Rambly Post About Miss M Growing Up

It occurred to me this week that Miss M has starting calling cats "kitty" instead of "meow-meow" and it makes me realize how much she's growing. My first impulse is to be sad at how quickly her babyhood is disappearing, but I also remember certain stages that I couldn't wait for her to grow out of- - like getting into everything. We've been trying positive/grace-based discipline more so with her - we've always done it somewhat with the boys, but we always reserved spankings as a last resort in our toolbox of parenting tactics. We've been trying not to use any spanking at all with Miss M.

Miss M is more spirited, more determined, louder, and more persistent than any of her brothers ever were, and I know her Daddy sometimes wonders if our failure to spank her has made her that way. But I don't think so, she was different from the day she was born. I remember her laying next to me just minutes after she was born and she didn't want to nurse! She just wanted me to pat her on the back. She was also the only one who, at four months old, even though she was afraid of the vacuum cleaner, made herself scoot forward and touch it. She's the first of our children to have tantrums (actually melt-downs; they tend to happen when she's tired).

When she was one, she was into everything. Any cabinet door left open, she'd be into. Anything left within reach, she'd grab - we had to learn to put our books and papers way up on the table, and as she grew her reach grew, too, so we had to put stuff farther and farther in, or up higher. As soon as I'd walk away from the computer she'd start pounding on the keyboard. We'd tell her she couldn't do that and remove her and she'd laugh and run away and look for an opportunity to do it again. Her daddy wondered if a good swat might teach her that we were serious. But I remember when L, who is nine now, was this age, I had just read To Train Up a Child by the Pearls. I tried it; I picked one problem area and decided to use their method of lightly swatting his hand with a little switch from a willow tree every time he tried to play with the dirty dishes while I was loading the dishwasher. I did this for a couple of months and he never did learn, he was just like Miss M: as soon as I'd give him an opening, he'd be into the dishes again. The little swats were unpleasant to him, but they didn't really deter him. He finally just grew out of it and got interested in other toys. And that seems to be happening with Miss M, too. She responds better now when we tell her to move away from something (not always, but at least she seems to understand now that we aren't playing a fun game!) and she's finding more interesting things to do.

So, sadly, she's getting bigger, growing up, although some of the more difficult challenges are getting easier. Sometimes I tell her, 'You're getting so big!" and she'll invariably tell me, "I not big, I little." :)