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.
No Coincidences 