I am not exactly sure when I just knew I was in trouble. My first child, Jake, was easy. He had a tantrum or two, bit daddy once, and it took us a week of consistency to teach him to sleep in a toddler bed. Big deal. Our second child, a daughter, was quite different. As an infant she screamed any time I put her down. When she was 3 months old I ordered a Moby wrap because a friend told me that it was easy on the back and I would conveniently be able to carry her everywhere I went. I ordered the Moby wrap and it came…only it was blue, not the purply indigo I had ordered. I complained and the company was willing to exchange it, but then I would have to live without it for another week while the situation was mended. Wait a week….wait a week…I sobbed on the phone with customer service. You don’t understand people, this child is killing me. Can you overnight it?? I will pay you ONE MILLION dollars!
Yep, that's when I knew I was in trouble.
This determination on her part carried over into toddlerhood. We were glorified spankers of our first child (you know, the 10 spankings he has gotten his entire life). Then Sonora met the wooden spoon. After a spanking she would just scream and throw things. We would spank again. There was no heart change from her, just rage. She’s a lot of rage. A lot of fury. I can think of seasons in our lives where every single day, multiple times a day, she screamed in a heap on the floor.
Not now though, or at least, not most of the time. Now she is sweet and lovely, passionate about princesses and dolls, playing legos with her brother and helping me in the kitchen. Her and I went out to the mall yesterday and then out to Outback Steakhouse for an afternoon snack. She ordered a side of regular fries and another of the sweet potato variety. The “yellow ones” were salty and spicy, while the “orange ones” had a honey glaze. She looked up at me with her big brown eyes and smiled, “Hey Mom, these fries are spicy, and these are sweet.” I thought it was ironic that she had chosen this appetizer for us because it occurred to me that if Sonora was a meal- in whatever hypothetical world my daughter could morph into a food dish, she would be something really, really spicy with a piece of pie on the side. I think there was a time in our lives where she was 85% really difficult and 15% “normal.”. Then we moved onto to 50/50. Now I would say that we have swapped the original statistic. We fight battles 15% of the time….and oh.my.goodness, she can wear two grown ups slap OUT in under an hour. I know there are moms with children that have been coined as “strong willed” and they need encouragement. I totally get that.
I have come out swinging through a thicket of hopelessness, and let me say, I have a feeling I am coming out ahead. Sometimes I’m not sure, but we have had a good year under our belt and have learned what work for us. I am no expert on raising a strong willed child, but I can say that I’ve survived the first three years of mine’s life and I do have some tips. Some of them are straight out of parenting books and I will be the first to give them credit. I should also add that I did not do this alone. I had lots of insight from my mom, close friends, and of course, the experts. Here is what has worked for me:
1) Stay Calm, and Give Options .
This is a home runner in the Love and Logic books- which I highly recommend. Your kid needs to know that they are not “too much” for you too handle. Don’t lose it. Don’t determine that the problem needs to be solved in that moment if you can’t handle it. For us, we made a list of things (ok, a mental list) of what was acceptable in our house. Anything that isn’t, the kids have the option of going outside. Just now I heard hammering in the back bedroom and since my youngest is taking a morning nap I ran back there to see what my children were doing. Of course, it was Sonora beating the wall. I said, “Sonora, you are welcome to hammer outside. Want me to help you with that backdoor?” She didn’t want to move outside, so the hammering stopped. Before this works, you have to follow my number two tip.
2) Establish Boundaries.
This is not the fun part, trust me. But it is the tip you have to follow if you want some authority. Sonora stopped hammering because she knows that if she doesn’t stop beating the wall indoors, I will throw her over my shoulder and carry her to the backyard. It doesn’t matter if it’s raining and 50 degrees out. I will toss her a jacket and socks. She knows that when I give the option, “It’s time to be quiet, or you can play outside,” that if she continues being loud, I will follow through on my end. So yes, I’m going to say it, the famous strong willed child adage- BE CONSISTENT.
3) Decide what’s really important to you.
There are times where I make a threat, and don’t follow through because it really isn’t that worth it to me. James Dobson says that with these kids, you can really just stick to moral issues to do battles over (like hitting, lying, disobeying parents, ect). I fight the “be quiet in your bedroom” battle when the baby is sleeping, but otherwise, not so much. I fought the bedtime battle because I needed time with my husband. It took us about 3 months of teaching Sonora to sleep in a toddler bed without getting up. THREE MONTHS!!! It makes me laugh now because she gaily skips to her bed each night. I don’t usually fight the clothing battle…like when she dresses herself in multiple mismatching colors. I also didn’t fight the potty training battle with great fervor because she was fighting back. So I backed down and let her do what she was going to do. She is 3 ½ and just now 100% potty trained. Oh, but be warned parents, when the strong willed child does something, they do it with the same determination that they didn’t do it before. She is already waking up in the middle of the night, waking ME up to help her go potty because she cannot wipe on her own. I have whimpered, “just go in your diaper…,” but that is beyond her at this point.
I really struggle the most with this one because sometimes I pay the price of her decision. Like when I don't fight the nap time battle and she’s so grumpy that I can’t take her out in public , or I don't make her change into real clothes and everyone in public is looking at her like she’s homeless. Boo...you live and you learn.
4) Love them through their storm.
I think if a parenting “expert” saw me doing this, they would call me crazy. There are times when I ask Sonora not to do something, and she gets mad. Really mad. She changes the entire atmosphere of the house. One time I tried this parenting tip. When everything is unwinding in your house, just stop and ask God what He is doing in your children’s life. How does He see your child in that moment? Sonora was raging one time and ran to her room. As she slammed the door, I swear my entire house shook. I was mad at her, but I’ll give credit to the Holy Spirit on this one…I just stopped. I tip-toed to her room and cracked the door open. She was laying in her bed, beating her pillow. I just began seeing her for what she was- a very strong girl, who so desperately wanted her way, but it wasn’t going to happen. That is frustrating. So I went to her, knelt by her side and asked her if we could talk. She wouldn’t even look at me. When I touched her, she shrieked like a tea kettle and I wondered briefly if she was going to need deliverance instead of discipline. I just leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “I love you, baby.” She turned away from me, but I kept on, “I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.” She STILL ignored me, but she wasn’t screeching anymore. I climbed in her bed next to her and pulled her into my chest, “I love you, Sonora. Nothing you ever do will keep me from loving you.” I believe with all of my heart that when we are at our worst as human beings, this is how God brings us home. Not with boundaries, or that word “consistency” or ten commandments. He just holds us and loves us. He understands that the weight of the consequences of the decisions we make are painful. Sonora had driven herself outside the confines of community- that was already not fun. Making a point is not fun. I saw tremendous success in this approach. I’ve done this a couple times now, and both times the fight has ended with her curled up on my lap crying. The worst thing that can happen is for ME to become the “bad guy.” Bad decisions are the bad guy. Bad attitudes. I am the one she can come to when it gets really hard, and the only way I know to facilitate that is to be consistent not just with my boundaries, but with my love.
5) Parent from relationship.
This can be difficult early on, but now that Sonora is 3 years old, it is way easier. I yearn for her to be in right relationship with me, especially when I discipline. When she’s being disagreeable, we’ll say, “You can go to your room (or outside) and do that, or I can carry you there.” When we carry her away from us because of her behavior, it’s not fun. The first time I put her in her bedroom to “stew” she stayed there for almost two hours. She was two years old. She can absolutely come out when she’s ready to behave, but she chooses not to. Now, after 15 minutes I will go pursue her. “Sonora, I miss you. Please come be with us, our family is not the same with you. I know you didn’t like your dinner so you upchucked it all over the table and I had to take it away and then you screamed and threw your stainless steel juice cup at my face, but that doesn’t change the fact that dinner is not the same without you.” My mom figured this one out with Sonora. Sometimes she is too strong for her own good! Now, if she chooses not to be happy and stay in her room forever and a day, I will go get her because I miss her and she needs to know that. Sometimes she will be grumpy around me but I just keep her close and remind her that she needs to be happy because that makes me happy. In the meantime, when all is well, I am cultivating this relationship with her. Her love language is physical touch, so I give back rubs almost every night.
If you are parenting a very strong child, it is completely doable. Don’t let society tell you otherwise. I think there has a been a big deal made about really strong children- like this “UH-OH- Watch out!” complex, so when parents began seeing their young children act up repeatedly they start feeling that dread that maybe they have a strong willed child. In my opinion, all children have areas where they are strong willed. Even my beyond easy son can be VERY serious about his lego creations getting demolished by his youngest sister, and have a tantrum.
There are the kids like Sonora though, passionate to the core, especially about controlling her own life. The thing a parent of an up and coming strong willed child needs to know is that you cannot control them. You absolutely cannot control them. You just facilitate the environment.
They won’t share their toy with their brother? That’s fine, they can go play alone in their room. Screaming will probably ensue, be warned.
They won’t eat the dinner you served? I usually offer one more option (some leftover I have in the fridge), and if they aren’t interested, they can hang out with us at the table or go play- but dinner is over.
They won’t leave the mall when you’re ready to go? Set the timer on your phone for five minutes, and that’s what time you are leaving. When the timer goes off, they can either walk beside you or be carried over your shoulder. What would they like to do?
See where I am going with this? It’s Love and Logic style. At 8:00, it IS bedtime in our house. If she’s not ready for bedtime, she can go outside of our house.
I definitely have my struggles. We didn’t start reading Love and Logic until last year, so we’re still piecing it together and figuring out what works for us. But I can say that the atmosphere in our home change dramatically when we stopped fighting her, figured out what was really important (James Dobson logic), calmed down, and made it a passionate point of ours to love her through her pain.
For awhile, our season of struggle was potty training. It was her dressing herself in wackiness. Now those are areas of victory (or areas I just gave up on and they resolved themselves!).
For now, we are stressing about her nap time, which she insists it is time to give up. There is hope, I have found that to be the ultimate truth. My goal is not to change her, but to embrace her strength and help her to do the same. I don’t fret anymore, I just thank God that He was willing to entrust me with such a firecracker. I guess none of us really chooses to eat spicy fries with honey glazed ones on the side, just like we don’t choose to have a strong willed child. Sonora ordered the crazy combination yesterday and I have to say, once I tried it, I found it to be satisfying and addicting, and I couldn’t get enough. I feel the same way about my sweet and spicy little girl who is [apparently] out to change the world. If you find yourself parenting a strong willed child, enjoy it. It is a journey full of challenges, but also multiple miracles and victories. Who doesn’t want to live a life of miracles?
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