This was my second book to ever get out from Inter Library Loan! I think it came from Salt Lake City or Georgia. I like seeing where the books come from. It's interesting; the people there, well at least the librarians, must be interested in those subjects.
I don't remember a whole lot about this book because I read it extremely fast. She did not claim to go all out and do huge studies about "having a second baby within three years of the first." Instead, she just shared some of her experiences, and a few of her friends'. But mostly, she shared her own experiences.
The main thing she kept repeating was that moms of two under three don't get very much sleep. She said this about a hundred times. She also brought up how her toddler would sometimes scratch or bite the newborn. It finally got to the point where she didn't know what else to do - she had literally tried EVERY other option - and she just bit the toddler back. It worked, he stopped. She said she wished she had a discipline plan ready before baby2 was born.
This story freaked me out because I don't want to bite or scratch a toddler, my Jane! But I can see that this may happen at some point. And I haven't really thought that much about discipline, except that my parents seemed to do a pretty good job with one-two-three. This book inspired me to look for child discipline books, which while I say it inspired me to do it, I mean that inspiration is still on hold because I haven't ACTUALLY done it yet. But Danny and I did talk a little bit about discipline, our opinions on spanking, etc. We had already talked about it before. I think the main difference between Danny's idea of being a good parent and my idea of being a good parent is when to yell. In Danny's opinion, you should only yell in very specific circumstances, like when the kid is running into the street, or something like that. I grew up in a very, very loud house. If I wasn't winning an argument, I would just repeat the same thing, louder. Haha. We're trying to go with Danny's philosophy for this issue. Yelling kind of sucks. Wow, that was a tangent, and there are about ten books to go! Yikes!
I had three kids before my oldest turned three. It wasn't a goal or anything, I didn't even realize it until my third was almost due. The best indicator for when to have kids or how far apart is when Heavenly Father wants it to happen, which of course implies some communication on the matter. He gives us the capacity to fulfill what he has asked of us so as long as we are doing what is right we will be alright.
ReplyDeleteI had one child who was a bit the next youngest sibling. They were 20 months apart. It was bad. So we decided whenever this kid would bite then we would bite. All we did was feel like abusive parents because the poor kid had bite mark bruises all up and down each arm. We finally sat down and said we are not going to do this anymore and we don't want you to do it anymore either. Then it stopped.
ReplyDeleteLet me recommend a book called Parent Effectiveness Training. It has wonder full ideas that work and are humane. Good luck.