What She Shovels

We went to a talk by Robert J. MacKenzie Ed.D. (author of Setting Limits (and SL for the Strong Willed Child and SL in the Classroom). His basic premise is stating the boundary, stating the consequence and following through. That’s all well and good, but when it comes down to implementing these strategies, I still don’t know what the “logical consequence” is for not getting out the door and to the car. Get carried like he wants? How does that accomplish anything? As he was speaking tonight, I found myself thinking how great it sounded and how as soon as possible I was going to follow the steps, just as he’d outlined.

Gosling’s teacher happened to be sitting behind us and we ended up talking about a lot of it during the Q&A and afterward and she brought up a lot of relevant criticisms. One of the parents in the crowd questioned if some of the particulars were beneficial for long term development.

I left feeling like I had more questions than answers, more doubt than confidence and more confused than clarified. I try to remember that they’ll likely turn out all right as long as they’re loved and respected and we can only do our best. There are hundreds of thousands of books and nearly as many theories, but we know our kids better than anyone else. They didn’t come with user manuals, so we’re doing our best to figure it out along the way.

Tonight’s presentation and subsequent discussion really drove home how important it is to constantly evaluate what’s working and what isn’t and to keep focused on what is truly important. Different methods will work with varying degrees of success at different stages of their lives. I have to remember to keep thinking and not buy into one methodology or another because nothing is going to be 100% for everyone.

Many thoughts, probably not so coherent. Off to go to sleep listening to the pitter patter of rain on the gutters.