strong-willed children

From the beginning of my marriage my mother-in-law has told me how strong-willed my husband was as a child. I didn't fully understand that until I had my own children. When my first son was born, it was apparent early on that he was strong-willed. When my second son came along, he was more of a silent type, but his strong-will still made itself loud and clear. After going through the training of two strong-willed boys in a row I was blessed to have a 3rd child that had a different kind of will, strong, but easy going.

I really like the book "Strong-willed child or a dreamer". It describes Eli so perfectly (and my husband). A dreamer can be mislabeled as strong-willed when really they just need things to be logical. If you are giving them an instruction and it isn't logical they react.

Today was one of the hardest days of my whole motherhood experience. We had gone on a field trip with our church's homeschool group to Sweet Tomatoes. For the past few months we have been dealing with Eli melting down in public places or group situations if things don't go how he wants. It happened today, but it was different. Sweet Tomatoes is a two minute drive from our house and Eric was at home working so it gave us an opportunity to give him an effective reality consequence.

So here is the scenario: we go into the restaurant and the manager tells the kids to sit down. Eli wanted to sit where Grant was sitting so he proceeded to try to push Grant out of the chair. I half-carried, half-dragged Eli around the corner and tried to calmly talk him through this before he escalated any further. He was crying loudly and the manager was trying to talk to the children and Eli was making it hard for everyone to hear. I finally gave him a choice to come to the table with me or go home. I ended up dragging him outside. I left the other 2 boys there with a woman from my church and then it took 15 minutes to get Eli into the van.

As I am dragging him to the van, I get scared that he is going to get hurt (like his arm getting pulled out of its socket) so I gently grabbed his ear and tried to guide him like that. That didn't work. He just flailed about everywhere. With all of this screaming and crying he started to have a bloody nose and he is rubbing his nose and then there is blood all over his face. So here we are standing at the van in front of a busy street with lots of cars driving by and he has blood all over his face. I thought surely someone was going to think I must have hurt this poor child.

Amazingly, I was not angry or frustrated that whole time and I was just calmly trying to get him into the van. I finally got him in, but then I couldn't get the door closed because this strong, little boy refused to let me close the door. It became a wrestling match. Two different times I got the door closed, but he was able to get it back open before I could get to the driver's side of the van. So the third time I drug him to the driver's side door and put him in that way and I had to hold him down next to the driver's seat while I got the van started. Luckily, he has a fear of being out of his seat when the van is on so he quickly got in his seat. I got him home and Eric had to carry him into the house. As I was driving back to Sweet Tomatoes I was out of breath and I felt like throwing up.

I couldn't believe the way that I had just manhandled my son. My heart hurt that we had just gone through this situation. After the field trip, we went home and I talked to my husband. He said that he remembers a situation that his mom had to do that to him. He said that it was very impactful and that he knew his mom was right. I called my mother in law and asked her about the story that Eric had just told me and she said that that was the last time she had had to do that to him, but I don't think Eric remembers any of the other times.

Please Lord, let this be the only time for me. For those of you who may be thinking that I am a child abuser, please know that I am not. I love my son and I would NEVER do anything to hurt him. I do have guilt about the ear thing, but my husband told me not to apologize. I am very prone to saying sorry to my children for every little thing. Eli and I have talked about it and I am slowly retying the ties between our hearts. I think time will tell the outcome of this situation. He has responded to all of my love and hugs today like normal so that is good.

I do know this now...if a stranger tried to put Eli in his/her car, unless they knocked him out, he would get away. He is a strong, little guy and I am proud of him for that.