What's In A Name?

I've been intending all year to write more about the Magic Language course I taught this year, but in the midst of an extraordinarily crazy semester, survival was the name of the game. Now that the class is officially over (and I can officially say it was the single greatest teaching experience of my life), I'm hoping to write a little bit more about it here. In our first unit, we read A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, a fantasy book where the magic system revolves heavily around knowing the "true name" of people and objects. We spent a lot of time discussing how language works, if there is any connection between a word and the thing it names, and the power names hold in our society. I assigned my students a creative essay to write about their relationship with their own name, and I must say, I've never had more fun grading an assignment, because the essays I got were AMAZING. Some of my students loved their names, others hated them, some had even officially changed their names, and it was fascinating to read about. Every essay was deeply profound, and since reading them, I've been stewing all semester about what I would've written about my own name. As soon as I submitted final grades, this is the first thing I decided to do with my time. Below is my own name essay. I hope you enjoy.

“What’s in a name?” asks Juliet to the night sky. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as a sweet.” She has a point. What is a name, but a conventional piece of language, a collection of arbitrary sounds attached to us at birth. Names are just words, words just puffs of air. They mean nothing but what we ascribe them to mean. Why does it matter, what we are called, or that we are called anything at all? While some of us are eccentric enough to slip in and out of names and identities throughout life, the vast majority of us are saddled with a moniker at birth, officially to be changed only through a fee and court order. We do not choose our names, mostly. Our parents choose for us, but what do our parents know of us to pick good names? Just scrunchy blobs of newborn flesh, how are parents supposed to pick the perfect sounds to identify us?

Socrates and Cratylus debated the question of whether there were “true names,” sounds and syllables that represented and connected to a person’s true “essence,” a word that described them so perfectly that to know a person’s name was to know the person truly. They, along with the modern branch of linguistics, eventually decided this could not be how language works, and of course it is not. Words are not intrinsically connected to the things they signify. The names given us at birth are less like skin, attached to our being, and more like clothes, artificial additions. And like clothes, some names fit like gloves, others fit like baggy sweaters. Unlike clothes, names cannot be changed so easily, and sometimes the infant who snuggled in the warmth of their childish name must grow into the adult constricted by the too-tight fabric. If only names could be shed as easily as clothes, or shed entirely. What’s in a name, really? Perhaps it is a relief to some, knowing that their name, and whatever conventional baggage comes with it, is not actually a part of who they are. Names are signs, not realities of identity.

And yet, the first act of brutality the Nazi’s inflicted on inmates of those infamous concentration camps was to strip them of their names. In place, inmates were given numbers tattooed into their very flesh. There is a reasonable logic to this. Numbers are markers of identity too. Numbers can be even more individual than names; there can be an infinite amount of numbers without ever repeating, whereas one class of twenty kindergartners can have two Johns or three Marys. But reasonable logic doesn’t negate the fact that a number instead of a name is dehumanizing. Even de-biologizing. We name every living thing—the family pet, the flowers in the garden, even the algae scum on the surface of a puddle in some squalid bog gets a name (chlorella, what a beautiful name at that). To take away a person’s name and replace it with a number is not just to deny their humanity, it is to class them with the inorganic commodities bought and sold by bar code identification. Some things may be identified by number, but living souls need a name.

However arbitrary or ill-fitting our names may be, like all of language, names have power and significance because we believe in their power and significance. Our magic stories, fantastical semiotic reflections of how we imagine the real world could work, are rife with names of power: names that can summon demons, names that can control the wind or call a storm, names so evocative of dreadful evil that they must not be named. Names can be so sacred we don’t use them at all, but instead use honorific titles. While we can talk all we want about sticks and stones and words not hurting, it just isn’t true. Words matter, and the most significant words we have are the ones that have the power to identify us. To name us. We crave to be known by our names. To be called by our names. In the few instances of scripture we have where God the Father has spoken to man, he has called them by name: Adam, Moses, Joseph. To be called by name is to be known, or at least, acknowledged, a type of knowing.

Perhaps that is why I went through such a period of mourning when I changed my last name after marriage. I’d disparaged my maiden name while growing up. Smith. Could there be a more common, more unimaginative, more bland name in existence? My shallowest fear in life was to become a teacher before I got married and have to listen to my students call me “Miss Smith.” And yet, and yet! That name had been my identity for twenty-one years. That name tied me to the only family I’d known, to my father, and to his father before him, and his father before him. It was a name rich in legacy, a name of prophets and presidents. Though my lineage did not change with marriage, I still felt a severing, a wondering if I could claim my noble ancestors now I didn’t share their name. Would my children feel the same connection to that heritage if they never bore the name Smith? It felt like losing a part of myself, and I mourned that loss.

I considered keeping my last name (and confession, I did keep it as a middle name, but the strange place and powerlessness of middle names in our society is a topic for a different essay). However, if I had to go back and do it again I would still change my name, because I recognize how my new last name represents the new family unit I have built. It connects me deeply to my husband and my children. Tanner (a name, I might add, barely one syllable more interesting than Smith if no less common and unimaginative) is the name that unifies and identifies us as a family. It’s a powerful thing, to share this common family name. It binds us together. I wish the burden of losing and changing names and identities didn’t fall so heavily upon women in our culture, didn’t reinforce so much the paternal connection. I wish my name represented all the lost maiden names from my maternal line, the Nortons, the Prices, the Warrs… but hyphenated names are an in-elegant solution. The only perfect situation happened to my Grandma Donna Smith, who married her third cousin once removed, my Grandpa Mitt Smith, and never had to change a thing. Of course, we can’t all have looping family trees like that, or the species would be in danger.

The significance of last names, the connection to family, define people in a very specific way, but first names are another matter. If Socrates’ “true names” exist, names that define the true essence of who we are, we would expect to find them in the first name. But if first names actually reveal anything about anyone, it is more about the parents giving the name than the child receiving it. Did my mother have any clue that the name “Suzanne” was a French version of the Hebrew word for “lily”? Did she believe that flower possessed any essential connection to the babe in her womb? No. My mother gave me my name for the entirely unromantic reason that my due date was originally on the birthday of her favorite college roommate, who happened to be named Suzanne. Of course, then I actually came two weeks late, so the date was irrelevant, and I’ve never in my life met my namesake, which generally makes me question how strong their friendship actually was (if you name your child after someone, don’t you think they’d be an important enough person in your life to actually meet up with occasionally, and introduce said child to?). So for all intents and purposes, I consider my mother’s choice of my name to be arbitrary. Practically meaningless.

And yet, and yet… When I stumbled across the etymology of my name in a baby book years later, I felt a spark of recognition. I felt the clothing of my name, at times in my past too tight or too baggy, to slide in comfortably around my skin. I had loved calla lilies since I was little—pure and white, graceful curves, long and elegant. They were the flowers in my wedding bouquet. And French had been my minor in college. I did a study abroad in Paris. Now here was my name Suzanne, literally meaning French lily. Fleur-de-lys. Could a name be more perfect for me? Was it a true name? Or was it coincidence? Did my name, with the power of some unbelieved magic, shape me? Predict me? Guide me to become the essence it defined? Or was it just luck, me forging connections to an arbitrary collection of sounds randomly assigned to me by chance? Is that what all people must do who love their names? Find the connection, build the identity, create the definition they want?

I decided I wanted to name my first daughter Lily, as a way of naming her after myself without giving her the name Suzanne. Maybe that’s a selfish thing to do? But how could I give her a more significant and meaningful name? How else are parents supposed to choose names for their children? How else other than chance, whim, liking the sound of the syllables, the way it will look on some future theoretical resume, the connection to some long-dead ancestor or some beloved celebrity, trying to conform, trying to be unique, naming her after my favorite flower, myself? How else to pick the single crucial defining symbol for a being who exists more in potential than in experience? And, like all the other baggage parents pass along, children must do their best to get along under the weight (or weightlessness) of the name handed to them.

I had so many images in my mind of what this daughter would look like, how we would go see the ballet together every year, how she would let me curl her hair and we would wear matching dresses, how someday we would go to Paris together, and how her favorite flowers would be lilies too, simply because of her name, and the connection it would give the two of us. Three years ago, I gave birth to that daughter I’d been dreaming about, and I named her Lily. And she grew up to be nothing like I imagined.

She is a force. Though she be but little, she is fierce. She is strong and opinionated and stomps around our house in her favorite pair of boots. She is passion and bursts of emotion and has a flair for the dramatic. She looks nothing like me (she is 100% her father’s child), and loves wearing princess dresses but only over pants. She won’t let me touch her hair, so she runs around with wild stringy curls, little more than bedhead. She will likely never take a day of ballet lessons in her life (though I can potentially see her going out for softball, and honestly, with the way I’ve seen her tackle her older brothers I believe she would make a fair linebacker). She is the life of the party, the center of attention, color and sound and explosion. She is the opposite of me in almost every way possible, and yet the depth of my love for her takes my breath away. I stand in complete awe of her fierce, beautiful, passionate little person, but I often worry she will grow up resenting the name I gave her, for she is nothing like the quiet, slender, elegant calla lilies I painted in a watercolor to adorn her nursery before she was born.

We do not get to choose our names, but even if we could, how many of us know what name we would pick? How to choose a collection of sounds to represent our identity? Such a significant weight for a symbol to hold! How does one choose the perfect name? Does the perfect name exist? What do we do with the names we are given? Especially the ones that fit like baggy sweaters or squeeze like too-tight T-shirts. Do we suffocate? Do we chafe? Do we drown? Do we insist on nicknames or file legal petitions to change them? Or do we learn to accept them? Do we let our names define us, or do we define our names?

What I hope my daughter knows is that while it may not be a “true name,” or a name that describes her essence perfectly, it is still her name. She is not a number. She was loved enough, cherished enough, to be given a name. Her name still holds power, still holds meaning, still identifies her. There is still magic in her name. Maybe some names “fit” better than other names, maybe some names feel arbitrary and unconnected to who we want to be or feel we truly are. But also, maybe it’s about making the connection. After all, a name’s meaning isn’t tied down. There are a million ways to inhabit a name, to find the connection, and make it fit. I wasn’t always sure my name defined me. Maybe my daughter will find her own reason to love her name. Maybe she will love the connection it creates between the two of us (a mother can only hope). Or maybe she will find some other way entirely to connect her name to the essence of her identity.

I am the calla lily, but there are other varieties of lily. She can be the tiger lily.

No Punishment Parenting: A Divine Pattern

The first time I read a parenting book that recommended abandoning punishment completely, I thought that sounded entirely crazy. Not that I've ever been a fan of corporeal punishment, but after all, "spare the rod, spoil the child" is in the Bible, right? Or something like that.

It was just hard to imagine how to parent children without "punishment," without timeouts for tantrums, without "consequences" for naughty disobedience, without at the very least verbal reprimands. But frankly, time-outs hadn't actually been working out for me all that well anyway, so I decided to give this "no punishment" thing a whirl, just see what happened. To be honest, I expected it to be disastrous. I expected it to lead to chaos and anarchy.

But I was completely wrong, and the parenting books were completely right.

I'll get to more on my experience in just a minute, but I've done a lot of thinking about this concept, and a while back I had a huge "ah-ha!" moment when I realized that no-punishment parenting is actually a very divine way of parenting. Hear me out for a second.

What are the reasons we punish children? I can think of two off the top of my head:

1.) To teach/motivate/extract good behavior

and

2.) Justice

Maybe there are other reasons to punish children, but at least for me, these two pretty much cover it. I would punish my children because "they just have to learn!"

But does punishment actually teach? In my experience... no. Well, yes actually, it teaches a lot. It teaches children to be afraid. It teaches fear. It also potentially teaches children they are not worthy of love. It rarely teaches children the lesson we actually want them to learn (that hitting is wrong, and I don't want to hit because it hurts others and I don't want to hurt others, I want to be nice them) and actually teaches them fear (I won't hit because I'm afraid of being punished, or I will hit and then I will lie or try not to get to caught because I'm afraid of being punished). Punishment most often teaches children to be afraid or ashamed, it rarely teaches them to modify behavior based on feelings of love and morality.

But then we get to that sense of justice. I mean, your kid hit someone! They can't just get away with that! You can't just let them go on about their day as if nothing happened, while that poor other kid is sitting there crying his eyes out! That's not fair! They deserve punishment because it's just! That's how the world works!

But here's where my epiphany about divine parenting comes in: when does God punish us? Immediately after we've done something wrong? Right there, as soon as it happens?

Or does He wait? Does He give us space to learn, space to change and grow, and space to repent?

How many of us give our children time to repent? I'm not just talking about five minutes, or even an hour. In the vast majority of cases, God gives us our whole lives to repent. Could we afford to give our children the same amount of time? And then, once that repentance happens, there is no punishment! None! It's covered by the atonement of Christ! We repent, and there is no punishment! That is God's mercy!

How many times, as a parent, are we so concerned about meting out justice, that we forget about mercy? How long do we wait for repentance, and, if they do repent, how many times do we punish anyway because of the principle of the matter? Because of justice?

Then this second thought occurred to me: God doesn't punish children! Ever! In LDS doctrine, children younger than the age of eight are considered not accountable for their actions, and completely covered by the atonement of Christ. They are not capable of sin, therefore they are not subject to divine punishment. Ever.

Why on earth, then, do I feel it is just to punish children?

Now admittedly, I've only ever parented children who are under the age of eight, so maybe things will change next year. Maybe punishment is more justified with older children who are more accountable for their actions. But I'm guessing that even then I want to err on the side of mercy, on the side of giving time and space for repentance.

But now I come to the big question: if you don't punish children, how do they learn? How do you teach?

This is the question that stumped me at the beginning. But here's what I've started to figure out: not punishing children for misbehavior is not the same thing as ignoring misbehavior. It simply means waiting for the right moment, and then teaching through means that look nothing like punishment. In fact, what I've realized is that punishment is actually a lazy form of teaching. It is much harder, but also much more worth it, to consciously teach morality and good behavior in calm, intentional moments. Sometimes the heat of the moment requires redirection (like physically holding a child's arm to keep them from hitting, and trying to direct them to play somewhere else), but the key thing is not to react angrily (much harder said than done), and really attempt to remain as calm as possible. No one can learn in the heat of the moment, especially not children. But later, maybe right before bed when everyone is feeling calmer and you're snuggled up on the couch reading a book together, then you can start the conversation, "Remember earlier today, when you were hitting your brother? Was that a nice thing to do? What should you do next time you feel angry with your brother?" Surprisingly, this even works with my two-year-old. This is the moment for teaching.

As I've stopped "punishing" my children, I've even started viewing their behavior differently. I've stopped seeing them as being "naughty" or "disobedient," and instead I see little beings who are working so hard to learn, but who don't always get it right. Who does? But I have so much more grace now for age-appropriate or situation-appropriate behaviors that before would've been deemed "punishable."

My oldest is such a really, really good kid. He is responsible and obedient and just really awesome. Sometimes he gets plans in his head; projects he's working on that he really wants to finish. But I come barging in with demands that he stop what he's doing and go eat dinner, go take a bath, go get pjs on, go to bed. Naturally, he resists. It's hard to be interrupted. Even I as an adult get upset when people interrupt me and force new demands on me, why should I expect my son to not be upset? Why do I expect more mature behavior from him than from myself? The old me would see his resistance as disobedience. The new me tries harder to listen. What's this project? How long is it going to take? Can you maybe just do this part and then get ready for bed? Can we find a compromise?

Nothing about this situation deserves punishment, even if the way my son expresses his frustration feels rebellious or annoying or disobedient. It isn't disobedience, it's simply a person learning how to balance strong emotions.

My middle child is generally the sweetest, easiest kid on the planet. But if he doesn't get enough sleep or enough food, boy, do we know about it! He generally wakes up in the morning hangry hangry hangry! He'll say he wants a bowl of cheerios, but after I get him one he'll scream and cry about how he actually wants Raisin Bran. But if I get him that instead he screams and cries all over that it was cheerios! And back and forth until I just want to throttle him. It's so frustrating! But is it punishable? Usually I find that if I sit with him long enough to calm him down, and get a bite of food into him, after three or so bowls of cereal he's back to his happy little self! All trace of tantrum is gone! Would it teach him anything to send him to timeout? Punish him by not letting him eat at all? No. I just have to trust that at some point he will have more self-control than he does now. Even I'm grumpy when I'm hungry, do I really expect him to feel better than I do?

And my youngest. The most spirited, the most rambunctious, the most energetic of my three. Today she asked me for a strawberry, so I got her one from the fridge. I told her to go sit at the table and eat, but she started down the hallway to her bedroom. I called to her and reminded her that food (especially sticky, juicy, red stain food!) needed to stay in the kitchen, and would she please come sit at the table? She looked right at me and with a sassy little shake of her head said, "NO!" and continued down to her room. I stood there for a second, dumbfounded at the boldfaced disobedience. I could feel the need to punish. I felt the need to run and grab her and physically bring her back and scold and lecture her. How could I let her get away with such disobedience? Wasn't it setting a bad precedent? Wasn't I being soft? But I took a moment to stop and regain calm. I followed her down to her room and said one more time, "Please come eat that at the table. Food isn't allowed in the bedrooms." Then I turned and walked away. It took a minute, maybe two. But she came back to the kitchen.

How grateful I am that I gave her time! Maybe she was testing boundaries and pushing up against my rules, but she wasn't actually trying to be disobedient. And even if she was, even if she never came back to the kitchen and managed to wipe strawberry juice over all the carpet and plush surfaces of her room, she's only two. She doesn't know right from wrong yet. Does that deserve punishment? Or does that deserve more patient teaching while we wait for her to grow and mature?

Along with avoiding punishment, I now also try to avoid "consequences" in my parenting too. I've heard people talk about the idea of "natural consequences," but in my humble little opinion, if it truly is a "natural consequence," then a parent doesn't have to actually do anything to bring it about. For instance, if a child touches a hot stove, the natural consequence is that they will get burned. The parent didn't have to do anything to bring that consequence about. But if a child fails to do their Saturday morning chore, and as a "natural consequence" is made to miss out on the afternoon birthday party of a friend... that is a punishment. There's nothing "natural" about that. I try really, really hard to avoid any "if, then!" phrases as a parent, any threats, anything that can be construed as, "If you don't do this, then there will be a consequence!" It's not a consequence, it's a punishment.

I will admit this incredibly hard, and I'm not perfect with it. My default "consequence" situation usually happens around bedtime, when my oldest is stalling and dragging things out, and I find myself threatening, "If you don't get your pajamas on and brush your teeth right now, there won't be any time for me to read to you!" This feels like a natural consequence at the time (I always have so much work to get done at night, that if bedtime doesn't happen fast enough, I start to get panicked with stress), but my son sees it for what it is: a threat and a punishment. Occasionally it motivates him to get moving a little faster, but usually it spirals into misery. He continues to dally (usually because his mind is focused on something else), and I continue to fume, until I explode and walk out of the room and slam a door (a few weeks ago I even dramatically threw the book across the room smacking it against the wall... very mature), and then he cries and throws a tantrum because he just wants me to read to him. He just wants to make sure I still love him. He wants to reconnect and heal. So I have no choice but to go back on my ultimatum threat and read to him. Try to heal the breach. Because what kind of mother punishes a child by refusing to read to them?

So I try, and try again, to avoid threats. To avoid ultimatums. To avoid any language that forces compliance in fear of a consequence.

But I still see the questions in your mind, because they were the same ones in mine: then how do you get your kids to do what they need to do? How do you get them to see what they've done is wrong? How do you get them to behave? How do you make it feel like they are not "getting away" with something? Won't the kids grow up spoiled, soft, and self-centered if they are never punished?

And here's all I can say: maybe. Except that doesn't seem to be happening with my children.

I'm not saying my children are perfect little angels, that I stopped punishing and they started being perfectly obedient. I would guess they throw just as many tantrums and have just as many "difficult moments" as most children their age. But they certainly don't have more. They are not "spoiled" (as far as I can judge) or headed for a life of rebellious crime (again, as far as I can tell).

But they are happy.

Here's the biggest change I've noticed: Throwing out punishment didn't change my children's behavior, but it did decrease the negativity in our home by probably about 90%. I personally no longer felt the conflict from enforcing punishment. I no longer have to be the bad guy. I don't have to yell (although I sometimes still do, working on it!), I don't have to scold, I don't have to make someone sit in timeout, I don't have to take toys away, I don't have to threaten or cajole. I simply redirect and stay as calm and positive as I possibly can.

And I apologize when I mess up. That part is pretty key too.

And for the most part, I have normal happy kids, who experience a normal range of expected emotions (including frustration, grumpiness, impatience, sass, anger, and boredom), and who are often very compliant, and sometimes not. But overall, they are happy. They feel safe. They know they are loved. And they are thriving. Our home feels peaceful. It really does. My children fight sometimes, but really, not all that often. They have tantrums, but really, not all that often. I get to the end of my rope, but really, not all that often. The overwhelming feeling in our home is peaceful and happy, which is exactly what I want it to be.

I want to emphasize that this is a kind of parenting that we are still working on, my husband and me together. Last weekend, we took the kids to run some errands to a few stores. It was miserable. They were whiny and out of control. In the car on the way home, two kids were crying, and the one in the back was verbalizing his own boredom and frustration in that particular tone made specifically to grate on a parent's very last nerve. My husband turned to me and asked, "How do we get them to stop whining? What are we supposed to do?"

My answer surprised even me. I told him, "Nothing. We do nothing. The kids are tired. We made them stay up late last night (to participate in a babysitting co-op), and they didn't get enough sleep, and probably got too much sugar, and then we dragged them to a bunch of boring furniture stores, and frankly, it would be strange if they weren't miserable right now. They are acting completely appropriate for their age and situation. They certainly aren't in any position to be taught right now. So we just wait until they are." Later that night my husband did have a talk with our oldest son about having more patience when he's bored, and maybe helping out with the younger two instead of just complaining. Did it work? Did he learn his lesson? Maybe, maybe not. But what he didn't learn was to be afraid of us, and that's something.

I want my children's behavior to be motivated from a place of love, from a sense of rightness, from a knowledge of moral duty. I do not want my children's behavior to ever be motivated by fear of punishment, fear of lost love, fear of angry parents. When they mess up and make mistakes (really mess up, not just fail to meet arbitrary expectations I unfairly place on them), I want them to feel sorry because they truly feel sorry, not because they are sorry they got punished. This is a more difficult way to teach, but it is a better one.

God always gives us space. God allows us all time to learn, and grow, and repent. He gives us this entire life, a probationary period, a time to prepare and to repent. Sometimes He can't prevent the true natural consequences of our choices, but in most situations, He withholds Divine Punishment until the very end, when time has actually run out. God's plan is NOT a plan of punishment. That is the point of the atonement, so that not a single one of us will ever have to suffer a moment of punishment if we choose to live worthy and repent. God does not teach through punishment. And it is my humble testimony and opinion that we can parent in God's divine pattern. We can allow our children space to learn and grow and repent. We can teach in the calm moments (never the heated ones). And we can simply let go of punishment. Period.

Okay now, I'm almost anticipating decent in the ranks, so please, if you disagree, or if you have a "But what about this???" situation, please feel free to comment! This post is part of me just working through all my thoughts and feelings about this pretty radical idea, so feel free to work through it with me! I'd love to know your thoughts/opinions!

Kids Don't Come With Instructions (But Here Are Some Books I've Found Useful)

Some things I've done that parenting books have told me to do that have changed everything:

1. Validate my children's emotions and experiences as real and important. This one is tricky sometimes. Because they are little and unreasonable and know so much less than I do, it can be incredibly easy to dismiss their feelings. You don't want to eat your vegetables? You don't want to get buckled in your car seat? You don't want to get dressed/bathe/be a reasonably not-disgusting human being? Tough luck, baby, just deal with it! After all, I know exactly what they need to do to turn out to be decent, healthy, productive, contributing, and happy members of society, right? What do they know?

Well, turns out that's not the point. Turns out it doesn't matter if I know more than they do. Turns out that the better I get at  not dismissing their emotions, the easier it is to actually get them to do what I want. It takes some theory-of-mind work and empathy on my part to get there, and I'm not always the best at it in the heat of the moment, but I've had some pretty convincing experiences where as soon as I validated what they were feeling, everything changed. Sometimes it looks like me realizing that what they are asking for really isn't all that difficult to give in to. Most times, when giving in to their demands or feelings isn't an option, it looks like me just recognizing that they are unhappy, and that is a completely valid response. It's okay to be unhappy when I interrupt their play to go to the store, that wouldn't be fun for me either if I were in their shoes. It's okay they are unhappy that I'm forcing bedtime on them when it would be far more interesting to stay up late. Don't I still struggle with that one too? It's okay they are throwing a tantrum or refusing to oblige, I'm asking them to do hard things and they are young. It's not easy. Just a little dose of sympathy and understanding has gone a long way to change everything about my perspective on how I interact with my children. Instead of getting frustrated, I feel the pain with them as we move through these hard parts of the day. Just because they are little doesn't mean their feelings and experiences aren't valid.

2. I no longer believe in punishment. This one felt so counter-intuitive to me the first time I read about it (in this book here), but punishment didn't seem to be working much either, so I decided to give it a try for a bit and see how things went. This was several years ago, when my oldest was probably three. I used to have power struggles with him constantly, and I felt that any resistance and struggle on his part was punishable with time-out. Basically, he was in time-out a lot, several times a day. But all time-out led to was bigger tantrums and more tears and worse power struggles. It was a vicious cycle. So I just stopped using time-out. I stopped punishing him pretty much cold turkey, for anything.

And I'm not sure anything changed about his behavior, but my perspective changed drastically. I realized that most of the things I'd been punishing him for were age appropriate behaviors. He was simply being a three-year old, and I was telling him it was not okay for him to be a three-year old. I was telling him he needed to be older and more mature than he was capable of being. Punishment wasn't teaching him anything but fear and frustration, and as soon as I stopped punishing him, our relationship improved drastically. I began seeing for the first time just how scared of me he had been, and it broke my heart. He was scared of my disapproval, but he also wasn't doing anything "wrong," except trying to learn and grow and test his boundaries in ways that were entirely appropriate for him.

I have not done a formal time-out with my children since then. I can't say I've inflicted any sort of formal punishment for anything. In fact, it's been a long time since I've viewed any of my children's behaviors as deserving punishment at all. This is not to say that they are perfectly behaved angels. Far from it. It's just that I've learned to distinguish between age-appropriate behavior, and actual transgression. Age-appropriate behavior sometimes needs correction (my youngest is a hitter, she's a violent little thing), but punishment doesn't teach correction, it teaches fear. Instead, I try to find ways to talk and teach during calm moments, and when bad behaviors happen (like the hitting), I simply try to redirect and stay calm. But I don't punish. She's only two. Most two-year-olds hit. It's not inappropriate for her age or maturity level. She will grow up some day and she will become more self-aware and develop greater capacity to control her impulses. What I can control is whether or not she also grows up fearing and resenting me, or trusting me to be her safe place.

This rejection of punishment, or even "consequences," I believe has had a profound impact in our home. For the most part, my children are not scared of me. They behave in age-appropriate ways, and I stay calm (mostly, it's a work in progress) and talk to them calmly when those age-appropriate behaviors cross lines of safety and propriety. This whole rejection of punishment has given me all sorts of insight into how Heavenly Father punishes as well, but that's a post for another day (don't have time for a deep theological tangent here, but I have lots of thoughts here that I'm bursting to share, so hopefully soon!).

3. Parenting is less about my children, and far more about me. I can't "change" my children, I can only change me. 90% of our struggles are about my expectations, and most of the time, my expectations aren't fair. The reason church is so frustrating? Because I expect my two-year old to sit quietly for a solid hour. Is that a fair expectation? Maybe for some kids, but not for my girl. That doesn't mean that I'm not supposed to have any expectations for her behavior, but it does mean that when I'm feeling super frustrated with her, the frustration is stemming from my expectations not being met, not from her behavior actually being inappropriate for her age and maturity level. I can change my expectations, I can't necessarily change her.

4. Less stuff is best. Experiences are better than toys. Children need to get outside, explore, be messy. Routine is key. Routine is crucial. Routine is life. It's okay for kids to be bored. They need unstructured time just to play. They need to be allowed to fail, to make mistakes. Humor always helps. Silliness can go a long way. Connection is key. Food does not need to be a battle. Sleep should be protected at all costs. Sleep is life. Touching is important. Give hugs and kisses, tickles and caresses. Be gentle. Be kind. Be calm. Be calm. Be calm. (This last one is kind of just a grab bag of some parenting philosophies I believe in and have worked for us.)

Now, does this mean I'm a perfect parent and we have no struggles and my children are all wonderful? No! (I already talked about my violent two-year-old, no perfect children here!) My kids watch far more TV than they should and do far fewer chores than they should. We still have lots of things we need to work on around here, there are still lots of ways I could be a better mother. The point is, I'm a better mother than I used to be because of parenting books. Below is a list of some of my favorite ones.

Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting by Dr. Laura Markham

Kind of the big one that has changed me the most. I don't know if it will offer everyone the same enlightenment it offered me, but I 100% credit this book for setting me on the path to be the parent I am today.

How To Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Joanna Faber and Julie King

Not quite as life-changing for me, but still brim full of all the things I believe work with kids: validating feelings, getting rid of punishment, using empathy, etc. Haven't read the original one, but plan to some day.

Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv

The book itself was a complete bore, not riveting at all. But the message completely resonated with me. It presented a view of childhood that I really want for my kids, about helping them connect with nature.

Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne

Again, maybe not the most well written, but a message that deeply resonated with me about the kind of simple childhood I want to create for my children.

Bonus! Including an Instagram account here: Ralphie from @SimplyOnPurpose . She is the single best reason to be on Instagram, in my personal opinion. I won't say that I agree with 100% of the things she says, but I probably agree with 99.9% of her parenting philosophy. She preaches positive parenting, and it is beautiful. If you aren't already following her, you probably should be. Peruse her archived stories, she has such gems of wisdom and advice about all sorts of things. Water the flowers, not the weeds! Stay safe! Ignore the junk!



What are your favorite parenting books/resources? I'm always looking for new ones!