pure personality

Mid-way through the Christmas holidays I realised that I got my timing very wrong: to be in the last trimester of pregnancy during the hot, crowded, festive season and facing the daily challenge of entertaining two 5-year-olds was mildly exhausting - to say the least.

I know, I know, I must not complain as we do live in one of the most beautiful places on earth...I could have been trapped in a city apartment block with it snowing outside! I'm just not that good with crowds and traffic and sharing our "most beautiful place on earth" with the rest of South Africa - call me selfish. Anyhow its all over and life returns to normal. I can now, smugly, find parking at the beach for my morning walk after dropping the girls at school! And I vow to graciously remember this year- long privilege next festive season, when I am less hormonal - promise.

The great thing about the holidays and my enforced home time (I did not venture off the farm into the madness much) was spending more quality time with the twins. And as a result observing, with a bit more insight than usual, the developments in their personalities.
My father coined a phrase that I love to remember when it comes to inexplicable behavior: "pure personality". And that's just it, we are born with our personality whether we like it or not and no conditioning, discipline or conforming will change the essence of our personalities  We are forever doomed to deal with it's flaws and exalt in it's perfections. Seeing the way my children, born on the same day, under the same stars and raised in the same home, confront various challenges in such extraordinarily different ways confirms this to me each time.
One of the challenges they faced this holiday was learning to ride their bikes. One of them asked for her trainer wheels to be removed on day two and from then on, with the odd 20 minutes put in by Dad, went on to practice daily until she perfected the art of riding her bicycle, which brought her so much pleasure that she forgot all about using her excess energy on punishing me for attention: a valuable realisation on my part!
The other was very keen to try but as soon as she saw she couldn't immediately master it, she grew anxious and angry and gave up. This caused even more frustration as her sister was doing something she couldn't do - but she was be damned if she was going to fall around like a fool in front of anyone - rather ignore the whole project.
Many frustrated tears and tantrums were thrown, to which I responded with logic: "if you don't try, you won't learn," anger: "for goodness sake, either try or don',t but stop punishing all of us too!" and remedial teaching: "Once upon a time there was a little girl who had a twin sister..." None of the above worked until finally her stubbornness gave in and she agreed to let me help her. So, with preggi belly and all, I put in my time daily up and down the driveway and slowly her self-confidence gathered momentum until suddenly she realised "Oh, I can do this!" And she did.
I am so excited about this latest step in development as it gives them a huge leap in freedom and independence. It also confirmed, yet again that no two children are the same and as parents we have to continue to strive to meet their individual personality needs. I guess that throws the "parenting formula" out of the window and another reason why they don't dish out handbooks at birth!

boot camp or not?

Of all the skills required to be a reasonably adequate parent I find the area of discipline the most challenging. And I'm sure I am not the only parent to feel this.

Disciplining your child lovingly and fairly while also instilling a deep understanding that under no circumstances may she repeatedly spit bath water all over the floor is quite difficult - to put it mildly. I have  tended to want to approach most misdemeanors with a severe tongue lashing in the hope that I don't have to take the reprimand any further and that I never have to go back to the same boring incident again, and again. But I've realised this really doesn't work as children soon become deaf to shouting. 

There is so much advice out there on how best to discipline your child: the most advocated, and a favourite of Super Nanny's, being "time out" and the least being smacking. But lets face it, trying to persuade a 3 or 4 year-old to sit quietly on a chair in the corner without screaming or running away is a lot more exhausting - and also open for further bad behaviour - than a firm smack on the bum. I am not saying that hitting small children should be the common form of punishment but I do feel that it can be rather effective if used sparingly and consciously. For Pete's sake most of us were smacked and locked in our bedrooms as children and I don't hold it against my parents or feel I have suffered any major trauma from it.

What I do feel has lead me to the therapist's door though is not being heard and understood. So I strongly feel that listening to your child's gripe or defense is a fair approach to deciding on the type of discipline she should get.

Having two children of the same age but with polar opposite personalities I have found that the same type of discipline does not work on both of them. Charlotte, who is constantly trying to perfect her world, cannot  bear the thought of being caught out at behaving badly and therefore sitting in the corner and having to actually think about her awful behaviour is almost too much to bear....which some would argue makes it a good form of punishment for her, but unfortunately for me too! What should take up to four minutes ends up taking an hour, with her screaming and me eventually losing all my calm unaffected "I can do this" demeanour of a parent in control. Invariably I end up in a rage that leaves me having to abort mission and walk away. Hence the entire objective to instill discipline is lost: the child gets away with screaming and I feel like a first class loser parent. So I choose alternative solutions with Charlotte, like talking about why it's not okay to do what she did, which really seems to work with her, and if it's particularly bad I will remove a privilege like T.V. 

Anna, however, is a different kettle of fish and with her, bless her mischievous little heart, I am constantly pulling out new tricks to stay on top of the discipline game. She is one of those children that if born to a timid softly spoken mother, which I am not, would run the entire household and perhaps the farm and surrounding community too. "Time out" seems to have no real effect on her as I have a strong sense that very little self-reflection is done in that corner, but instead it is used more as a time for her to cook up and perfect her defense speech. So for her I vary things quite a lot! I admit she has received a fair amount of spankings in her short life and thanks to her I have had extreme practice at controlling my patience. Ofcourse her forgivable grin and hilarious outlook on "the way life is" always helps us to bounce back quickly from any unpleasant outbursts.

No matter which way you look at it discipline is a full time occupation and there is a fine line between punishing one's child effectively and causing more parental anxiety. I can see now why there are some parents who choose to turn a blind eye to a lot of bad behaviour as sometimes it just doesn't seem like its worth the exhausting battle. I, however, take it all far too seriously to ignore the possibility of my children growing up into unpleasant adults and possibly often end up punishing myself more.

The bottom line is that kids need discipline but I think cutting them some slack here and there could stand their self esteem's in good stead. After all they are just kids and when else in their lives will they be able to so vehemently push the boundaries within the security of those who love them.
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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

It is just over 3 months until my girls turn four, officially leaving toddlerhood behind and embarking on the next phase of life as Little Girls. A phase which I am already finding a lot more fun than the "eat, sleep, poo" phase and the "I can walk and talk, but see no reason" phase.
After nearly four years of wishing for a little extra sleep in the mornings instead of dealing with a dirty nappy at 5am and having tea demanded at 5.30am; we now don't see them until 7am! Charlotte, who is so determined to grow up, is now in the habit of dressing herself - including socks and shoes - before coming to say good morning and Anna has finally seen the light and realised that sleeping later is actually quite nice.
Although this is a very warmly welcomed development, I have caught myself feeling a bit rejected and starved of their warm little bodies on a cold winter's morning.
However, along with this growing up - there was a time when I was so overwhelmed by them as babies that I forgot they were going to grow up at all - comes a whole lot of new challenges that make sychronised feeds, mid-night wake-ups and 18 nappy changes a day seem like a walk in the park.
Firstly and most notably you can't pull the wool over their eyes because they know that "weetbix doesn't have sugar in it already, ok Mom" and "the biscuit Anna got is definitely bigger than mine!" You definitely can't dress them up to look as cute as you'd like them to. If you put something off until tommorrow, there is no way of getting out of it. And ofcourse the most difficult to adapt to: you can no longer talk about them in front of them, or swear, as they now, very inconveniently, understand almost everything. I find this one the hardest and hence it came back to bite me:
It was one of those days when your chíld decides to have a problem with everything and today it was Charlotte who challenged me at every point right up to throwing a tantrum in front of the school's admin office - an ideal position for the school staff to observe my excellent parenting skills! But I stayed calm and tried to meet her needs, no luck, she continued to scream and stamp her feet as mothers and teachers gave us a wide birth. And then, as if she felt my level embarrassment was not high enough, Anna promptly whipped down her pants and tried to show me her privates!
To hell with concious parenting! Panicked and crimson with embarrassment at the chaos my children were creating, I scooped them up under my arms and marched to the car.With both of them screaming, I managed to strap them into their safety chairs. Determined to get out of there as fast as possible, I'm sure I uttered more than a few vulgar words as I battled with the f*&#$ing seatbelts.
Once I had gained a bit of composure they got a calm yet lethal tongue lashing. The trip home was silent.
The afternoon unfolded quite pleasantly, considering its start, until Charlotte pushed me a little too far again -insisting on climbing on the roof of the car - she ended up in her bedroom with the door locked.
Time out for Charlotte has never been very successful, she doesn't grasp the concept of "be quiet and it will be over in 3 minutes" She gets quite angry, really angry. So I expected the thumping and screaming, but boy did I stop in my tracks when I heard: "Mom, I can't get this f*&#$ing door open!"
Oops.