During our homestudy, it became clear that my weakest area of parenting was discipline.  The ways that my parents disciplined were largely inappropriate according to modern standards and I really couldn’t offer up a lot of of alternatives to those methods. So, I dove into parenting books to fill this void. 

We got recommendations from our agency, people in our classes and friends.  We were armed with some of the most popular techniques and ready for any kind of behavior issue. 

On the first night that the girls came, it took them about 3 hours to go to sleep, so we brought out our books and read the appropriate sections.  We had heard that all kids need boundaries and consistency.  So we figured that we should make our expectations clear and stick by our guns.  We knew that there may be a few rough spots in the beginning, but ultimately, everyone will have an easier time.  By the third night, they were asleep within 40 minutes. Wow, it sure seemed like that worked!

I had tons of plans for the weekend because I figured keeping the kids stimulated was probably the best thing to do. I hoped that having an exciting thing to move to would keep them from getting bored or fighting.  We noticed how it was hard to get the kids dressed, fed and teeth brushed, so we set up a sticker reward system, where they earned a sticker for moving smoothly through these times.  By the third day, they dressed themselves and had their teeth brushed!

We attended a party on their first weekend here, and our neighbors were amazed.  The street became abuzz on what great parents we were, so immediately, and how we were completely on top of the girls.  When we talked to our agency about it, they gave us a slightly different opinion.

Not that they said we were bad parents, on the contrary, they were really supportive of the efforts that we were making and the way that we were learning from our mistakes.  On the other hand, they felt that us playing “SuperParents” so quickly may be confusing to the girls and getting in the way with their attachment and bonding with us.  They said “Put your books away and put yourself in the kids shoes.”

They thought that the girls behavior had improved throughout the weekend either because 1) they had been getting more attached and getting used to our routines or 2) they were scared and anxious about not doing the right thing.  Either way, it seemed that our parenting techniques were useless…either extraneous, going over their heads or actually doing the opposite of what we hoped.  Instead of calming them by having a goal, it was actually probably stressing them out to try and meet the goals that we set up.  Our social worker made the point that many of their negative behaviors are anxiety driven and will just go away without an effort. Wouldn’t we rather have that then use disclipline to make them go away and risk alienating the already confused and scared kids?  Well, yah…of course.

So our second weekend with them was much shorter in the first place and I decided to take the opposite approach of the first weekend. Instead of overscheduling with activities, we had one big outing for the day, which reduced the transitions that the girls experienced and gave us a lot of time to hang out around the house, get up out of bed and get back into bed.   

Instead of prescribing a solution to a problem that no one could really understand the root of (since we don’t know the girls yet), we are slowing down to let them do their own thing and enjoy getting to know them.  Instead of trying to control their behavior, we are just putting them in fewer situations where we have to have expectations of them and more situations where we can watch them and be with them and all of the emotions that come up.

And we do think that, in the end this worked, too.  Actually, it was easier on us.  Once we got used to the idea that crying and whining were going to happen, we were able to just let it happen.  It actually doesn’t tend to last for very long.  Instead of trying to intervene everytime the girls fought, we realized that if we just let them fight (with certain boundaries), they usually figure it out in the end and if they don’t, it is usually pretty easy to interject a ruling on the matter. 

The great thing is that they actually want attention as much as they want activities.  They seem to be just as happy to help us make dinner as they are at the kinder-gym.  So for now, we are looking forward to a lot of singing songs together, making art, cuddling and longer times doing routine things TOGETHER.