Tobey: Personality shaper

They say a child's personality is primarily shaped in the preschool years. That scares the heck out of me.

Tobey's been trying my patience this week, especially now that the distraction of cousins and activities are gone. (Tangent: Can nursing moms who haven't gotten their period back yet experience PMS? Because I seem to get irritated at Tobey at roughly the frequency of every month.) His clear dawdling in order to not do as I say is really irritating me. And then I end up using my "tone".

Having been a high school teacher, I must say, I have a pretty good "tone". I have a "look" and I have a "tone" that nicer people in this world do not have. When I am tired and I am sick of thinking of logical consequences to give Tobey a choice of whether to obey me or not, I whip out my tone.

My tone seems to be "effective", because as soon as I use it, Tobey either dawdles or cries. It's the crying that breaks my heart, like what he did this morning when I gave up on him ever listening to me, called him, "Child!", plopped him in the playpen that he was too slow to get into and retreated to the shower. I could hear him the whole time crying, "Mommmeeee!" and crying, that fake whining kind of crying. At first I was irritated that from outside the bathroom he could ruin what's supposed to be my moment of solace and cool down. But then I thought through the whole sequence that got me to that point and realized that it wasn't as bad as my attitude made it to be. What broke my heart more than the crying was how quickly he stopped and smiled when I came out of the shower (in undies and a towel turban) and hugged and held him. He was smiling before I got to get out my apology. He said, "Mommy have water in eyes?" because I was crying at his acceptance of me and my faults.

But back to the crying, Tobey's pleas for "up up" when he's clearly in trouble or when I start with the tone is slowly waking me up to the possible ramifications of my moments of impatience. I don't want him to doubt my love but I find it hard to muster up the energy to think of gentler" way of giving warnings and discipline. It doesn't make me feel better that Tom comes home "fresh" (even after a hard day's work) and seems to think of logical consequences for Tobey's actions easier than I can because he hasn't been trying to dole them out all day for every situation since 7:30AM.

I was in awe of how 4-year old Emily could not only express her feelings in words but that she felt like she COULD express them to her parents without fear. Dennis told us how he asked Emily once why she always wanted Denise to do her bedtime routine. After a little bit of hesitation and looking around, she said gently, "Well, because sometimes I like you and sometimes I don't." It broke his heart as I could only imagine but I thought it was kudos to them how she could say something like that without fearing that he would love her any less. I don't really want to hear Tobey ever say to me that he doesn't like me, but if he ever doesn't, I'd want him to tell me (gently!) without fear.

Denise was really great at "threatening" the time out chair with Emily without getting worked up. She could calmly say, "Emily, why do I have to ask you to do this four times before you will listen to me? Do you need to sit in the time out chair to think about it?". Seems to work better than my, "Tobey. Tobey. Tobey! Tobey!! Tobey!!!! CHILD!"

I pray not just for daily grace but for parenting grace. I pray that whether now or in adolescence or even adulthood, that Tobey would not doubt my love for him, that I will always be willing to say I'm sorry like this morning, that we will be able to talk and be open with each other without fear of ramifications.