sure that I adore you for it.
And if I think of more things to say, I will probably come back and try to add them later. There are so many angles to see this thing from. But I confess... I am an ENFP and I am sort of tired now of blathering about one topic.
Much love to you, all of you.
Peace.
You will soon find that spanking isn't the whole issue with me. I don't believe in punishment at all (GASP!).
'Course permissiveness can be unhealthy as well, so I am setting out on this parenting journey to tread not somewhere in between those two evils, but outside the whole paradigm altogether. Onward, fellow travelers! To the land of gentle discipline! (I'm cheesy and I know it... beeeooouuup beeouup beoup beoup beoup beoup beoup. Girl, look at that baby. He drinks milk! Okay, yes. Too much coffee. I'm out of control.)
Now that you know what you're getting yourself into (should you choose to read on), allow me to indulge in a disclaimer.
And it shall be fuchsia. Which is spelled much more weirdly than I thought.
Ahem.
This is not an attack.
I have close friends who spank, and I adore each of them. I am not insinuating any sort of negativity whatsoever towards those friends and/or their sweet little children. I do not and will not sit around making grim predictions of their futures. They have attentive parents who love them. Their futures are bright!
There is no way around the fact that since I so dearly disagree with punitive parenting, I will disagree with any and every choice to spank or shame a child. And so, it follows that I will disagree with my friends - loving and attentive as I know them to be.
But if you are a parent who spanks and believes it is the right thing for you to do on occasion and you are my friend and you are reading this: please know that I am not walking about dwelling on this disagreement/difference. I have all faith in you and your parenting. I love you, and am grateful for your sweet presence in my life.
And now back to our feature presentation.
Often, it seems, punishment is seen as non-negotiable by many in the Christian community. Being a Christian myself, I grew up thinking that "Spare the rod, spoil the child" was actually in the Bible as a command.
Turns out it's not.
That phrase was actually coined by Samuel Butler, who wrote a poem called Hudibras. He tossed that in there to make fun of the practice that modern day spanking actually originated from: domestic discipline. Oh, barf.
So, fine. But there are verses in there. The rod verses in proverbs. You can find a link to a smart and lovely blog in my shorter winded rant about spanking that details some serious research regarding those verses.
But here I will just, for brevity sake (Ha, brevity. Like I know how to use that.), point out my favorite soap boxes about those rod verses.
I can't remember where I first heard it, but I will happily cite the brilliant and lovely Crystal Lutton, who holds a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. This is her website. It is full of eye opening facts and the like, including a nice little dissection of some of those verses.
I have learned that there are problems with the way these verses have been translated/understood.
Basically, we have a verse that in English is over there saying (Proverbs 23: 13-14) "Withhold not the rod of correction from your child, for if you beat him with the rod he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod and deliver his soul from Hell."
Meep.
I stand corrected.
Haha, juuuuuust kidding :).
To my best understanding, the word "rod" in this verse was translated from the word "shebet" which has three meanings in Hebrew. It could refer to a King's scepter (which was a symbol of authority, and not used to hit people with) or a shepherd's staff. A shepherd's staff was used for 4 things: to gently nudge the sheep to and fro as they traveled to keep them headed in the correct direction, to pry brambles away from wool and free a sheep if he got carried away eating berries and found himself tangled in the thorns, to lift a sheep out of a pit with the hooked end if he fell in as he meandered along aimlessly, or to whack a wolf with if it tried to attack a sheep.
A good shepherd would never hit his sheep, despite that there is a ridiculous myth bopping around out there that shepherds used to break a lamb's legs so that he could nurture it back to health and then the poor creature would follow him everywhere. But this is patently false. A friend of mine explained that away beautifully. And goodness, I know you savvy readers know better than to think an abused animal would follow it's abuser anywhere ever again.
A sheep is, as it turns out, sheepish. They don't do so well when you hit them. Pretty much no one does ;).
Not to mention that if the legs healed but left the sheep lame, it would hold up the whole flock. Like I said, ridiculous.
Ah, but i said 3, didn't I. Shebet has a third meaning, and that is this crazy wooden club type thing with nails and junk sticking out of it everywhere (or something equally terrifying) that actually would kill a child if he was beaten with it. So it is all kinds of unlikely that the club is what that verse is referring to.
AHEM. Also :).
The word "beat" was translated from in that verse was, apparently, the same word used for "beat" in Jonah 4:8 where it talks about how the sun beat down on Jonah. Literally, it meant something to the effect of "To be ever present and not always in a pleasant way - just generally always there".
That was a terrible paraphrase from me, but you get the idea.
So better translated from the Hebrew, to the very best of my understanding, that verse comes out more like "If you are constantly present with your gentle guiding staff, your child will not die."
And that is truth.
There is more. In another verse, it pretty much does sound like it is implying that you must hit your kid if he.... oooooh, if he has committed very adult sins that would bring shame upon the family. The word used for "son" is the word na'ar, which was used for young adults. Not small children. And interestingly, never girls. Only men.
I have heard it argued that we should look at the fact that parents were told to actually STONE their rebellious offspring to death in the old testament and maybe chill out because now we're only taught to spank them.
First of all, what? *Blinks*. Well, then why aren't we still stoning our kids, if we're following Scripture literally?
Oh yeah, context. :).
Second of all, even more context :). For further study will show that 1) there had to be a certain amount of witnesses present and the "rebellion" had to be very serious and essentially the parents had to go before the town elders or whathaveyou and admit that they had absolutely and in every way failed their child as parents. And 2) I need to look into this a lot, lot more, but my very best understanding right this second is that in some crazy way it was actually sort of a mercy. Don't ask me why. I've yet to figure that out enough to utter one single word about it.
In any event, I encourage you to dig in deep if you feel like something in Scripture doesn't fit with God's character of grace, mercy, and lovingkindness. So far, further investigation has always pointed me towards Him being Him. Wild love.
I also need to throw out there another very important fact. Proverbs are proverbial. They are not commands. They were meant to be vivid word pictures used to drive home a point.
I find it very interesting that Christians cling to the rod verses as a reason to hit their children, but I do not know one single Christian who would take Proverbs 23:2 literally and "Put a knife to your throat if you are a man of great appetite". For some reason we can all see clearly that this statement was not meant to be taken literally, and yet whole methods of parenting are built on a few similar verses in the very same book.
Somehow, the rest of the Bible is disregarded.
You thought I was done? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just warming up.
You see, somehow the word "discipline" has become synonymous to many in our culture with "punishment".
Egads!
Discipline really means "to teach". As it came from the word "disciple".
So, I am compelled to look at the way that Jesus discipled his ... disciples. Yes, He was at times firm and to the point with them, but He never once resorted to violence to teach them. And they were grown adults. Just imagine how gentle He would have been with children.
As a matter of fact, the whole message of the gospel is that we have not been given what we deserve. We have not been punished, even though we have done - all of us - a million things wrong in a day. Because punishment doesn't help us learn. So God made a way that we could be spared what we deserve - we could be spared punishment. He'd rather we learn. He'd rather we be taught. He'd rather we'd heal and become whole like He meant for us to be in the first place. And punishment does not accomplish any of those things in adults.
And punishment does not accomplish any of those things in a child.
It is as 1 John 4:18 encourages us. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love because He first loved us."
Love, not punishment, ya'll :).
Even during a time when the cultural predisposition was to send children away rather than risk having to be exposed to a little one's developmentally expected disruptive behavior, Jesus Himself said to bring them straight to Him.
They were (and are) the least of these. When Jesus said to bring the little children to Him, He was validating their value as humans. Bringing them up onto the same level of worth as adults.
That is what God does, you see. He is constantly elevating those that society sees as having of a lesser status to a place of equality and value.
So from a religious/Christian standpoint, I have to say that I am in every way convicted against punitive parenting - especially, but not limited to, spanking or any other form of violence. For me and my family, If I hit my child, I will have sinned. I will owe him and God an apology.
And God would forgive me, because I am already righteous under the Blood of Christ. And from that forgiveness, I would grow more able to be patient with my child. My little least of these. See how that works? :)
Forgiveness is for when someone has done something inexcusable. We are to excuse the excusable. And forgive the inexcusable. And heap grace and mercy on those around us (including our children... especially our children.). We are able to do so because God has/does heaped/heaps grace and mercy on us.
Come along, friend! We have made it through the Sparkly Forest of Scriptural Interpretation and are wading reluctantly into the bog of common arguments. There's one! Straight ahead! (No, I have not eased up on the coffee. Why do you ask?)
I was spanked and I turned out just fine!
Did you, now? Teehee, just kidding. Sort of.
It is a special kind of awkward when someone goes and tries to hold him/herself up as an example of parenting goals well accomplished. We all have flaws. No matter how we were parented.
And anecdotal evidence is not evidence.
And besides, I probably deserved it!
Oh, really? You deserved to be hit because you were in a developmental stage in which it is natural to be literally unable to control your impulses? No. You didn't deserve it.
It doesn't mean your parents are bad people, or that they weren't doing the best they could with the knowledge they had. It doesn't mean they didn't love you or have beautiful intentions, and it doesn't mean that they were bad parents. It doesn't mean that all the things they did right are suddenly void. But no child deserves to be hit for any reason. That includes you. I don't care what you did. You didn't deserve to receive violence in return for it, at an innocent age.
It is the only thing that works! I was the kind of kid that needed a whoopin', and my kid is the same way! Nothing else gets his/her attention!
Oooooookay. Here's the thing. Yes, for some kids, spanking "works". In that it will stop a behavior. Sometimes even on the first try. And some kids will stop a behavior because they are afraid of time out or a mean look.
I see these all (the punitive measures) as parenting "short cuts". A swift and easy means to an end - if the end is simply behavior modification.
Some kids will "stop" a behavior because they were spanked... except they won't. They'll just get really good at making sure they don't get caught again.
I am so much more deeply concerned with what kind of adult my child grows up to be than with how obedient he is as a little one.
That he would desire to do what is right because it is what is right and not because he is afraid of the consequences if he does wrong.
I want him to know that he need not fear being honest with me because I will always be on his side. Helping him learn how to navigate life.
That our relationship would not be injured and re-injured every time he does something developmentally expected - no matter how wrong it is.
Deep in my bones, I have a suspicion that many things that look like short cuts - when it comes to relationships - can easily end up being long and painful detours.
Punitive parenting is adversarial. It pits parent against child. It creates a battle of the wills. Whoever wins hangs onto his/her will. Whoever loses goes away with a will that is either broken or secretly strengthened. (More on this later). But the truth is that when one party wins, everybody loses. Relationship is injured. A valuable teaching opportunity is lost.
Do I want my words to have meaning? Do I want him to listen to me? Yes, of course I do. But there are so many more options outside of the paradigm of permissive vs punitive.
There is this beautiful thing called grace based discipline.
How do I teach a stubborn two year old who can't be reasoned with that Momma's words mean something without violence or over-talking? Oh, there are so many ways :). I only know a few so far. Playful parenting, getting up and moving them to action, redirection, and transitional songs, and simply finding creative ways to set everyone up for success in the first place, for example.
And I know that life can really come at you sideways a million miles a minute sometimes.
And please don't get me wrong. I absolutely expect to do everything all wrong the vast majority of the time. Novice, that I am.
But there are resources! Resources upon resources with different teaching tools to try so that I can find out what works best for my child in any given scenario.
There is all kinds of access (thank you, internet) to clever ideas for helping children learn through their respective developmental stages. And there is information aplenty about those stages, as well.
And I will be very happy to blog about what has or hasn't worked for us in the future, for anyone who is interested :).
But sometimes, my child is directly disobedient. He/she KNOWS he/she is defying me and breaking the rules! And he/she does it anyway! That definitely warrants a spanking. Or a time out at the very least.
There are a few variations of this argument. Some more intense than others. So I shall break it down.
There is the camp of "First time obedience is the only obedience! They must do as I say on the very first try, or else it's like they never obeyed me at all! And if they don't obey me on the first try, they won't obey God on the first try! God calls us to first time obedience AAAAHHHH!"
Okay buckeroo. Have a handful of chocolate chips and glass of rice milk with me and breathe for a second, pretty please.
Ahem, and turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 21: 28 - 30.
"But what do you think? A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, 'Son, go work today in the vineyard.' And he answered, 'I will not'; but afterward he regretted it and went. The man came to the second and said the same thing; and he answered, 'I will, sir'; but he did not go. 'Which of the two did the will of his Father?' They said, 'The first'. Jesus said to them, 'Truly I say to you that the tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom of God before you."
Obedience is obedience. No matter how many tries it took us.
Then there is the camp of "A child's will must be broken! That is how true obedience is achieved!"
I won't even go into a passionate rant about this. Instead I will link you to a beautiful post where the argument has been succinctly put already. And I will add a quote from that very post, even, 'cause it's so good (A quote within a quote... a dweam wivin a dweam... I'm doing it again, aren't I? My bad... here's the awesome quote) :
"It wasn't until recently when I was reading about the persecution of Roman Christians under Communist rule that something changed for me. According to the late Patriarch Theoctist of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 'Man has a very powerful will - so powerful that even God Himself does not break it. And by this [God] is actually showing that man is in the likeness of God. Without man's will he could not make any progress on the way to goodness. So out of all the gifts that God grants the human being, we believe that freedom is one of the most important.' (Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer, p. 126)' "
Suffice it to say that I absolutely 10000000% do not believe in breaking anyone's will. Much less a child's.
Then there is the camp full of normal, tired parents who are just over it with having their sweet babies look at them in the eye and do that thing they've demonstrated already a million times that they know how not to do, just to get on Mom and Dad's last, raw, exhausted nerve.
And to those parents, I say this:
I am so sorry, and I am not far behind joining your weary ranks one of these days.
But I still don't believe direct disobedience warrants punishment, and this is why:
I want my children to have a strong will. They will be needing that will in the future, to say no to peer pressures and all the alluring temptations of the world. They can practice crossing their arms and saying no to me as many times as they need to. It is important to me to make our home a safe place to practice saying no.
It is about learning healthy boundaries.
They are learning where they end and where another person begins. And also where other people end and they begin.
Now, of course, if I have told my three year old child five hundred times that the cat is not meant to be a projectile, and one afternoon following an exhausting morning he scampers away from me and reappears from round the corner with the cat in his hands and that twinkle of "direct disobedience" in his eye and then high tails it outside before I can catch him and tosses the cat off the balcony and onto his cousin, YES, I am going to be very upset.
But punishing him would not be constructive. Punishing him would be the wrong thing to do. Even if his cousin has to go get stitches because she tried to catch a creature falling from the sky who had become nothing but a yowling ball of teeth and claws.
I would need to remember to assign positive intent to my child.
A very small child has not yet developed the ability to have empathy. If an adult behaves without empathy - that pretty much makes him/her a sociopath. But a three year old is not sociopathic. A three year old also does not want an adult person much bigger then him/her to be angry at him/her.
Try to remember when you were a child. If you did something in "direct disobedience" to your parents, was it because you wanted to DEFY them? Or was it because you were intensely curious? Were you (as my mama friends like to say) hungry, angry, lonely, bored, or tired?
And if my child is testing a boundary it is not to try to win one over on me. It is literally simply to learn the boundaries.
Punishments are designed to teach through pain. But I don't believe that pain is necessary for teaching, nor do I believe that it will teach without causing damage.
Natural consequences make sense and they do not damage the relationship between parent and child. If the cat must be kept away from the child until the child is able to keep him/herself from harming the cat, that is a natural consequence. It might make my child very sad to lose access to the cat, but this is not pain I am inflicting on him/her. It is me keeping everyone safe.
And so there is no break in the relationship with my child. If he is sad, I can hold him and comfort him without feeling as though I am lessening the pain I intended to inflict to drive a message home.
I can help him make amends with his cousin, and it is much more likely that he will communicate the all important WHY with me so I can know why he threw the cat over the balcony. If it turns out he did it because he was curious how a cat always lands on it's feet, I can teach him about that. If he was angry with his cousin over something, I can address that.
Punishments don't get to the root of the problem.
There is a reason behind disobedience. And it is important to me to figure out that reason as often as I can.
And if I tell them to do something ridiculous and they defy me and then I realize I was being ridiculous, I will be proud of them for sticking to their guns. Because there is absolutely a time and a place for that. And they will begin to learn when and how and when not at home where they are safe.
What about when they do something dangerous? Like running into the road? I must spank for danger!
First of all, spanking for danger assumes that the child first must attempt the dangerous thing. So do children need to try to run into the road and then play with a chainsaw and then walk on broken glass and then stand near the edge of a cliff and then...
and be spanked every time to learn to be safe?
Kids invent new hair raising ways to endanger themselves all day every day, don't they? Should they be spanked every time?
No, of course not.
Spanking/punishing a child for doing something dangerous to prevent them from doing it again takes the responsibility for keeping the child safe off the parent, and places it on the child.
And if there must be a last resort, I will concede that being hit is better than being run over - but so is being a leash kid. There is always a gentle option.
I will add here that many of my college courses were child/human development. I have worked in daycare and in group homes for teenagers and adults with autism.
I didn't punish in any of those settings. Nobody was injured, either.
That is very different from being a parent. I know this. I have only been a parent for 4 1/2 months, and it already is like no other thing I've ever done. Every second. Of every day. And night.
But my point is that there are ways to keep people from hurting each other and/or doing wrong things without the use of punishment. There have to be.
Because you can not spank a child with autism no matter how many times he tries to make a beeline for the road. That child will not be able to process what punishment did to him. Parents of children with disabilities find other ways to keep their dear ones safe, and parents of typically developing children can, too.
My best friend, for example, used to tell her daughter, "Keep one hand on the red car." as she unloaded her groceries. That worked for her. It might not work for my kid or your kid, but this is our job as parents. To figure out our children and what works for them. We can keep them safe without punishing them, I promise.
Also, parents who have not spanked for danger have found that their children are more likely to come back to them when called (because they are not afraid of being punished! Surprise!)
"What if I have tried grace and mercy and the children took advantage?"
We take advantage of God's grace and mercy every day, and yet He does not withhold it from us. Nor should we withhold it from our kids.
What we say to them will become the way they speak to themselves when they grow up. When they are little, they look to us to see what God is like. WHOA.
So I think, for me, I would want to do my very best to continue with the grace and mercy (How many times did Jesus say to forgive? 77 times 7? I believe that applies to our children, too.) and also try to figure out what isn't working if the kids keep acting like banshees. Did everyone get enough protein today? Sleep? Again, are we hungry, angry lonely, tired? Or not tired enough? Should we break out some sensory play or big muscle movement? What developmental stages are my kiddos in? What do they need so that they can feel good enough to be physically able to listen?
I don't even know who started it, but my best friend (and a bunch of amazing mamas I now know) use a "comfort corner" to teach their kids how to put themselves in time out. Not as a punishment - but literally to teach them the life skill of being able to remove themselves from a situation if they are becoming too emotional to control themselves.
Sometimes I think I could use a comfort corner.
I'll let you all know more about that and how it goes when we start using it with our little guy.
Anyway, the point is - outside the paradigm of permissive vs punitive there are whole piles of tools out there to help meet the needs of all kinds of children.
"I have to show them who is in authority!"
They know you're in authority! You already have complete and total control over their entire environment. They cannot eat without you deciding to feed them. Hitting a child only makes them suddenly feel as though you are able to lose control of yourself. It makes the environment they live in feel slightly (or vastly, depending of frequency/intensity/etc) less stable.
Punishment is about control. Control is only healthy when it is exerted upon something one possesses. It is healthy for me to control my emotions. I possess them. It is healthy for me to control my habits. I possess them as well.
It is not healthy for me to seek to control another human being (not that I want my kids to be "out of control" - but that means something different than what I am talking about here). It would not be healthy for me to see my children as my possessions. I do not own them any more than I own my husband or my mother or my sibling.
They have been entrusted to my care, but they belong to the Lord. Just like you and I belong to Him. I desire too greatly to show respect for Him and this gift He has bestowed on my life to seek control. Instead, I will seek relationship and understanding.
...........
Okay I think we're near the outskirts of the bog of disagreements. What say you? I'm trying to think of other's I've heard. Spanking to keep kids out of jail? Too bad 99% of prison inmates were spanked as children.
Eep! I spy yet another on it's way towards us!
"I would never spank my child in anger, so it is okay and safe."
Would you understand it better if someone flew off the handle and whacked you in a fit of rage, or if that angry person went away and collected him/herself and then came back and told you that what you did was wrong, and you deserve to be punished, so, go on and sit right down so I can calmly cause you bodily pain. For your own good.
Please. That doesn't work on kids any better than it does adults. Yes, it might stop the behavior, but again I say at what cost to the relationship? At what cost to actual learning? And sadly, at what cost to the picture they have of themselves?
So many women in abusive relationships find themselves making excuses for their abusers. Their internal voice - the voice of their parents - is in their head saying that they have done something to deserve being abused by their spouse.
Anyone can end up in an abusive relationship. No matter how strong or independent they are. That is another topic all together, but my point is that I would never ever want to teach a child that anything they can ever do makes it okay for another human to strike them.
Spanking in a controlled way says, "It is okay for someone to hit you if they are bigger. If they hold more power in the relationship. If you have done something to deserve it. The person hitting you gets to decide if you have done something to deserve it or not. And that is okay."
Spanking in anger and then apologizing later says, "I am human like you and I made a terrible mistake. You can never do anything that would make it right for me [or anyone else] to do this to you."
Studies have shown, even, that parents who are spanking while "not angry" are often spanking much harder than they thought they were. Bollocks that I can't find you a link right now. I'll add it later if I remember :).
Okay, enough of that. I'm sure I have convinced you, at the very least, that I can ramble endlessly against any pro-spanking argument tossed my way. So I will just add a few more points and then you can all go have a pizza eating contest... or... sit in a tree and silly string unsuspecting passersby .... or... go google what Nessie would look like with a mohawk, whatever kids are doing these days :).
* Spanking/punishing doesn't only harm the child - it also does something really crappy to the punisher as well. I have never met a parent who really feels good about it, and I think it's because deep in their gut, they at least feel a check.
This is because, besides the immediate damage to the relationship, it also changes the way the parent views his/her child. To use terms in one's mind such as "He deserved it!" or "He was directly disobeying me!" or "It's just a rebellious attitude!" paints a hard to handle little one in an even tougher light.
If I instead say of my child, "Wow, he must have felt so hurt/out of control/left out..." or "He desperately needs some one on one times with his momma" or even, "He is experiencing the natural consequences of his behavior and might need some comfort, but next time we can set him up for success by..." it feels empowering instead of bleak. It puts my child back into a human light in which he is truly just a little person going through developmental stages and needing guidance.
* Study after study after study has shown that long term spanking does not work. As a matter of fact, children who are modeled violence are more likely to see violence as a viable option for their own behavior as they grow older.
And why wouldn't they?
If it is never, ever okay for my son to hit a friend or a sibling, then it is never, ever okay for me to hit him.
*Studies have also shown that long term, spanking can result in an adult with mental illness. Depression. Anxiety.
Again, I will add links if I can find them, but if you are so moved to do any research at all regarding spanking and you dare to read actual scientific studies, you will find again and again that spanking has been shown ineffective and damaging for the long term.
* Spanking is illegal in Sweden.
There's a can of worms for ya! Hehehe, noooo, I am not going to try to hash out whether it should be legal here or not in this blog post - or maybe ever. That would be a bit of a red herring, don't you think? Let's not follow that train of thought down the bunny trail.
I only bring it up to point out that in a country where spanking is illegal, somehow everyone grew up without being run over by a vehicle or turning into hooligans. In fact, the Sweeds I've met in real life have been polite and charming individuals.
Of course anecdotal evidence isn't evidence, so never mind that ;).
___________
Okay, so. That was very very long. If you read it all, you can be sure that I adore you for it.
And if I think of more things to say, I will probably come back and try to add them later. There are so many angles to see this thing from. But I confess... I am an ENFP and I am sort of tired now of blathering about one topic.
Much love to you, all of you.
Peace.
Monday, July 16, 2012
A friend of mine posted this on a forum that I frequent and I didn't want to lose it. Thank you for blowing my mind with your clever thoughts, Lindsay!
_____________
[Snip]
I was discussing today's sermon (in which the pastor dragged a spanking concept into it that simply didn't need to be there--spanking, IMO, is like yelling, "Squirrel! in the middle of teaching someone how to drive), and I asked, "Really, how is punishment a *good* thing? "
And then it hit me.
Christ took my punishment. He didn't just take it before a certain age. He didn't just take the punishment for acts committed between 1985 and 2009, or for the sinfulness of my human, fleshly heart. He took it ALL.
And my sons are covered under that. And if He took all of their punishment, too...and I punish my children....well....instead of heaping my punishment on them, I heap it on Him.
The gravity of that realization had me literally stuck in my chair for a solid few minutes.
If I've done it unto the least of these...
[/Snip]
________________
Matthew 25:40
The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’
_____________
[Snip]
I was discussing today's sermon (in which the pastor dragged a spanking concept into it that simply didn't need to be there--spanking, IMO, is like yelling, "Squirrel! in the middle of teaching someone how to drive), and I asked, "Really, how is punishment a *good* thing? "
And then it hit me.
Christ took my punishment. He didn't just take it before a certain age. He didn't just take the punishment for acts committed between 1985 and 2009, or for the sinfulness of my human, fleshly heart. He took it ALL.
And my sons are covered under that. And if He took all of their punishment, too...and I punish my children....well....instead of heaping my punishment on them, I heap it on Him.
The gravity of that realization had me literally stuck in my chair for a solid few minutes.
If I've done it unto the least of these...
[/Snip]
________________
Matthew 25:40
The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Worth It
Before I start to tell this story, I feel it imperative that I make one thing abundantly clear: I am passionately for natural childbirth, as our bodies are made and able to do.
I had a perfect little hippy scenario in mind for my own birth, cautious - mind you, and aware that pain would be a big part of it (or, "hard work", as I would try to remind myself), but daydreamy nonetheless.
Though I compromised the home birth I truly longed for because I am uncomfortable with North Carolina's laws regarding midwife choices for that kind of birth experience (and I'm just plain old not brave enough for an unassisted childbirth), I was happy to go with the next best thing: a birthing center with a rock awesome midwife in South Carolina.
My day dreams didn't change much as a result. My best friend would be there to doula for me and help talk me through thepain hard work. My husband would be there supporting and getting all excited with me, reminding me that it wouldn't be long before we could hold our little guy. We could have birth projects to do so I could keep up and moving and distracted during the beginning stages of labor, and in the end, I would hop in a birthing tub for a water birth. There would be immediate skin to skin contact and establishment of a breastfeeding relationship. They would wait until the cord stopped pulsing to cut it and do the APGAR stuff with my kiddo still in my arms.
In my fuzzy picturings, there may or may not have also been crock pots, paint, henna, and favorite TV shows that my doula friend and I could have either utilized or ignored depending on what labor actually turned out to be like. There was definitely a carefully selected musical playlist.
These musings stayed with me until I hit 37 weeks and discovered my little one was breech.
Well okay. No big deal. Babies are born breech all the time.
Oh, but in SC (and certainly NC) it is illegal for a midwife or doctor to deliver a breech baby unless the mother had already had a kid before. Bother that.
So my midwife scheduled for me this thing called an external version.
I had no idea what that was or what I was in for.
The doctor that consulted with us about it told me that it would be uncomfortable, but overall no big deal. Also that there was a less than 1% chance that I would have to have an emergency c-section, but that even though they did external versions many times a week, they hadn't had anyone go to emergency c-section over it in over 8 years.
That risk seemed minimal enough to me. And given that supposedly only 2% of breech babies turn head down past 37 weeks... I was all determined to have my natural birth, by golly, so I signed all the necessary and dreadful things to sign (Except where they wanted to chuck my placenta afterwards. I may have actually exclaimed, "No, I want my placenta! You may not throw it away!", much to the bewilderment of the man with the paperwork in front of me) and went for it.
I'll spare you all the boring details about how long I went without eating or drinking and how hospital gowns that aren't yet snapped up are really flippin' confusing thankyouverymuch, and how much I dislike IVs.
The ob who came in to do the version reminded me of my dad if my dad was a doctor. That is to say, he was loud and burly, a little too informative, and extremely excited about the mechanics of what he was about to get to do. When I stated that I had been told I had an abundance of amniotic fluid in there, his eyes widened with glee.
Okay, so, I know you're wondering what an external version turned out to be. I'll tell you. First of all: "mildly uncomfortable" my skinny white girl booty. You don't get offered an epidural for mild discomfort. You don't get told that most women can't relax their muscles enough for the version to work without an epidural for mild discomfort.
To flip a baby from the outside, an ob (while monitoring the child via ultrasound) locates the kiddo's head and bottom and then literally crams his fists into one's pregnant belly and draaaaags the babe around.
"Mild discomfort". Snort.
I opted to try it without an epidural. Recovery time and drugs in my body and all that. I was able to call on imagery that my doula best friend gave me to use for childbirth. I intentionally kept my breathing normal and tried my best to locate tense muscles and release them while picturing my little boy in an unpoppable bubble and turning easily.
The first three times the ob tried, it didn't work. And the third time, they came within a breath of sending me into an emergency c-section.
He was telling me what to expect. Prepping me, as he watched my little one's heart beat drop. Total anesthesia. A breathing tube. Blackout.
I knew that my stress would not help my baby's heart rate come back up, so I tried to courage up.
"Fine, God!" I shouted silently, "But don't You abandon me! Fix this!"
It is a good thing Abba still loves me when I'm anguished, angry, and demanding.
Peace. The ob froze. Thinking. Watching.
The heart beat on the monitor started to come back up.
The ob made a lighthearted comment and rubbed where he saw my child's head was and the heart rate came up even more. He chuckled, "Oh, he likes that.", and did it some more until everything was back to healthy and normal.
We waited a few minutes and he said he thought it would be reasonable to try one more time.
So I, with the help of endorphins unleashed to compensate for all that pain and fear, breathed, relaxed, and buckled down to try one last time.
It worked on that last try. My little one flipped. I would have high-fived him if he'd already been on the outside with us.
As far as we know, he stayed head down for the next week and a half or so. My midwife had a hunch it wouldn't stay that way forever, though, so she made a strong recommendation that we try a natural induction. She promised that if my body and my baby weren't ready, it wouldn't work, but felt confident that it was worth a try.
This was hard for me because I believe in babies baking until their little lungs develop enough to let loose proteins that tell the preggo body that it's go-time. But being reassured that if it wasn't time, it wouldn't work, and it was more like encouraging labor than a true induction I decided to call my best friend and get to work.
The process I went through with this involved lots of swallowing a horrific tasting herbal tincture, and running on my elliptical while breast pumping for 3 straight hours. (And now you have that mental image in your head. Have fun trying to get rid of it. Maniacal laughter.)
It didn't work.
When I hit 39 weeks and 5 days, my midwife's nurse practitioner sent me off to another ultrasound because she couldn't tell for sure if he was breech again or not.
Yeah, he was breech again. This time he was footling breech. Which is basically the worst kind of breech you can be. I would have to be some kind of hardcore fearless rockstar to choose to naturally birth a child who was footling breech. Footling means he had one foot down in the birth canal. If he came out that way, we would have to try to stuff that foot back up in there and hope for the best. And it could still end very badly.
There was also some bothering about abdominal measurements on the ultrasound. But that was tiresome and not worth talking about, really. I thought it was probably bunk (Hello, full term baby all balled up in there and they're trying to get accurate measurements on a blurry ultrasound? Psh.), and once he was out here it was confirmed that it was bunk. Whatevs, medical culture.
So I was told that I had a few choices. I could either try another external version which would be followed immediately by a real medical induction (Ah. The spastic, violent contractions brought on by pitocin. Awesome.) in a hospital (Sigh. Goodbye hippie birthing-center birth.) if it worked. Or I could go ahead and just have a planned c-section.
Of course I could choose to just wait and hope for the best. That maybe by some freak chance my kiddo would flip head down on his own. I know this happens. It's not unheard of. But deep in my gut I just didn't believe that would be the case for me and my child. And if I went into labor while footling breech, I would again be staring down the barrel of an emergency c-section.
The last time I tried a version, it came so close to ending in emergency c-section. And this time, the risks would be even higher. A bigger baby is harder to turn, and more likely to get tangled in his umbilical cord, which would be very dangerous. A footling breech baby would be much harder to turn than a frank breech baby (which is what he was last time - with his feet up over his head).
I told the ob that I would like to talk to my midwife, get a referral to Mission - a hospital that was closer to my home (and that I trusted more, but I wasn't going to tell him that), and then I would make a decision.
By the time I got to Mission, I was exhausted beyond all reason. What with all the waking up early, the hearing of bad news and coming to terms with it, the making big decisions quickly, and the barely eating all day.
Around 7:30pm an ob came in to speak with me.
I was expecting another hyper, burly man like the guy at Spartanburg Hospital, and was relieved when a lady came in who moved and spoke in very similar ways to one of my most precious friends. She sat with me and explained everything clearly and with compassion and understanding.
When she started to explain what I should expect when going through a c-section (new baby going straight to the warmer to have all the fluid that would have normally been squeezed out of his lungs on the way out of the birth canal beaten out instead, cord cut immediately so they could get straight to stitching me back up, etc) I started tearing up.
She squeezed my knee and stopped to offer validation that it is hard to make a choice like this, and that this isn't how it was supposed to go.
A little validation goes a long way with me. It meant the world to me that the person explaining my choices to me understood the gravity of them. That she understood how many ideals I would have to let go of no matter which way I turned at this point.
In the end, it became clear to me that my real choices were pretty much between a planned cesarean and an emergency one.
There is, as it turns out, a significant difference between the two. The biggest being, for me, that for an emergency c-section, they knock you out completely, as opposed to a planned one in which they just numb you from the ribs down.
It was desperately important to me that I at the very least be present for my wee lad.
So I surrendered to a planned cesarean birth. I couldn't believe it, but that's what was happening.
Joseph handed me my phone to call my best friend when the nurse left to gather surgery-prep supplies. I told him it was wildly necessary that he see our child be born, even as intense as it would be. Because I couldn't see, with that divider up and all, and even if this wasn't happening how we hoped, it was still our baby's birthday!
He told me that he couldn't watch them cut me open. That he would pass out. Not because it's gross, but because it was me.
My best friend asked to speak with him, so I handed over the phone.
She told him to just ask the Dr to tell him when they were gonna pull the kid out and only watch that.
Hospital gown. IV fluids. Paperwork.
The ob I had spoken with promised me she would find something to put my placenta in to take it home with me so we could encapsulate it.
I am still not entirely convinced that the team that did the actual surgery were people and not angels.
The ... I guess she was the anesthesiologist's nurse? Anyway, she had a Wizard of Oz print on her scrub cap. This was significant to me because a dear friend of mine's name is Kansas for Wizard of Oz-ly reasons.
These people kept reminding me of my friends. I was outrageously comforted by that.
Anyway, the anesthesiologist's nurse (because Joseph wasn't allowed in until I was all ready to go - too many people in and out and whatnot), as I geared up for the spinal and the epidural (hatred of needles and all), stood in front of me and held my face. She actually put her forehead on my forehead and told me to just close my eyes and breathe. I literally didn't feel a thing. It was like the anesthesiologist only touched my back.
And then my right foot went all tingly and warm.
That sensation climbed up my leg, all the way up to my chest, and then went back down the other side.
There we go. I couldn't move or feel most of my body. How awkward. I didn't like it.
As they tested my numbness with something that looked like a tazer, the nurse asked me if there was any music that I liked that I would like my son to be born to. It was so kind of her.
I couldn't think of any of the songs on my playlist, so I just requested Josh Garrels and she pulled it right up for me. Thank you, human compassion and also the internet.
Joseph came in to hold my hand all gowned up, looking like a duck with the mask over his face.
I had a perfect little hippy scenario in mind for my own birth, cautious - mind you, and aware that pain would be a big part of it (or, "hard work", as I would try to remind myself), but daydreamy nonetheless.
Though I compromised the home birth I truly longed for because I am uncomfortable with North Carolina's laws regarding midwife choices for that kind of birth experience (and I'm just plain old not brave enough for an unassisted childbirth), I was happy to go with the next best thing: a birthing center with a rock awesome midwife in South Carolina.
My day dreams didn't change much as a result. My best friend would be there to doula for me and help talk me through the
In my fuzzy picturings, there may or may not have also been crock pots, paint, henna, and favorite TV shows that my doula friend and I could have either utilized or ignored depending on what labor actually turned out to be like. There was definitely a carefully selected musical playlist.
These musings stayed with me until I hit 37 weeks and discovered my little one was breech.
Well okay. No big deal. Babies are born breech all the time.
Oh, but in SC (and certainly NC) it is illegal for a midwife or doctor to deliver a breech baby unless the mother had already had a kid before. Bother that.
So my midwife scheduled for me this thing called an external version.
I had no idea what that was or what I was in for.
The doctor that consulted with us about it told me that it would be uncomfortable, but overall no big deal. Also that there was a less than 1% chance that I would have to have an emergency c-section, but that even though they did external versions many times a week, they hadn't had anyone go to emergency c-section over it in over 8 years.
That risk seemed minimal enough to me. And given that supposedly only 2% of breech babies turn head down past 37 weeks... I was all determined to have my natural birth, by golly, so I signed all the necessary and dreadful things to sign (Except where they wanted to chuck my placenta afterwards. I may have actually exclaimed, "No, I want my placenta! You may not throw it away!", much to the bewilderment of the man with the paperwork in front of me) and went for it.
I'll spare you all the boring details about how long I went without eating or drinking and how hospital gowns that aren't yet snapped up are really flippin' confusing thankyouverymuch, and how much I dislike IVs.
The ob who came in to do the version reminded me of my dad if my dad was a doctor. That is to say, he was loud and burly, a little too informative, and extremely excited about the mechanics of what he was about to get to do. When I stated that I had been told I had an abundance of amniotic fluid in there, his eyes widened with glee.
Okay, so, I know you're wondering what an external version turned out to be. I'll tell you. First of all: "mildly uncomfortable" my skinny white girl booty. You don't get offered an epidural for mild discomfort. You don't get told that most women can't relax their muscles enough for the version to work without an epidural for mild discomfort.
To flip a baby from the outside, an ob (while monitoring the child via ultrasound) locates the kiddo's head and bottom and then literally crams his fists into one's pregnant belly and draaaaags the babe around.
"Mild discomfort". Snort.
I opted to try it without an epidural. Recovery time and drugs in my body and all that. I was able to call on imagery that my doula best friend gave me to use for childbirth. I intentionally kept my breathing normal and tried my best to locate tense muscles and release them while picturing my little boy in an unpoppable bubble and turning easily.
The first three times the ob tried, it didn't work. And the third time, they came within a breath of sending me into an emergency c-section.
He was telling me what to expect. Prepping me, as he watched my little one's heart beat drop. Total anesthesia. A breathing tube. Blackout.
I knew that my stress would not help my baby's heart rate come back up, so I tried to courage up.
"Fine, God!" I shouted silently, "But don't You abandon me! Fix this!"
It is a good thing Abba still loves me when I'm anguished, angry, and demanding.
Peace. The ob froze. Thinking. Watching.
The heart beat on the monitor started to come back up.
The ob made a lighthearted comment and rubbed where he saw my child's head was and the heart rate came up even more. He chuckled, "Oh, he likes that.", and did it some more until everything was back to healthy and normal.
We waited a few minutes and he said he thought it would be reasonable to try one more time.
So I, with the help of endorphins unleashed to compensate for all that pain and fear, breathed, relaxed, and buckled down to try one last time.
It worked on that last try. My little one flipped. I would have high-fived him if he'd already been on the outside with us.
As far as we know, he stayed head down for the next week and a half or so. My midwife had a hunch it wouldn't stay that way forever, though, so she made a strong recommendation that we try a natural induction. She promised that if my body and my baby weren't ready, it wouldn't work, but felt confident that it was worth a try.
This was hard for me because I believe in babies baking until their little lungs develop enough to let loose proteins that tell the preggo body that it's go-time. But being reassured that if it wasn't time, it wouldn't work, and it was more like encouraging labor than a true induction I decided to call my best friend and get to work.
The process I went through with this involved lots of swallowing a horrific tasting herbal tincture, and running on my elliptical while breast pumping for 3 straight hours. (And now you have that mental image in your head. Have fun trying to get rid of it. Maniacal laughter.)
It didn't work.
When I hit 39 weeks and 5 days, my midwife's nurse practitioner sent me off to another ultrasound because she couldn't tell for sure if he was breech again or not.
Yeah, he was breech again. This time he was footling breech. Which is basically the worst kind of breech you can be. I would have to be some kind of hardcore fearless rockstar to choose to naturally birth a child who was footling breech. Footling means he had one foot down in the birth canal. If he came out that way, we would have to try to stuff that foot back up in there and hope for the best. And it could still end very badly.
There was also some bothering about abdominal measurements on the ultrasound. But that was tiresome and not worth talking about, really. I thought it was probably bunk (Hello, full term baby all balled up in there and they're trying to get accurate measurements on a blurry ultrasound? Psh.), and once he was out here it was confirmed that it was bunk. Whatevs, medical culture.
So I was told that I had a few choices. I could either try another external version which would be followed immediately by a real medical induction (Ah. The spastic, violent contractions brought on by pitocin. Awesome.) in a hospital (Sigh. Goodbye hippie birthing-center birth.) if it worked. Or I could go ahead and just have a planned c-section.
Of course I could choose to just wait and hope for the best. That maybe by some freak chance my kiddo would flip head down on his own. I know this happens. It's not unheard of. But deep in my gut I just didn't believe that would be the case for me and my child. And if I went into labor while footling breech, I would again be staring down the barrel of an emergency c-section.
The last time I tried a version, it came so close to ending in emergency c-section. And this time, the risks would be even higher. A bigger baby is harder to turn, and more likely to get tangled in his umbilical cord, which would be very dangerous. A footling breech baby would be much harder to turn than a frank breech baby (which is what he was last time - with his feet up over his head).
I told the ob that I would like to talk to my midwife, get a referral to Mission - a hospital that was closer to my home (and that I trusted more, but I wasn't going to tell him that), and then I would make a decision.
By the time I got to Mission, I was exhausted beyond all reason. What with all the waking up early, the hearing of bad news and coming to terms with it, the making big decisions quickly, and the barely eating all day.
Around 7:30pm an ob came in to speak with me.
I was expecting another hyper, burly man like the guy at Spartanburg Hospital, and was relieved when a lady came in who moved and spoke in very similar ways to one of my most precious friends. She sat with me and explained everything clearly and with compassion and understanding.
When she started to explain what I should expect when going through a c-section (new baby going straight to the warmer to have all the fluid that would have normally been squeezed out of his lungs on the way out of the birth canal beaten out instead, cord cut immediately so they could get straight to stitching me back up, etc) I started tearing up.
She squeezed my knee and stopped to offer validation that it is hard to make a choice like this, and that this isn't how it was supposed to go.
A little validation goes a long way with me. It meant the world to me that the person explaining my choices to me understood the gravity of them. That she understood how many ideals I would have to let go of no matter which way I turned at this point.
In the end, it became clear to me that my real choices were pretty much between a planned cesarean and an emergency one.
There is, as it turns out, a significant difference between the two. The biggest being, for me, that for an emergency c-section, they knock you out completely, as opposed to a planned one in which they just numb you from the ribs down.
It was desperately important to me that I at the very least be present for my wee lad.
So I surrendered to a planned cesarean birth. I couldn't believe it, but that's what was happening.
Joseph handed me my phone to call my best friend when the nurse left to gather surgery-prep supplies. I told him it was wildly necessary that he see our child be born, even as intense as it would be. Because I couldn't see, with that divider up and all, and even if this wasn't happening how we hoped, it was still our baby's birthday!
He told me that he couldn't watch them cut me open. That he would pass out. Not because it's gross, but because it was me.
My best friend asked to speak with him, so I handed over the phone.
She told him to just ask the Dr to tell him when they were gonna pull the kid out and only watch that.
Hospital gown. IV fluids. Paperwork.
The ob I had spoken with promised me she would find something to put my placenta in to take it home with me so we could encapsulate it.
I am still not entirely convinced that the team that did the actual surgery were people and not angels.
The ... I guess she was the anesthesiologist's nurse? Anyway, she had a Wizard of Oz print on her scrub cap. This was significant to me because a dear friend of mine's name is Kansas for Wizard of Oz-ly reasons.
These people kept reminding me of my friends. I was outrageously comforted by that.
Anyway, the anesthesiologist's nurse (because Joseph wasn't allowed in until I was all ready to go - too many people in and out and whatnot), as I geared up for the spinal and the epidural (hatred of needles and all), stood in front of me and held my face. She actually put her forehead on my forehead and told me to just close my eyes and breathe. I literally didn't feel a thing. It was like the anesthesiologist only touched my back.
And then my right foot went all tingly and warm.
That sensation climbed up my leg, all the way up to my chest, and then went back down the other side.
There we go. I couldn't move or feel most of my body. How awkward. I didn't like it.
As they tested my numbness with something that looked like a tazer, the nurse asked me if there was any music that I liked that I would like my son to be born to. It was so kind of her.
I couldn't think of any of the songs on my playlist, so I just requested Josh Garrels and she pulled it right up for me. Thank you, human compassion and also the internet.
Joseph came in to hold my hand all gowned up, looking like a duck with the mask over his face.
After that, it was relatively quick.
One of the Dr's said "Alright, it's time for a birthday party! Joseph? Come on over here!", and Joe popped his head over the divider.
My husband gave me a running commentary.
"Oh there's his feet! They're so little! And there's his butt... and his back... oh he's stuck... he's stuck!"
And I'm laying there, "What do you mean he's STUCK?!"
And then, before I knew it, they were holding him up for me, all gooey. Our little Silas Ezekiel.
The cord was cut. He was dashed over to the warmer. I was able to watch him the whole time on screens. Even though he never left the room, they had cameras to make sure there was never a doctor blocking my view. That was nice.
They made as quick work of it as they could. It wasn't long at all before he was all swaddled up and in Joseph's arms.
Of course, Joe came straight over and put him on my chest. He had to hold him there for me, though, because my arms and hands were shaking uncontrollably. I was told this is a normal side effect of the anesthesia wearing off. It was rather unpleasant.
But Joseph held Silas there for me so we could all be close while they finished stitching me back up.
When it was almost time for them to push me on into the recovery room, they had Joe take Silas and go sit with him so they could tie up loose ends that required moving me around a lot.
I watched my husband in his first moments of being a new dad, sitting in a chair with our eensy newbie, holding him with such care, all curled up with his cheek pressed against that tiny forehead with a look of overwhelming gratitude, astonishment, wonder, and responsibility. And love, of course. Heavy, change-you-forever, Daddy-love. He looked like his heart had been split wide open to make room for this newness, this totally trusting little squisher.
This is the image that makes me cry every time I revisit it. My husband sitting in that chair experiencing what it is like to hold a brand new life in his hands.
I will add here that the recovery room was a bizarre experience in and of itself. They wouldn't let me leave to go to a regular room until I could move both of my legs.
And by then it was 4:30 in the morning. I would have been exhausted without major surgery. I was fighting sleep harder than I've ever fought it. I had to stay awake and figure out breast feeding. I was not about to sacrifice that as well over all of this.
Someone was sitting there trying to show me how. She kept grabbing my breast and smashing it down, telling me to cram it in his mouth like it was a hamburger. She had me holding him in what I now know is called the clutch hold. This was really awkward because I had the IV fluids all hooked up in one arm, and then the arm I was holding him with was attached to a blood pressure reading machine. Every five minutes or so the dang thing would squeeze me to try and get a reading, but it couldn't get one if my arm was bent. So then it would try again and try again until it worked.
But of course my arm was bent and had to stay bent in order to continue to hold the babe to the breast. So psh, blood pressure reader.
At some point I finally lost my battle with sleep and began to doze off.
I heard a nurse comment that I was breathing like a rabbit. Whatever that means.
It was weird, too, when the time finally came that I was asked, for the seemingly thousandth time whether I could move my legs, tried to move them, and then said once again that, no, I could not - only to be told that I was, in fact, moving them.
I looked down and saw the lady was correct, and it was just insane. I was temporarily certain I would spend the rest of my life with freaky robot legs.
So anyway, the rest of the story is all rest and recovery, staring and stammering and lovesickness.
Our precious pastor friend came over a day or two later and anointed that sweet little forehead. And then some of our other innermost circle dear ones came bearing love and contact solution, flowers and food.
And finally, when it had been about 3 days, we went home. Where it all begins.
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