Pick your battles....

Someone told me once about child raising, when they are young you have to pick your battles. If you discipline them on EVERY single little thing, you'll often spend all day in battle. I loved this advice, and I think it is great. There are days where I have to back off in SOME areas because it seems the more I discipline Hana, the more out of sorts she gets and the worse she behaves. So I sometimes have "pick your battle" days. When I would have normally not allowed her to get out toy after toy without putting some toys away, I might let that slide on "battle days". Or I might not make her go back and close the door she just opened on "battle days". You know, small things like that, which in the whole scheme of things are not really disobedience, and don't have to be knit picked on days when she and I both are on edge.

But it seems that Hana took this advice from someone too. She has chosen her battle. She is a pretty obedient child, when we tell her to do something MOST of the time she does it. However, Hana's chosen battle seems to be picking up toys. She does not want to pick up toys for some strange reason. I had to discipline her FOUR times the other day before she would pick up her refrigerator magnet alphabet letters. I didn't know she could be so hard headed. FOUR times! And the same thing has happened several times since then. Several rounds of punishment before she complies! oh man!

As a parent, you just want to say "Why? In the end you had to pick up the toys anyway, so why do we have to go through all that just to have to pick them up when it is all over!?" And if anyone could get that through a two year old's head, we would not need parenting advice now would we!? This is what parenting is all about, isn't it. They try to figure out when and where they can win the battle. If they don't test the limits they'll never know if they can win the battle, right! Someone ought to send Hana a telegram which reads...

YOUR Mommy and Daddy will ALWAYS win the battle!

She hasn't figured it out yet, but we are more hard headed than she is!