Choices

Isaac and I recently read the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. (It made us want to read Boundaries with Kids by the same authors, which we'll work on soon.) One of the premises is that as parents, our job is to prepare children to make right choices as they grow up. Once we have established respect and obedience in our children, we need to focus on helping them become autonomous, responsible, and independent, able to control themselves and their choices.

When Ellie is no longer under our control, we want her to be responsible for herself and to choose to love God and love people. In order to prepare her to make these choices as a teen and adult, we need to start now, when the consequences are less. The book made me think about how autocratic I want to be as a parent, and what responsibilities I am willing to give Ellie.

I think Isaac and I have been pretty good at empowering Ellie and encouraging her to be independent. We have also been decent at giving her choices (within boundaries, of course) and letting her make decisions. But I think we can do this more deliberately than we've been doing.

With 4-year-olds, the dumbest choices become very important. This afternoon, Ellie was making a bed on the floor with couch pillows. She wanted the ones behind me, which I need for my back. I explained her choices: she could get her pillow, get the pillows from our room, or make do with just the two pillows she had. She argued and argued. The choices remained firm. (In hindsight, Isaac and I realized that we should have explained the choices twice, then put her in her bedroom until she decided. We shouldn't have engaged in the argument by continuing to calmly explain what we had already explained.)

Eventually this disintegrated into us needing to put Ellie in her room because she refused to make any choices and kept arguing with us. (WHY do kids insist on tantrums? She was clearly set on a tantrum and was going to keep arguing until she got it.) She yelled, "You can put me in my room but I'll just follow you right back out!" Suffice it to say it was ugly and we needed the latch on her door.

Isaac latched her door and explained, "Ellie, when you're calm, you can come out and I'll talk with you." First, she yelled/sobbed that she WAS calm about 15 times. When she got no response, she started yelling, "Daddy! I want you to come in here and talk to me!" Again, she was ignored. After about 25 repetitions of this, she yelled, "Daddy! It would be nicer if you answered me the first time!"

Anyway, finally she was calm and came out to talk to Isaac. He explained that sometimes the choice we want most is not an option. Then we have to choose the next best choice. Ellie said, "There IS no next best. There's just what I want to do. That's what the best thing is."

How often do we say that to God? When He doesn't answer a prayer in the manner or timing we want, we rebel. It's particularly silly and arrogant since like a parent, He knows and wants what is best for us much more than we do. In Isaiah 55:8,9 God tells us, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." Why do we keep insisting that our ways are better than His?

Going back to the tantrum aftermath, I explained that it's our job as parents to help Ellie learn to make the right choices. She objected plaintively, "But it's HARD to." And she's right. For some reason, we let our short-sighted thoughts and ways dictate our actions, instead of acting on faith to make the right choices, knowing that God's thoughts and ways are higher than ours.

Maybe we're all 4 years old in some ways. Maybe these are lessons that we should all be working on.