Making them mind.
Dec 4
Children need a variety of methods to make them mind. Do not exasperate them”. The use of one method exclusively definitely hardens the conscience to the other forms of listening. Their minds turn off from one or the other. We must intersperse entreaty with command and illusion, Etc. different ways for them to know that it is in heir best interest to do as they are told. They aren’t dogs and the tone of voice that is strong commands should be reserved for the sharpest of corrections. Yeah should be taught to gentle speech as much as gentle touches. Don’t hit and don’t yell without serious cause or serious consequences!
Mary Mary quite contrary how are your children fed….breast fed, hand fed, spoon fed, pouch fed, does it really matter?
Is your dog hand fed? Does it matter? Habits of politeness and habits of culture used to matter a good deal. Perhaps not so much anymore. But I think it should…
I was behind the times about the pouch feeding craze.. My first pouch feeding mommy must have thought me a barbarian not to have known how to hand such a pouch to the baby and let them at it. I laugh to think what I said, I am not familiar with pouch feeding. She had to show me the way to open it and it took a week before I felt comfortable handing it to baby. I couldn’t write about it at the time. I felt ignorant. I felt old. Etc,etc.
I was and still am an advocate of breast feeding, if you can. Children can thrive on lots of different kinds of foods, but the physical bonding that happens with breast feeding is immeasurable. It is the most human of sympathies that forms between mom and baby. No one can break that between you. You actually feel together for that small moment of time in the world. Learning to know that biting causes pain to another and that mother is human, are lessons that go with you and are initiated at the breast. There are many lessons to baby and mommy.
The story of Mowgli is the story of a child left to the wolves to rear and to socialize. A wild child has never felt the swaddling of being in the arms and looking eye to eye when fed. The possibility of this child growing into a socialized human, might be slim. The lesson of wildly training children is the anticipation of a break down in culture. A dog eat dog world where social mores are passé and biblical mores are a myth. We start at the breast. God says can a mother forget her nursing child?
If her breasts are aching and there is crying going on in the next room, will she walk out of the door hardened to the cry of her little one? She might. But God is not like that. He tells us. Try to imagine the depth of care that this is… Far fetched indeed, because we have instructed women to quench the call of their children for their own pursuits and acceptance. There is no winning in that kind of culture. Babies are crying mothers are crying and we are wondering why? Where is the sanity of it?
Spoiled? Perhaps the children are? Talked to. Expecting personal considerations and real relationships in this short life. Definitively.
Mowgli or Romulus and Remus
The rearing of little wolves might be a necessity to a developing culture, but it certainly isn’tGods letter of intention for us. We were meant to be human. We were meant to be able to imagine the love of a really devoted mother who could never forget us and thus reason from scripture about her more intimate Eternal counterpart. We were meant to love God and our mothers and not devour the earth, as wolves might be wont to do.
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