I’m always surprised by how ineffectual some people are with managing their lives. I won’t get into specifics on this, but suffice it to say that if you make complaints, and they are for or about things you can control, the issue with fixing them resides on you. While there are many things out of our direct control, there are also many things within our direct control. Take for example high gas prices of which we have no direct control. What we can control though, is our choice in vehicle. We can choose a small vehicle rather than a truck or a hybrid or even a good used vehicle and spend the extra money directly on gas. Saving on a vehicle means we have more money left over to spend on gas. This is just one way to work with life laws where we can come out as winners.
Let’s take a baby example and see what we can come up with. Baby wakes up too early. Let’s see what we can do, I did. First we darkened the room to cancel out the sun as a stimulus to waken baby. The sun is a trigger that tells all of us it’s time to get up. If you’ve never noticed, people will tend to want to sleep in later in the long winter nights and less in the shorter summer months. You can fix this somewhat with dark blinds and tossing your alarm clock! I found this to work well with my son. I tried to help my sister and her kids with this but it didn’t work. This is likely because she has two kids and one wakes up the other. At one point she had one boy up at 4-5 a.m. well before daylight! Turns out his internal clock was set to put him to be at 7 p.m. at night so he got his 10-12 hours of sleep and was ready to go. Stretching it out made him overtired because my sister wasn’t able to stretch the bedtime out and push his naptime back in the day. Engineering things to suite your needs take diligence and careful monitoring in order to slowly tweak things.
While working with life laws it’s important to be diligent and observe – then experiment to see what works. My son loved to bother me throughout the day, even if I need to write on the computer. Instead of barking back, I got down and started him playing with some toys then quietly left to resume my work. After a while he’d come back and when he was almost 2 years old, I was able to tell him that I was almost done and would come and play when I was finished. Because I kept my word, he’d go off and do something with confidence that I would keep my word. It’s this fact which permitted me to finish in peace. The life law is that kids will always want to bug you and play with you no matter what, so you’re going to have to give a little to take a little back.
We played around a lot with eating habits too. I found that my son would harass me for treats and snacks had he had carbohydrates alone for breakfast. Instead of bending to this, I offered him just 3 cookies which he could eat at anytime. We selected the cookies early in the morning and put them in a container. It was his choice to eat one, two or all three at anytime. This effort didn’t totally solve the problem, but it did curb his nagging for cookies. Next I boosted his calories for breakfast by introducing eggs or other protein such as beans along with a carbohydrate such as cereal or toast. These extra “good” calories meant he wasn’t hungry. I figured snacking was a function of sugar crashes rather than a raw want for cookies. Turns out I was right as after a week, he lost his interest in cookies, raisins and other sugary foods.
Your issues might be different than mine. Maybe you need baby to wake up earlier so you can bring him to daycare – try slowly adding light in the morning to gently rouse him. Maybe your baby is scared of the dark – try removing light so he doesn’t see shadows! Odd solution you say? Not really, children did without nightlights essentially forever. Maybe your child is afraid of a stuffed animal so ask him what’s bothering him and give him signs for things you think matter to him. I had to remove a goose ‘book’ after my son was startled by seeing a stuffed goose at an outdoors store! My son also had night terrors after watching a nature video of lions. After affirming that he need not worry over and over again and discussing the matter, his night waking’s disappeared altogether. My son was bothered by ANGRY “Thomas the train” at about 20 months of age. He told us about this so we just stopped watching Thomas on television – despite him asking to watch it! Funny kids, huh. Talking about feelings is very important. This is working with nature.
With any problem you might have, there is way to work with it. While you can’t expect life with a child to be perfect, smashing your head against the wall without adjusting to the rules life throws at us, is to act like a spoiled child yourself. Watch for life’s rules and you can be a highly effective and successful parent. Rather than complain, you’ll look at life problems as if it was a game where you come out a winner everytime.