Parenting thoughts

I read this recently:
http://drgeraldstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/07/what-children-need-from-parents-ii-on-slot-machines-and-candy-machines/

It made sense of course, and resonated with situations and problems we see in our home.  However, whenever I think about this topic and how we interact with our kids I think, "How can I actually *almost never* compromise or negotiate in interactions with my kids?"  From the example of how we have handled sleep and sleep routines in our house, I see that we have a lot of peace around that issue because we were (on someone else's advice...we never would have figured that one out left to our own devices!) exceedingly consistent from very young infancy.  With sleep and a young baby, you are actually able to put them in a crib from which they can't escape and leave the room and ignore them until they fall asleep...your plan is your plan and it's a lot easier not to negotiate because you've shut the door and eventually there is SLEEP...the attempt to negotiate has an end.  They wake up, they feel great, and they learned the rules!  Usually (but not always!) it didn't even involve crying once we got the hang of getting the timing right.

Waking life is a whole other beast.  Everything is WAY more complex.  There are multiple people in the picture.  There are multiple requests/demands going on at once.  Sometimes you need to say no to something  that you said yes to many times in the past (commence weeping and teeth gnashing).  Sometimes you've gotten three hours of sleep the night before and you are short on patience and you know it.  Sometimes you realize you've really been saying no too much and you decide to say yes to something you previously said no to.  Sometimes your child makes a sweet request for you to change your answer and what parent doesn't get a soft heart to respond to that and want to make the change?  By way of example; for a younger baby...all my babies have been exceedingly clingy (a 13 month old should not need to be held all the time.  Eden thinks otherwise right now.)  Of course, I see my role in it, because when she is at my heels fussing and crying to be picked up, I will challenge her when I'm in the middle of doing something that has to be done (sometimes I will even challenge her a long time) but eventually I pick her up.  I'm totally a slot machine about that.  I think it would benefit both of us for her to be content playing with some toys on the floor.  So does that mean that I have to leave her screaming on the floor until she gives up (which is much harder in the kitchen with the chaos of life and me right there for her to look at than in a crib in a dark room for naptime, see my point?).  Even if she gets to the point of giving up, eventually she will come over and want to be picked up.  That seems like reasonable baby behavior.  Can I *never* pick her up when she asks?  Is that how to be consistent and make progress with that particular problem??  That's crazy!  I want to and should pick up my baby when she asks sometimes, but that makes each time ambiguous and unpredictable for her so she'll keep up the behavior.

My mind reels when I consider all this psychology of interacting with my kids.  When I look at my day with them, I see myself doing my best to consider the variables, make the best choice I can about whether to give in to my child's request/demand/whine/plea or to stand firm and suffer the temper tantrum.  I don't think I am just approaching it lazily and giving in because it's hard to say no and stick with it.  But sometimes it really does feel correct to me to not stick with my initial answer for whatever reason.  I do however see that my kids don't see that our word is completely solid and they do a good deal of manipulating us until we move.  I just can't imagine what life would look like if I stuck without bending to every single thing that I said.  It would take an enormous amount of resolve and who knows how many days of serious, heart-melting angry outbursts, time in room, eventually a spanking, etc. to try to overhaul how we deal with our kids.  The bigger problem is that when I attempt this sort of overhaul, it never ends up 'working' because I am attempting to change my instinctual parenting reactions and become a person who acts differently than I actually act and think.  It doesn't really feel right to me to never ever flex about every single thing I say.  If I were convinced it had to be that way, I would do it.  I've done extremely hard work around maintaining consistency with sleep routines in our house!  But I have to be really convinced that it's the right path, and it just doesn't feel right sometimes.  Of course, like I said, if someone else hadn't told me how consistent I needed to be with sleep in order to have peaceful routines, I am quite sure it wouldn't have felt right to me to ever let a baby cry :{  (And as much as I hate ever letting a child cry in the crib, and perhaps have been TOO consistent in compensation for how inconsistent I would naturally be prone to be, it has been a good thing for us to do that overall.  She says as her poorly-sleeping-at-the-moment-despite-best-efforts baby tosses fitfully on the monitor screen.)

This is all pouring out because we are reaching a point where we realize we are not in a great situation with attitudes, disobedience, demandingness, entitled sourpusses, fighting way too much in the home...on a daily basis.  And we are not sitting on our duffs, we are 'disciplining' all day it seems...but clearly our instinctive approaches are not so effective.  So something has got to change or we are going to continue down a path that is not working super well.

A last brain dump of a thought process related to this that goes on in my all the time:

Theory #1.  Are my kids grumpy and dissatisfied about my answers to their needs/requests because I am not giving them enough autonomy?  Am I being TOO prescriptive, not allowing them enough freedoms overall such that they don't feel a general positivity about their lives and their role in it and I am exasperating them?  Do I need to give them more control/power/choices where I can so that they better accept the directives that are not up for debate?  Am I am 'no Mom' too often?

Theory #2.  Are my kids grumpy and dissatisfied about my answers to their needs/requests because I give them too many freedoms/am too flexible and then when they have to do something or accept something they don't really want to, they feel too big in their britches and are not at peace with the authority structure in the home?

You can see that having Theory 1 and Theory 2 banging into each other in my head all day is causing me to have no idea which way to proceed to make changes.  Since I love black and white, it is exceedingly hard to live in the gray area of parenting in real life.  Can I buy crib-cage structures for 3 and 5 year olds and stick them in there til they stop whining?  I might get a serious amount of work done with a roomful of caged children for a few days til we reestablish who's the boss around here!!  Ha ha.  Don't report me for that comment please, it's a joke.

It's hard to be an analytical person.  Don't be too hard on me for opening up my brain and sharing my thoughts!  Believe it or not, I love my kiddos deeply and I just want to do what's best for them, easy or hard, but while showing them tons of warm love and making sure they know I'm on their side.  Then again, I'm human.  I snap.  I yell.  I wake up tired and have done the same things every single day for over 5.5 years now!  Jesus, help!

p.s.  I accept thoughts and advice with open hands!  (Directives, criticism and comments of 'are you serious what kind of freak show are you??' I tend to be more close-handed about...though hey, I'm posting my thoughts to the internet so I'm kind of asking for it!!)