Watching her suffer these consequences can sometimes be difficult for me. You play too rough with the cat, she will scratch you. You take out your frustration on a toy, it will break and I will not replace it. You leave your little earrings all over the house, one is going to find its way into the vacuum.
But today I saw fruit. And having a stubborn and strong-willed child of God, I live for fruit!!
This might seem insignificant to you, but for this mom it shows growth. It gives me encouragement.
This afternoon after school she was wearing a brand new pair of shoes that her Aunt had delivered and was so excited to wear them! She went outside to play with the neighborhood kids (and in our neighborhood the kids go full force into play, which is awesome but not so good for maintaining nice shoes) and I followed shortly to tell her to take them off. But instead of telling her to, I laid out the pros and cons and let her make the decision.
"If you wear these outside, they might get thrashed before you have even had a chance to wear them to school. I suggest you wear these other shoes instead and keep the new ones nice for school."
She was quiet for a moment while she weighed these two things in her mind: "wear them right now because I am so excited!!!! Or keep them looking sparkly and wonderful so I can be happy wearing them to school tomorrow.... "
30 seconds later, she was out the door wearing her old shoes, the new ones set aside for tomorrow.
Hooray!!! One small victory! Enough of a victory to know that she is learning from natural consequences so that when she gets older and natural consequences are SO much bigger, maybe she'll avoid those too. That's my prayer.
I still make dumb choices that lead to natural consequences: overload on the junk food over the holidays and you'll be up half the night feeling sick to your stomach! You'd think after years of this, I'd figure it out. Nope.
Maybe I'm the one who needs prayer...
KC
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