No Coincidences

Tag: parenting

  • Spanking

    Spanking

    This last weekend Beth went out of town so it was Daddy weekend with my girls. We had an awesome weekend. We had Daddy Dinners which included meals Dad loves but Mom doesn’t (there’s a whole lotta chili involved). We spent a whole day at the pool. We went to a Notre Dame High School barbeque with food, snacks, and activities. We went to the grocery store TWO times. We had a movie night in Dad’s bed with the projector. It was a great weekend.

    Ivy has had some behavior challenges of late. Those challenges continued over the weekend.

    On Sunday, the last day before Mom was coming home, we went to church. Ivy did not do a good job and we had to leave before the first meeting was over.

    I was so frustrated. I loaded all three girls in the car and turned on the AC. I had to go back into church and clean up the mess we always leave behind, while the church meeting continued around me, load it up, and take the girls home.

    When we got home I put Wren down for her nap, setup Sage on the couch to watch a show, and took Ivy to her room.

    Despite the awesome weekend, Ivy’s misbehaviors loomed large. The most challenging thing as a parent is when your child is awesome 95% of the time and then does really, really bad things the other 5%. Because of the 95% you know she’s so capable.

    I won’t go into detail on the behavior but lest you think me a harsh, mean Dad, I’ll just say the behavior was unacceptable and important to be corrected. I’ll leave it at that.

    After Ivy was in her room I stood over her fuming. I was so frustrated. I took deep breaths to calm myself. I told Ivy I had to spank her.

    We don’t spank. It has happened maybe twice in our family and I don’t like it. But enough was enough. Ivy had to learn some things were unacceptable. I didn’t know how else to bring that lesson home.

    She freaked out a little when I said I had to spank her. As she was doing that, I closed my eyes and prayed.

    She asked what I was doing.

    I told her I was praying asking Heavenly Father what I should do. I was asking for help on how to deal with my daughter with love. How to show her I loved her but that her behavior had to be better. I desperately didn’t want to spank her. But I didn’t know what to do.

    Ivy loves pretending to be characters. It’s a fun thing about her. I love it. I love her creativity and her mind. All day every day she’ll pretend to be Dash from the Incredibles, the red head girl from the movie Leap, Alfalfa from Little Rascals, Justin Bieber when she’s singing, Ghost Spider, Huckleberry Finn, Snow White. You name it. If it’s a fictional character (or sometimes not fictional, see Justin Bieber), Ivy has pretended to be them.

    Back in Ivy’s room, considering spanking, not wanting to, praying for help, I don’t even remember thinking it. The next part just happened. I told her no more characters until she could improve on the things she wasn’t improving on. I told her I was not participating in her fun ritual of being different characters throughout the day until she could fix her behavior.

    Ivy reacted way worse at this than if I had actually spanked her. You’d have thought I told her the world was ending. She was beside herself. Distraught. She begged me to let her be a character. I told her not until she improved and I left her in her room for nap time.

    I did not spank her.

    When Ivy woke up she immediately asked if she could be a character and I said no. I told her she could be a character after three days of making good decisions.

    That was two days ago as I’m writing this and Ivy’s behavior has improved 100-fold. Zero issues. Zero problems. Every day she has asked when she could be a character again. I’ve told her the day it can happen if she keeps doing a good job. She has accepted this.

    Now it’s Tuesday night and I’m writing this. She is very excited to be Justin Bieber tomorrow.

    I reminded her that if her actions revert back it will be another 3 days of no characters. I don’t think it will come to that. This has been a brutal 3 days for her.

    This is your reminder that prayer is real, and prayer is powerful.

    I was praying for help and I received it. I say again, I didn’t even realize what I was doing. It just came out of my mouth. “Ivy no more characters until you start to behave better.”

    I didn’t want to resort to spanking, but I thought I was out of options. I didn’t know what to do. With God, and prayer, there is always something else you can do.

    God answered my prayer that day and I’m so grateful for that. I know Ivy and Sage and Wren will have other challenges. They’ll never be perfect and I don’t want them to be. I hope they’ll accept that I’m extremely, very much, far from a perfect dad.

    But as their behavior is challenging and I think I’ve run out of options, I hope I can remember to pray.

    The Father of me, you, and the universe answers. In this life I’ll never be a perfect Father. But they still have a perfect Father.

    And He loves His children.

  • Growing Up

    Growing Up

    I recently saw a compilation video. This video showed dads seeing their daughters with their boyfriends for the first time.

    This made me think about when this will happen to me one day.

    I started to think about Ivy, Sage, and Wren one day growing up. I started to think about my Ivy, my partner, my girl who cuddles with me at every chance and always wants to play. I thought about her growing up.

    I started to feel an intense pain in my chest. Like serious, gotta stop thinking this kind of pain.

    I don’t know if other parents get this.

    You know those “memories” videos that iPhones create? IPhone takes all your photos for a year or something and puts them together with emotional music in the background. I can watch them in very limited spurts. I will definitely start bawling my eyes out. Tears are the best case scenario. Worst case, the aforementioned heart pain extends to my whole body and it feels like my body will explode.

    This will sound like an exageration. It is not. It is a real feeling.

    You’ll notice above when I talked about Ivy cuddling with me and always wanting to play, I stopped there. I could have listed a million other examples of the loving affection between us. I could have used more examples with Sage and Wren.

    But as I type these thoughts and consider them getting older, my chest starts to hurt, and my eyes fill, and I have to stop. There’s a reason I’m not getting more detailed.

    My love for them is so all encompassing, so palpable, so excruciating, that I feel physical, overwhelming pain when I think about it one day changing. I know it has to change, one day. Until that day…

    Having three kids now five and under (because Ivy is five, yeah, let’s not talk about it), is extremely, extremely hard. It’s taxing. It feels like almost every day is a marathon that never ends. Sometimes I’ll find myself thinking I just want it to be over. I want them to be able to pour their own cereal and put on their own pants and wipe their own bum.

    Then Ivy started putting on her own pants and pouring her own cereal. Sage started wiping her own bum.

    And as I type this, and the screen becomes blurry, I remember to embrace the bum wipings and all the mundane. Because one day might be the last day Ivy says, “Daddy, do you want to play with me?”

    I hope that day never comes. But I guess it probably will.

    Okay. I need to stop now.

    Am I the only one? What is this love? A father for his daughters.

    I’ll be patient, one more month
    You’ll wrap your fingers ’round my thumb
    Times are changing, I know, but who am I if
    I’m the person you become
    If I’m still growing up

  • Parenting is Hard and Rewarding: Polar Express

    Parenting is Hard and Rewarding: Polar Express

    We took the girls to Williams for the Polar Express. If you live in Las Vegas or Phoenix, this is a must-do activity if you have children under the age ~9.

    This was Ivy’s third time and Sage’s second time. This trip was for Ivy’s fifth birthday.

    We came into Williams on a Friday. We arrived at the hotel 30 minutes before we were able to check in. So we hung out in the hotel lobby, walking around, writing to Santa, and drinking hot chocolate. We got into our room around 3:00pm, got settled, and started thinking about dinner.

    We went to a restaurant in town then visited the shops. The girls did an awesome job and had a lot of fun.

    We got back to the hotel around 6:15pm.

    Ivy and Sage were setup together on the pull out couch. We put on Bluey and let them watch.

    I’ll recap the next four hours in one word: chaos.

    I don’t want to give all the details. Just know things were not going well. Bedtime is hard.

    Things culminated in me doing something I regretted to Sage. Afterwards, she was lying down on the bed, stoic, sad, unmoving.

    This balance being a dad who is loving, patient, caring, kind, and understanding but also enforcing rules and having a strict expectation for behavior is the most difficult thing to balance.

    I tried to apologize to Sage. I tried to comfort her and tell her I loved her and she was nonresponsive. That is very unlike Sage.

    I proceeded to get a bottle for Wren who was crying.

    Amidst balancing Wren and heating a bottle in the bathroom I heard noise in the hotel room and returned to find Ivy bouncing up and down on the bed, inches from Sage’s head. It was 11pm.

    I lost it.

    I smacked the bed and told her to lie down. I smacked the bed two more times to make sure my point got across. It was loud. Ivy cowered. Ivy cried. I think I woke up Sage.

    I started lecturing Ivy about how she was getting too old for such behavior and she needed to do better. Ivy was crying and saying I owed her an apology over and over. I told Ivy I did not owe her an apology. I looked at Sage, who was now sitting up, and said, “I owe Sage an apology.” Sage gave me a small smile.

    Those moments are so crazy. Why can’t we all be like this?

    “Become as little children” (Matthew 18:3).

    Moments ago she couldn’t look at me. Now she was smiling at me, the cutest, sweetest, most innocent and loving smile.

    I came back to Ivy.

    I started to tell her that we had all not been doing a great job lately. I told her I could be better, Mom could be better, Sage could be better, Wren could be better, and Ivy could be better. I told Ivy that she was my big girl and she had to do better. I then told Ivy she wasn’t perfect. I started to explain that I didn’t expect her to be perfect. I just expected her to do her best. Before I could elaborate, she latched onto that statement that she wasn’t perfect. She started repeating over and over, replacing “you owe me an apology” with “I am perfect.”

    I spoke very intentionally and clearly to Ivy. I reiterated that she wasn’t perfect. She got more upset. But then I told her, “I AM NOT PERFECT.” This made her pause. I told her I was not perfect and I made many mistakes. I told her I wanted to be a good dad and sometimes it was really hard. I told her we all needed to do better. I started to cry.

    I was sitting on the bed near Ivy. Ivy came out from behind her covers and knelt beside me. She wrapped her arms around me, hugged me tight, and said something I hope I never forget.

    She said, “Dad, you are perfect. You’re the best daddy in the whole world.”

    This took my crying to sob levels. Ivy started to cry. But not like she had been, not 5-year-old tantrum or normal crying. She was really crying. She hugged my neck and held onto me and she cried on my shoulder.

    I looked Ivy in the eyes and I told her thank you for what she said.

    She looked back at me and told me she loved me.

    How do we deserve these children?

    I talked more to Ivy about how we all needed to be better and that tomorrow I was going to try to be perfect. She said she was going to be perfect too.

    We went to bed. After all that, as if exhausted from a prize fight, all the girls immediately went to bed.

    The next morning they all woke up like we didn’t just go 10 rounds the night before.

    Children are amazing. Children are special.

    Sage immediately came and started bouncing on me first thing in the morning.

    Throughout that whole day, Ivy did so good. She was kind to her sisters. She was patient, helpful, and mature. She helped her cousins. She was nearly perfect. Throughout the day she would ask me, “Dad, am I being perfect?”

    Yes, I told her. She was.

    I’ve thought a lot about that night since. Do I regret losing my cool? I don’t know. As parents, we want to be awesome, patient, kind all the time. But sometimes, I think a child needs to see you hit a bed. Sometimes kids need to see that we get angry as parents too.

    Would I have had that special moment with Ivy if she hadn’t seen me lose my cool? Would she have had the desire to be “perfect” the next day?

    After losing my cool, it was extra important to be calm and show them extra love (D&C 121:43). This parenting thing is difficult. I’m trying every day to be “perfect.” I’m falling short every day. But I’m grateful for the example of these children. How quickly they forgive, move on, love so willingly and so openly. I hope I can be more like them.

    Except during bedtime.

  • Parenting Without Faith

    Parenting Without Faith

    Moments where you feel like a good parent doing good things sometimes don’t come often enough. And then one comes that is so impactful it brings you to tears.

    Ivy claimed to be sick this morning. I thought she was making it up until I saw her throw up with my own eyes.

    So she stayed home from school. Without any guidance or prompt, she went upstairs on her own and laid down in her bed. This is very un-Ivy like. She was definitely sick.

    I got a show setup on a laptop for her so she could lay in bed and relax. I brought it to her, and she didn’t want it, she just wanted to rest. Ivy was definitely sick.

    An hour later she came to my room and said she did want a show. We walked back to her room, and I started to get it setup. She said she needed to throw up and inexplicably walked away from her throw up bucket and passed her bathroom down the hall to my bathroom.

    Luckily, she made it in time.

    She knelt in front of the toilet. She looked so big, her little four-year-old body, already knowing how to properly throw up in a toilet. Any parent can relate to and feel the pain of watching their child throw up.

    I held her hair and rubbed her back.

    Ivy stood up.

    She said, through little sobs and stutters as she caught her breath, “Daddy, I ask Jesus in my bed to help me. Will you pray for me at my bed? I asked Jesus to help me stop throwing up.”

    Those words don’t fully capture it. I cannot properly put in words the sweetness, the tenderness, the humility, the vulnerability, the faith, the innocence of what was coming out of Ivy’s mouth. What I put above was roughly what she said. But it was so much more. It was soft, it was gentle, it was pleading.

    This pleading was not with adultlike “this needs to get done” energy, but with patient understanding. This request came with complete innocence. Coming from your four-year-old who is normally all chaotic, joyful energy, these calm, sweet moments can be so jarring.

    I explained to Ivy that Jesus might help her stop throwing up, but I promised her that even if she didn’t stop throwing up, He would be with her and help her. I told Ivy, “You know when Jesus died for you?” She nodded, as this is something we talk about often. “When He died for you, He felt what you just felt, that hurt and pain and sickness of throwing up, He felt it. So even if you throw up more, He is with you.”

    Ivy said, “Even when I get big owies, He feels it.”

    I took Ivy back to her room. I put a show on for her to watch. She lay in bed.

    How do parents parent without faith?

    This parenting thing is hard enough. How could I explain to Ivy that she’s throwing up and in pain and I don’t know why and there’s nothing I can do about it?

    In the last couple weeks, my knee has been healed, my daughter with potential hip dysplasia has been blessed (what happens is yet to be seen), and my Ivy has known that even though she’s sick, Jesus is with her and helping her and there’s a reason for it.

    How do you raise kids without this?

    I don’t know.

    The last thing Ivy said during our conversation at the toilet, “Jesus is God, that is why I ask Him for help.”

    Jesus is our God. Heavenly Father is our Father. They watch over us. As I sit here with tears in my eyes, my sweet daughter laying in bed suffering with a little tummy ache, writing this out, I’m reminded that Jesus is God. And I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t know that. It would be so hopeless otherwise.

    He died for us, and He knows our pain.

    I wish we could all have the faith of a 4-year-old.

  • A Lesson Learned

    A Lesson Learned

    *I wrote this when Ivy was 5 months old.

    I had an Ivy experience that I wanted to write down. It’s something I think I’ll never forget, but still good to get it written to make sure I don’t forget the lesson from this experience.

    One night I was with Ivy and doing her bedtime routine. I don’t usually do “Beth’s routine.” My routine is to rock Ivy to sleep with a bottle then lay her down. This night Beth asked me if I wanted to do what she normally did which was read to Ivy, then turn off the lights, rock her to sleep, and lay her down.

    I started reading a book to Ivy and she was thoroughly enjoying it. She was curled up in my left arm as I rocked in the rocking chair and held the book up in front of her with my right hand. She would get a huge smile on her face every time I would emotionally read a portion of the story.

    As I was reading, my left pocket started to vibrate. Normally I wouldn’t even consider answering a call at this moment. I had been making calls that week for my church calling. There were some people I needed to get a hold of, and it was important I talked to them. This all went through my mind as I held Ivy and weighed my options. I decided I didn’t know when I would get to speak to this person again and I needed to answer.

    I jostled Ivy up a bit and got the phone out of my pocket. I believed it to be only a minor inconvenience to her. I answered the phone and began talking. I expected it to be only a minute or two conversation. As I was talking, Ivy got unsettled and started to fuss. I put the phone between my right ear and shoulder and got her into my lap in front of me. I started to bump her up and down to soothe her.

    As I rocked her up and down, she got more content. When I was listening to the person speak on the other end, she even smiled and enjoyed the rocking. Then I started talking. When I talked to the person on the other end, for some reason Ivy got really unsettled.

    This is the image I have in my head. When I would be talking into the phone she would curl her bottom lip over her top lip, her bottom lip would start to quiver, and she was the saddest looking baby I have ever seen. I’ve seen her do this once or twice before, but never so directly related to something I was doing.

    This pattern repeated a couple times. I wouldn’t talk and she would smile and rock on my lap. I would start talking into the phone and she would get very upset and start to cry. The image I have in my mind is of betrayal. I don’t know if that’s what Ivy was actually thinking, probably not. But all I could think was, this was her time with me, and now I’m on the phone, and it’s upsetting her more than I’ve ever seen.

    It broke my heart.

    I got off the phone within 5 minutes but by that time the damage was done. I turned off the lights and tried to rock her which almost never fails but she was not having it. She was completely unhappy.

    Beth took over and was able to settle Ivy down and put her to sleep.

    I went outside to think.

    Now, the reason I answered the phone wasn’t bad. I don’t think what I did was blatantly bad. My intentions were good.

    As I sat outside, this is what I told myself. I got kind of bitter for a moment. Can’t I answer an important call related to my church calling? How can I be a productive and responsible member of my church if I don’t take those important calls? I was getting more upset. Then something hit me.

    There were a lot of good things that I could have been doing at that time while I was with Ivy.

    But, at that moment, there was nothing more important in the entire world than being with her.

    I wasn’t bad because I wanted to fulfill my calling, answer the phone, help someone, fulfill my duties. Those were good intentions.

    It didn’t matter.

    While I was reading to Ivy, she was the most important thing in the world. Nothing else mattered. Whether or not she actually felt betrayed by me answering that call during our reading time (again, she probably didn’t), I did betray her. That was her time with me, and I took it from her.

    I could have called that person back 15 minutes later and it would have been fine.

    I learned an important lesson I hope I never forget that night. While there are a million good things to be doing, my daughter is the most important thing in the world. Especially in the precious and far-too-few moments I get with her, nothing else in the world should matter.

    It was one of those cosmic-shift moments. One of those moments I realized would stay with me for the rest of my life. A moment I learned an extraordinarily important lesson from.

    I’m grateful for that moment, and I hope to never cause that quiver of a lip ever again.

    Reading back on this 4 years later and I think I still hold tight to that lesson learned. Just today someone told me about a celebrity who was asked if there was anything that made him jealous of other people. His reply was that he is jealous of anyone who still has kids at home.

    One day my girls will grow up and I’ll miss the playing and the wrestling and the tickling and the screaming and the tantrums and the fighting. I try to remember that every day.

    Now Ivy is almost 5 and Wren is how old Ivy was when I wrote this. Crazy.

    Wren