After Calvin had his first breath-holding spell, I decided it was time to plan ahead and learn how to deal with a strong-willed child. Numerous people, including Jaeger’s mom, suggested I read Dr. James Dobson’s The New Strong-Willed Child. I resisted at first because Dobson was the founder of Focus on the Family and I don’t agree with their approach in certain areas. In addition, I’m dubious about corporal punishment of which Dobson is a legendary defender. However, as a librarian, I was taught that one must read a book before you can judge it*.

I checked out an audio book of The Strong-Willed Child because I didn’t want to waste my valuable reading time reading a book that I didn’t think I would like. To my surprise, I found a lot of good, sensible advice in the book. The book started out with a discussion of what a strong-willed child really is. It pointed out that many people who have “easy” children cannot comprehend why some parents have a hard time controlling their children. The second chapter where “mothers share their stories” was eye-opening to me. Calvin is what I would term “strong-willed” but unlike many of the children profiled, he isn’t actively malicious. While parts of this chapter were horrifying and depressing, I found it comfortable to know that there were many children much more difficult than Calvin and their mothers did survive.

Chapter 7 discusses what type of discipline is appropriate depending on the age of the child. I found this very helpful as I hadn’t seen many breakdowns of when I should expect Calvin to understand what I was telling him. Dobson says that from 8-14 months children start testing the authority of their parents. However, you should usually just try to distract and divert them from inappropriate behavior. From 15-24 months, Dobson emphasizes the importance of consistently enforcing your expectations. Don’t let yourself get into an argument with your toddler. Instead, state expectations and follow-through with a punishment if they are not met. In addition, he says that children should only be punished for willful disobedient, not behavior that is natural to learning and development. Once the child reaches 2-3 years, Dobson recommends time-outs or spankings, whichever is more appropriate for that specific child.

I’m not convinced that corporal punishment is a particularly effective form of discipline. For Calvin, I plan to stick to time-outs. However, I have learned as a parent that it is dangerous to make broad assertions about what is appropriate for all children. If you do choose to use spanking, Dobson reprints a “Parent’s Guide” written by Dr. Trumbull. You can see the guidelines here.

While I did find The Strong-Willed Child instructive and I’m glad I listened to it, I would hesitate to recommend it to someone leery of Christianity. This book is most definitely written from an evangelical perspective which may be hard for some people to get past.

*I find it ironic that I would have to remind myself of this with regards to a Christian book when many of the challenges to books in the library are brought forth by evangelical Christians who make assumptions or listen to hearsay about a specific book.

Calvin Moment
Today I picked Calvin up from daycare and headed up to Loveland with the intent of buying Calvin new shoes and sandals. We bought his last pair of shoes when my mother was here and they were getting snug. Since Calvin has to wear shoes at daycare, I thought sandals might be a good option to have when it was particularly hot outside. I fed Calvin a snack on the way up and he seemed relatively happy during the 30 minute drive. We got to the Stride-Rite outlet and I carried Calvin into the store. A friendly clerk met us and asked what we needed. I indicated that we needed to measure Calvin’s feet to see what shoe size was appropriate. She obligingly brought out the foot measurer. Calvin threw a fit. He absolutely refused to put his foot down to be measured and squirmed and shrieked. I tried to calm him down a couple of times to no avail. Eventually, we gave up on trying to measure his feet and decided to just start trying on shoes. The clerk asked which shoe I was interested in and I picked one that looked identical to the style he’s currently wearing. It appeared that the next size up fit him fine so I decided to move on to sandals. Once again, Calvin threw a fit. As far as I can tell, he was appalled or terrified at the idea of an unfamiliar shoe on his foot. I suspect he tolerated the first fitting because the shoe looked like his old ones. I tried several times without ever managing to get the shoe on his foot. Eventually, I decided that if he didn’t want sandals, I shouldn’t get them. Spending more money for slightly cooler feet probably wasn’t worth the emotional trauma it was apparently causing Calvin.

In retrospect, I believe that my error was trying to measure Calvin’s feet immediately without giving him an appropriate amount of time to scope out the area. I’ve noticed that Calvin has very cat-like tendencies when it comes to new spaces. He wants to carefully examine them from a safe area, usually my arms, before he is willing to interact with it. Next time we go for shoes, I’ll try to remember this.