7:00 AM

In my last post, I mentioned that Josiah and David stayed in their beds until 7:00 AM, the time that we allow them to get up (which is certainly not an original idea with us; although I can't remember from whom I first heard that idea, I know that a number of other people do something similar).  Susan commented with a question about how we do that--how do we get our children to obediently stay in their beds in the morning?  It's a very good question, and I'm glad she asked it so that I can write a little more about it.  My first thought was just to leave a comment back in response to hers; but knowing my tendency to be long-winded  :), I decided to turn it into another post.  Besides, it deserves its own post because it touches on some vital issues!

By the way, I hope very much that this doesn't come across as an oh-they've-got-it-all-figured-out-and-have-perfectly-obedient-children kind of a post.  I'm actually writing this after a rougher-than-normal day with the boys, so I feel very humbled and aware again of how only through God's grace and strength do we ever "achieve success" in the raising of our boys.  The glory is His.

The simplistic answer to Susan's question is this: we bought a digital clock, made sure that it was positioned so that both boys could see it from their beds, taught them what 7:00 (or later) looks like on the clock, and then told them they couldn't get out until that time.

The real issue is much deeper and more complicated however.  What do you do when the child challenges that?  How do you handle it when it's 6:45 and they wander into your room?  How do you get them to stay in bed even if they wake early?  How do you help them choose to obey?

First of all, with Tobin (14 months old) who still sleeps in a crib, obviously he can't get out before 7:00 because he's stuck in there.  :)  But his situation is different: he sleeps in a different room than the other boys, we haven't taught him to tell time yet :), and if he cries before 7:00, I get him and don't even try to enforce the 7:00 AM guideline.  He goes through phases of different sleep patterns; and back around the time he turned a year old, he was waking earlier than 7:00.  I didn't like it because not only was it more difficult to pull myself out of bed in the 6:00 range, it was also very dark.  Winter mornings are not when I like to get up early!  :)  But I knew it was just a phase, so I got to practice the art of self-denial and simply get up with him earlier than I desired.  Now he's back to waking up after 7:00 almost all of the time, so I'm grateful for that.  I try to pay attention to his need for sleep and adjust his bedtime so that he wakes later than 7:00, rather than earlier.  At this point in time, he normally goes to bed around 8:00 PM (sometimes a pinch earlier, but rarely later).

There is another factor with Tobin though.  Because he's a Babywise baby, we put him in his crib awake and he goes to sleep by himself.  For him, his crib is a happy place; and his normal pattern is to wake up (whether from a nap or from nighttime sleep) and play and talk and be content in his crib for a while before he's at the point of fussing to get out.  He likes his crib and the stuffed animals and crib toys in it.  

Now on to Josiah and David...  

I have heard from a variety of sources that if you focus on training your oldest, that training rubs off on the younger siblings.  Firstborns are such powerful forces in a family!  For better or for worse, they have a huge impact on the younger ones; but that can be used to our advantage as parents.  Obviously, we also deal with the hearts of every single child because they are each unique and will each have personal struggles that need the shepherding of a parent.  I'm not suggesting to ignore the younger ones!  :)  However, from our experience with morning wake times, I'm convinced that the fact that Josiah "got it" helped David immensely when we transitioned David from a crib into a bed in Josiah's room.  David sees Josiah waiting until 7:00, so it's very natural for him to follow suit.  Josiah, in fact, has a tendency to be a little policeman when it comes to David so I'm sure he has verbally "encouraged" David to stay in bed if he wakes early.  :)  

The question still remains, how do you train the firstborn?  I actually don't have too many vivid memories of this with Josiah, but here is what does come to mind.  When the child gets out of bed too early, you simply take the child back to bed (or if they are old enough and have gotten into the habit of getting up early, you simply tell them to go back to bed).  When the child is first learning this concept, lots of gentle reminders can be used.  

On the other hand, kids are smart--very smart.  :)  And they can conveniently "forget" the guideline, so parental discernment is needed about when to simply remind and when to take it to the next level.  If a child of mine gets up too early and comes to me and I instruct them to go back to bed until the right time, if that child does not obey, the issue changes completely from reminding about a new habit (not such a big deal) to direct disobedience (much more serious).  At that point, we would deal with it the way we deal with a blatant challenge to our authority (and there's not just one way that we would deal with it...depends on the age of the child and the training methods that work best for him).  But the child would realize that their behavior was unacceptable and that we take it seriously.

Another thing that helped me put this 7:00 AM guideline into practice with our boys was deciding very consciously when to begin this, choosing a time when I was not sick or extra tired or stressed, and giving extra attention to it for the first few days until they consistently started to obey it without constantly challenging it.  In fact, in this post from way back in June 2007, I mentioned how I stayed nearby when I first put David in his new bed in Josiah's room.  I found a project I could do and still keep an eye on and ear out for David as he adjusted to the new freedom of his different sleeping situation.  For me, when it comes to any kind of sleep training, I've discovered two things: first, it's always better for me to tackle it in the daytime at the child's nap, rather than trying to be coherent and consistent in the night; and second, sustained attention at the beginning reaps enormous rewards in the end.  If I can devote some focused time and energy to training the child, after a day or two or three, they get the lesson and don't really challenge it much after that.

All of this assumes that the child has learned basic obedience--that they are not commander-in-chief of their own little life and that they must submit to the authority God has placed over them.  That is the true challenge!  

For the first few years (even up to age 5 or so), I consider that the most important lesson for my children to learn.  Obviously, they are learning SO MUCH during this time: that they are loved and cherished and we hold them as precious gifts from God and that there is no one like them on earth and that they are WONDERFUL!  Lots and lots and lots of love and hugs and kisses and cuddles and FUN gets heaped on them.  But they also desperately need to learn this lesson of bowing their head to authority; if not, they will fight and kick and scream their way through life, rebelling against all kinds of authority that they will have to encounter.  I view it as a grave disservice to a child to NOT teach them that lesson early in their life.  Would the problem child in school be such a problem if the parents had, in a loving context, taught him/her the principle of submission?  Would the teen sitting in court for vandalism or theft be there if his mom and dad had taken the time and exerted the energy to teach him that he must bend his will and sacrifice his own selfish desires for the good of those around him?

There have been times in my life as a mother that I have been specifically concerned about my boys' obedience (lack thereof, to be exact).  One year, I wrote in my new planner that my top priority for the new year was to focus on obedience with Josiah and David.  Much higher than losing weight, organizing my closet, writing handwritten letters, drinking more water, even serving on another church committee...so much more important than those other worthy goals was the one crystal-clear goal: to teach my children to obey.  (Obviously, the very highest life-long priority for me is to grow in my relationship with God and to reflect His glory and likeness more and more.)

I find that it takes a significant amount of energy and mental focus for me to train them in this way.  But when I'm on top of my game, so to speak, I don't dread their disobedience because I recognize that it gives me the opportunity to speak life into them by training them in how to live correctly.  Kevin Leman mentions this in his book Have a New Kid by Friday--this idea of actually looking forward to their mistakes because of having a plan for how to deal with it and how to turn it into a learning opportunity for them.

I remember when I decided to teach David to obey my verbal commands.  He was crawling around and decided to go over to the steps and see if he could go up them.  At that point in time, I knew it was not at all safe for him to do that by himself; and rather than throwing baby gates up to block all the dangerous parts of the house, I realized that I could teach him to obey, even at that young age.  You know what?  It worked!  I gave him the opportunity to disobey, watched him like a hawk (even if he didn't realize it), then dealt with his behavior and taught him not to go up those steps.  We never had a single incident where he tried to go up and got hurt as a result.  (To clarify: we did, however, have a gate at the top of the steps leading downstairs and also had a barrier around the woodstove.  Those truly dangerous spots, where one mistake could cost him terrible suffering or even his life, were blocked.)

Obedience protects.  When the child steps out from under the umbrella of obedience and submission to God-given authority, they are no longer protected and will much more likely "get wet" as a consequence of their disobedience.  I have often used this umbrella imagery with my boys to help them understand this principle of the natural, completely normal consequences of obedience versus disobedience.  It's just a fact of life, and you can only fight it so long before you realize you're just banging your fists against a stone wall and only accomplishing the act of bloodying your hands.  Some children take longer than others to learn this lesson.  ;)

Before I leave the subject of obedience, I must mention that I can always tell when my heart is particularly troubled by what I see as a lack of obedience in one of my children because I have a recurring theme in my dreams when that is the case:  the theme is wild animals tracking and attacking my children.  At this point in time, I feel confident in Josiah's basic obedience (so we've moved on to other issues like the condition of his heart while obeying!); but when he was still learning this lesson, I would dream this about him.  With David, I had a dream like this not too many months ago, which reminded me that obedience is still an ongoing lesson with him.  The dream has had a number of variations--sometimes the animal is a tiger, sometimes a bear--sometimes we're in a place I don't recognize, sometimes we're here in our home.  Often I'm inside the house, and my child is outside, and I'm struggling to reach the child or make my voice heard or somehow communicate the warning that they need to come inside to be safe from the predator.  I always wake up from such dreams in quite a panic; they are the type of dream that lingers so forcefully and causes you to feel the raw emotion of it for hours afterwards.  It's not as if I've had hundreds of these dreams during the past almost 7 years of being a mom, but it has been consistent enough for me to recognize the pattern.  I don't put a whole lot of stock in my dreams since they are usually quite absurd; but in this case, it seems like these dreams do accurately reflect the deep concern of my heart in the times when they come.

Whew!  I know that was a lot more than Susan asked for; but with a quiet house this evening (Tobin and David in bed asleep, and Josiah with Jeff at dress rehearsal for our Easter play), I could let my thoughts and my fingers flow freely.  This is the result:  lots of words.  :)

I do want to clarify one thing though.  The 7:00 AM guideline is not a hardship for the boys.  It is not an area of wills clashing.  It is a very normal thing for them to sleep past 7:00 AM; in fact, as I mentioned in the last post, it's rare for them to both be awake before that time.  David's normal sleep pattern is to sleep until close to 8:00 AM, if not later; and Josiah, although he usually wakes up before that, does not often awake before 7:00.  If I noticed that my boys tended to naturally wake up at 6:30 or even 6:00 and that their body rhythm didn't seem to budge even if I adjusted their bedtimes, I wouldn't fight it and make a huge issue out of this.  There are enough other issues that are more important!  But this works very well for our family, particularly since we don't have to get up and out the door by a certain time every morning.  If the boys went to public school, that would all be different.  For us, just one of the many advantages of homeschooling is the ability to have relaxed mornings.  :)

Ah, I hear the Jeep!  Jeff and Josiah just got home, so I'm off...  :)