Comical is not the only word that describes three year olds. They are opinionated. They are independent. They are loving. They are funny. And they are a handful. My child is no exception. In fact, he takes the term "typical three year old" to the max. He will hug your neck one second and wrestle you to the ground in the next. He has steadily, over the last year and a half or so, become increasingly independent and aware of his own feelings and emotions. He is no longer just an infant who is dependent on me (and Patrick) to meet his every need. He is now a preschooler who thinks he is in charge and knows what he wants. In short, he is a teenager.
Which leads me to the subject of discipline. I'm not going to go into all of the various discipline methods and ideas. I have not lost all my marbles . . . yet. But I will say that we've had to become pretty strict with the little man as of late. He's just a little on the hard headed side (must get that from his father). What I have found is that just because something worked with me, just because it worked with my husband, my sister, my best friend's dog, and my Great Aunt Ida's third child from the youngest (I don't really have a Great Aunt Ida), does not mean that it will work with my child. And so we've had to learn to discipline in a way that works with him. And sometimes that means taking him to his room, setting him on the floor (not telling him to sit but physically setting him down), closing the door and walking away. It is amazing how quickly his attitude will change when he has no audience. Believe me it is not the only method of discipline we use, but we have found that when he is in the midst of a complete and total meltdown it is the only thing that gets through to him. And please if you don't have children, don't say "I could straighten him out". You don't know. You don't have children. You will have children one day, and I will laugh.
So what's the point of all this discipline talk? Well, a lot of the adoption education centers around how you will discipline your adopted child. For example, it would most likely be terrifying to a child that has been removed from her home and the only caretakers she has ever known, to be sent to timeout alone in her room. She may connect it unknowingly to being abandoned. One of the questions that came up was, "Will you discipline your biological and adopted children differently?". At first, my answer was an adamant "no", but then as I thought about it I realized that, even if both of our children had the exact same background, it is very likely that we would discipline them differently. Not meaning that we would show favoritism to one over the other, but meaning that we will discipline them in a way that works best for their individual personalities. Some children need nothing more than a stern look to set them on the straight and narrow. Why do more than you have to?
So in answer to the question, "how will you discipline your adopted child?", I say "we will discipline both of our children in the way that best fits their personalities". We will use the most effective and loving forms of discipline possible to help shape both of our children into the people that God created them to be.
Proverbs 22:6 (New King James Version)
6 Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.
And when he is old he will not depart from it.
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