Raising Love : Introducing A New Baby to Your Child and Other Parentisms

Chapter 3 - An Interlude of Explanations

Jared and I always discuss major decisions with our family before we finalize them. To understand why we would discuss important life choices with a child, you need to first understand our thought process.

Jared and I are the type of people who like to first gather information, analyse the information and then plot the best way forward. When we became Jesse's parents, we had to decide how we wanted to raise him. Obviously we would raise him in Christ, but with regards to the other aspects of his upbringing, we needed to find our own way of parenting which was specifically tailored to our situation, and lifestyle, as well as to the character of our child.

We had a vast repertoire of parenting techniques to choose from (as we had seen many of our family and friends raise children over the years) and we also knew which of those parenting styles we liked and which we didn't like, so we figured that we would (mentally) create our own basic parenting style and then refine it as Jesse grew and we learnt more about him.

For instance we both knew that:

1. A lot of people firmly believed in physical punishment for children who had behaved badly, but we didn't want to take that approach. We wanted to speak to our child and try to resolve issues. We didn't want to be the insulting, or shouting parents, either. We are still following this ethos of respectful, verbal communication and it is working wonderfully for us. We are not perfect, and sometimes we make mistakes. The important thing is to apologise and move forward.

Many people may laugh and think to themselves, "well it's EASY for Jared and Kerisa to refrain from hitting Jesse and Zoe. Jesse has special needs, he doesn't do the things that our children do, and Zoe is too yoiung to be considered naughty." Yes it's true that Jesse doesn't have the opportunities to misbehave the way that other 9 and a half year olds do, but let me tell you, when you are exhausted from being awake all night and you're trying to change a poo diaper and he accidentally kicks you in the chin or slaps you or scratches your eyeball (giving you an infection and increasing your temperature to 38.8°C), it's very difficult to remember that he isn't doing it on purpose.

It has taken years of practice, and lots of Jesus, to develop the correct reaction - to not lash out in our pain. We can't just react with our kids, children behave that way. Adults need to hone their skills of impulse control and curb sudden, violent reactions.

As we edited this chapter today, we were reminded that this way of raising a child isn't just a pie in the sky idea, it's a very real reality to us. This point "hit" home when Jared received a KLAP (a very hard smack) to the face while feeding Jesse. It was an accident, but it still hurt like crazy, especially because Jesse's finger nails needed to be clipped. Jared had to look past the pain and control himself, and his reaction, so that he didn't lash out. All of this took place in a microsecond between the smack and the reaction. It is a learned skill (requiring love and patience) that must be practiced, it doesn't happen over-night.

2. We wanted to speak to our children with the respect that we want them to give us. We still believe in that philosophy. When Jesse gets a bit fussy because he wants something and he can't communicate it to us, it would be easy to lob an insult at him with the assumption that, since we can't understand him, he can't understand us, but that's not the right way for normal, functioning adults to behave.

We need to be able to talk to our child, instead of flying off the handle every time we get overwhelmed. We have also learnt that Jesse's understanding is exceptional. From a very young age he has understood complex life topics that young children often grapple with, so if we had insulted him, he would have understood every word and internalised all of that negativity.

We also refrain from physical punishments (hitting) as we feel that this type of behaviour only condones violence by repackaging it as "correction". Adults don't hit children because the children are being naughty, we hit them because we got angry and couldn't control our emotions. I hope you can see the irony in that.