It's Not Just About Brownies

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”---which is the first commandment with a promise---“so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. - Ephesians 6:1-4

This is a hard one for us when it comes to Samantha. We know children need boundaries and discipline to learn about the consequences for their actions. We teach our boys this...but Samantha?

She's the baby. She's the girl. She's (gulp) sick.

Yet, she also disobeys, has tantrums, can be very sneaky and even a little naughty.

Back in January, when she was in the hospital and we found out about her diagnosis, we decided that we would treat her the same as the boys, including discipline.

Of course, deciding something and acting on it are two very different things.

And it didn't become a real issue until lately when she decided she was going to explore the "terrible twos" a little early. She has begun to enjoy the toddler game of throwing food on the ground. Fun times!

Today, she threw a brownie on the floor and made a mess. She just started to walk away drinking her juice. It dawned on me that we can't let this snowball. I took her juice away and told her that she needed to clean up the brownie before she could have the juice. She protested. She threw herself on the ground. I thought, "this is so not going to work." But I repeated to her, "if you want your juice, then you need to clean up the brownie." She sat up and said, "o-kay." She cleaned up and I gave her back the juice.

Success! She can do this and so can we. She needs this guidance from us to learn right from wrong. It's our job as parents to teach her this regardless of how long we have with her.