If you remember from a previous post, Embrace the Stubbornness , sometimes stubbornness is so necessary, so warranting, so acceptable and so fitting. It is sometimes a quality we should embrace. It is sometimes a beneficial quality when it comes to injustice, when it comes to having things the way it should be and not settling for less. I try to carry that out in my everyday life. My daily routine with my son is no stranger to that stubbornness.
As of January 10th, 2015, I decided to wean Aaron off of the pacifier. Reading about potentially negative effects on a child’s speech and dental development, I decided that 18 months was a good time to start. 15 days later, he was sleeping through the night without it. Day 15 landed on January 24th, 2015 and he was finally completely weaned from the pacifier. At that time his naps went from 3 hours to 2 hours and there was quite a bit of tossing and turning at night. However, the changes were quite manageable.
Since that time, this kid has been waking up crying 3-4 times a night. I’m not talking about cute little whimperings that surface when a child wants something they know mommy and daddy will say no to. NO! I’m talking about screams and wails as if he missed out on something and he finally realized it was long gone. It was like waking up and realizing the person you love the most will never return again. That is a dramatic analogy, but that is exactly what most of my February nights were looking like….I think. Let’s just say that there were so many days that they just seemed to blur together. “Wednesday?, What? I thought it was Friday.”
He was going one week strong without missing that thing, when all hell broke loose. I couldnt quite figure out, why wailing out of naps and sleep at night was the new thing to do. I was so bent on not giving in and returning that pacifier to his mouth. This time my son’s stubbornness outweighed mine. It’s quite humbling losing to a kid! Not! I felt like quite the loser for a moment, but then I felt like a winner because I actually slept for 6 hours straight without waking up to a screaming child.
At one point I just started to pray, to declare to take control of my atmosphere in the way that I knew how to do, in the way that I described in a previous post titled, You Are In Control of Your Atmosphere. Then I had to confront God because this kid was still doing the same thing. “Why aren’t you bringing him comfort as I asked? I mean, we had a serious chat as Aaron awoke from his nap screaming like a child in a full blown temper tantrum session.”
At one point, I finally said to God, very blatantly in fact (after I already did), that I decided to put trust in that pacifier over you. Who says that? Recapping now has caused me to feel real bad in saying that. Who was the child throwing the temper tantrum now? My or my how the tables turned. It was as if he was saying “SEE, and thats how that happens.”
So…Yes, I did it! I finally gave in and jammed that silencer into my kid’s mouth and then there was bliss.
Don’t get me wrong, I tried other things first. I laid hands on my son, prayed over him, declared some life giving words over him and went back to bed. When he continued to wail, I stared into space, waiting on God. Then, I proceeded to download a white noise app on my phone and played the nice set of winds and laid it in his crib. I went back to bed and waited on God some more. He stopped crying for all of 15 minutes. I basked in the strength of his wails and when I finally decided that I wanted to sleep, I grabbed that pacifier and stuck it in his mouth and then there was bliss.
So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I like to tie a lesson learned to my posts. So here it goes: things are not always an easy road to achieve, there are challenges that test our strength and even our faith. How far can I be pushed before I finally break. I feel like it was one of those challenges…and well I broke.
On the bright side, I lasted several days which to me meant my endurance was getting better. Because of the road I am set to travel, I realize that even in the smallest of things, the seemingly smallest of challenges, there is a lesson to be learned.
Happy Parenting!
Wife to an amazing husband, mother to an exploring toddler and an MPA graduate aspiring to impact the world with encouragement in mothering and in social entrepreneurship.
