It’s About Making Babies!

Chrunchy Chicken admits to wanting help dealing with kids acting out, with short school days and enforced confinement at home. She wants to learn “Slow Parenting“.

What about you parents out there? Have you found a happy medium in dealing with the kids? Or do you fantasize about putting them up in a listing on Craigslist?

I did some substitute school teaching a few years back. Classroom discipline is one of the hardest parts of the job. One resource I commend to all parents is “Tools for Teaching” by Fred Jones. A couple of pointers from the classroom:

- The red zone. It turns out that there is a kind of distance-defined zone about a teacher (parent). Within three or four feet, kids tend to behave well, attend to their work or whatever. This is all completely passive. Out to about six to eight feet is a yellow zone, where the mere presence of an adult has less effect. Beyond that is the red zone. In the classroom, the way to get a child into the green zone, from kindergarten through high school in my experience, is to walk through the class. Roam the aisles between seats. You need to “expose” each student every few minutes. Try to sit down – and invite whispering, tossing, playing games and reading comics. Time and experience adds persistence and discipline. With practice you can make do with a pass every ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, but you have to stay on top of it. For parents? keep an eye on things. Wander in and out regularly. If you want them to behave as if you were standing there watching them, let them know you are keeping track, and watching regularly.

- Dealing with your own anger. When you first feel the irritation, take a calming breath. It takes 28 minutes for the adrenaline kicking in to cycle through and be flushed from your system. Be aware that you will be affected by the aggressive tendencies and heightened responses of the adrenaline. The good news is that it takes several minutes to build up full steam. By taking a deep, calming breath, by taking charge of the adrenaline circus, you diminish the full brunt of an encounter. You make better judgments and react more appropriately.

- Calming the yelling. When a child is throwing a tantrum or shouting, that is the last time you want to yell. Keep your voice at a normal or lower pitch and volume, and they have to get quieter to hear you. Yell, and you set them a new objective to overpower.

(I save yelling for imminent danger events and times.)

From my own life:

o – “If you can’t see my lips, I cannot hear you.” My sister and I had a horrible time teaching this to my mother. But it worked. Yelling from the next room, or the smallest room, is an expression of disrespect, and assumes that what is heard is understood – when often it isn’t. Yelling louder isn’t the answer – communicating is.

o – You might try a tactic from military movies. Instead of “stop this” which leaves worlds of opportunities for undesirable things *to* do, how about “Take this old toothbrush and clean the toilet.” and “Go weed the garden, after you clear the snow from the sidewalk.” Or “Vacuum the living room/clean your room/make pizza/make some !?$** chocolate chip cookies! Now!” (I prefer to substitute the word “silly” for “!?$**”, but your mileage may vary.)

And you might try to understand what each wanted from an encounter. A specific toy or object may just be a symbol for wanting to play together, or feeling bad or frustrated about something unrelated. This might be a child version of coming home from work with a bad mood, and letting it affect the family. Learning to deal with such things early can improve self awareness, communication and problem solving skills. When you can catch friction in action before things escalate beyond discipline (the will to complete a task) into a need for disciplinary action, you have opportunities to teach, to share, and to guide. And maybe, those times you get it right, polish up a reputation as someone all-knowing and infallible. “Mom”.

Blessed be.

* While reading “Tools for Teaching” I found the book very easy to read and understand. At the time I was helping my neighbor work with his cattle, and I immediately, as I progressed through the classroom discipline parts of the book, saw things go better in the classroom – and in the neighbor’s pasture. Just changing my perspective and understanding made a noticeable difference.

One last point from the book – weenie parents. If you are going to give in to your child, do it the first time he/she asks. If you ever wear down from constant asking, or allow repeated requests, you teach the child that begging works – and is a viable and useful communication tactic. This *will* cause pain to student and teacher when the teacher has to de-program that habit in the classroom. Smart students learn that whingeing doesn’t work *at school*, mostly, *not* that whingeing doesn’t work at all. All the parent need to do is to hear and consider every request, and only give the “final answer”. Repeated requests are an expression of disrespect for the parent, and should be dealt with.

Brad K Children, Society Crunchy Chicken, discipline, parenting

An old post on CindyGees blog caught my eye, What Godliness Does NOT Look Like. Dated 2007, the post refers to a an article by Karen at True Womanhood in the New Millenium, What does Godly womanhood look like in the 21st Century?. vision of godly women, Christian, that is, in the 21st Century. Written by Scott Brown of the National Center for Family-Integrated Churches, the list looks a bit like an honored Amish woman – plain dress, withdrawn from worldly (non-worshipful) influences, protected from undue influence by loving father and family, and desiring most of all a godly husband.

Karen’s post on True Womanhood copies the Scott Brown list, pointing to ScottBrownOnline.com. That site no longer exists, and apparently neither does Scott Brown’s article. The domain redirects to ncfic.org/blog, which begins August 2008 – more than a year after Karen’s blog. Karen concludes her inclusion of the list with a question – an uninflected, “what do you think?”

CindyGee objects to an assumption of affluence.

Godly womanhood is a fine thing, but godliness which is dependent upon privilege and wealth is merely hypocrisy, all gussied up in a modest, tasteful, expensive Edwardian gown.

Scott’s thoughts are quite Biblically oriented, as he sees the Bible.

Here are some of their distinctives:

1. They saw the bitter fruit of feminism and began to understand it’s bankruptcy and destructiveness.

2. They “kissed dating goodbye” and decided in their youth that they would abstain from the modern dating debacle.

3. They trusted their fathers encouragement toward them to fulfill the biblical and normative pattern of scripture regarding the roles of women and began to prepare themselves to be wives, helpers and home makers as a life strategy – in contrast to the feminist vision of independent workers outside the home.

4. They rejected the immodest, worldly but common clothing options of their culture and the Lord put it in their hearts to be faithful to God’s commands regarding feminine dress and modesty.

5. They are striving to preserve themselves sexually for their future husbands, instead of test driving numerous partners before marriage.

6. They are spending their time serving the enterprise of the home as assistants in their fathers businesses and assisting their mothers in the teaching and raising of the children in the home.

7. They were told by their parents that if they were faithful and obeyed, they would be blessed.

8. One of the blessings they are anticipating is godly husbands.

I will not speak to the relationship of Christianity to women, to families, or churches. My take isn’t about faith.

The Home as Culture

I think that there is merit in some of what Scott lauds, quite aside from faith.

• Don’t confuse fertility rites with other social and family virtues. Sex is everywhere, from advertising to common dress. The assumption that hints of breast and leg and sexual availability are related to “pretty” or beauty is decadent. The assumption that sex is another name for love is derogatory. And looking for a sex partner instead of a mate and co-parent is distracting from self-respect and responsibility.
• The home as culture. A house is a building. A home is an assemblage of traditions, rituals, and values that define a culture. The home is defined by those that dwell there, and how the home and those that live there interact with extended family, with community and nation.
• There is a reason to make babies. Most of us were raised in a community and family heritage that sees children as the continuation of their parent cultures. The intent is to teach the child the values, the traditions and rituals that enrich and empower the lives of parents and community. By raising the child, the culture of parents and community are preserved into the future.
• We each choose to honor the culture that formed who we are, or to amend or abandon it. Much of the turmoil and the un-familied people and children is because decadent forces in the United States sought to diminish the effect of home on children, to form a society of uniformly un-familied (lost and rebellious) souls.
• There is a difference between sex and making babies. Those that intend to make babies must choose a partner and co-parent to be, that will fill domestic, economic, and genetic role expectation. Matters of discipline (will to complete a task), honor, respect, and competence are much more important than physical condition. Socially, I contend that the better partner will not be particularly skilled at winning bed partners. Making a baby is an act of cultural continuity. Making a baby affirms belief and acceptance of parent and community culture, and defines the role of the family within extended family, community, and nation. Sex is a hormone event, part recreation, part exploration of emotional bonding, part affirmation of partnership in the home.
• Looking for a sex partner is an act of disrespect to self, family, and community. If you don’t depend on someone to help raise your child – how can you afford to spend intimate time with them? Conscious intentions aside, the body is a hormone-driven mechanism. Train it to respond to sexual signals, and it will. Choose to define those signals with respect to home and partner(s) helping to form that home, and you get the hormones, the emotional involvement, and physical adaption of the body all centered on enriching ties. Choose to train the body to attract available prospects, and you encumber the body’s ability to later live a chaste life. Experience many partners, and you train the body to react to . . . many partners. Sex is a life skill, and developing that skill to share with one or many is a life choice, difficult to change once acted on. Besides, like riding a bicycle, anyone interested can learn to be a better intimate partner.

Roles of women within the home, or men, or in whatever combination, are quite rigidly defined for most Christians. My own feeling is that roles within the home and community are matters of the home. I think communities are enriched that admit and support whatever homes may form, that nurture and respect themselves and others.

And I don’t think I much care whether this is the 21st century or the 20th. Culture of home, community, and extended family and nation, and honor and respect, are just what they have been, and still worthy goals.

Brad K Advice, Children, Dating CindyGee, Feminism, Making babies, NCFIC, True Womanhood