sowingseeds

My blog friend sire has seemingly stumbled upon this little gardening experiment of a blog I’ve got going. He asked in my last post if I had done anything on “pesticide”. I left a link to a post I’d done on pests. In that post, I sort of left off at “pesticide”, leaving that up to each family and each situation.

I do believe that there are many different forms of “pest control” that parents can and should utilize. I do not think that any one form will work for every child at every age in every situation. I like to try to stay creative and vary my ways of controlling the pests that can invade our children’s lives. It seems that as they grow, the best forms of pesticide in their lives also change. Sitting in “time out” is not going to do much for our 15 year old (although grounding is really a form of extended time out, I suppose.)

Though there are times when I may consider just wringing the necks of my children and the pests that invade their lives, it is not always feasible, nor would it really serve any good purpose! I recently left a comment on a cyber-friend’s blog (who claims to be better than supernanny!) that I feel like prevention is always the best medicine.

Foreseeing a problem and set up ways and guidelines to prevent the pests from ever entering in the first place seems to be the smartest and easiest pesticide to implement. For my young kids and nephews, I use creative pesticides like sitting in chair position against a wall, holding a large dictionary in outstretched arms, groundings, mouth washings, sentences, and “over-correcting”. But these do not truly seem to be pesticides, as I do not think they will ultimately change a child’s heart, even if they do change a behavior.

I certainly feel that this is the place we are at with our kids right now. Of course, I always desire for my kids to be individuals, but I feel like we have made a move with our son, placing him out into another receptacle for more individual growth. Having grown up homeschooled, he transitioned this year into public school. It has defiinitely brought about a different type of growth-mostly good.

I know that all children need to have their space to grow in their individual ways. I think it is important to their development as a useful and whole person. I think the bible teaches this in Proverbs where it says “Train up a child in the way he should go…” This means that each child has a different way of training that is more effective for him/her. I have found that with my own children-what works for one may not necessarily work for the other.