I have a two-year-old. She is such a sweet girl. She is smart, playful, and obedient. She loves animals and Disney princesses, and she loves to dance and play piano. She is my favorite two-year-old girl in the WHOLE world. But I’d be lying if I said she were perfect or that I wish she didn’t have to go to bed so I could spend more time with her. I love being her mom 99% of the time, but it requires a lot of patience to discipline a child. You have to be at-the-ready 100% of the time. Every now and then, I lose my cool and dream of the day when I will only be responsible for wiping my own behind.
Before I had kids, I didn’t have a lot of experience babysitting. I had one regular gig when I was a young teen and the kid was like 5: no diapers, rarely bath time, mostly books and TV. I have learned SO much about caretaking because of my daughter, but that’s not the only thing I’ve learned. I’ve learned a lot about myself by watching her.
The thing about two-year-olds is that, no matter how good their parents are, they are still young enough that most of their responses to life are still instinct rather than learned behaviors. You don’t have to teach a toddler to like ice cream or to make demands or sass back. You have to teach them to eat their vegetables and ask nicely and obey respectfully. You have to teach them the appropriate ways to express their emotions.
I am going to change the topic a bit and tell you about a book I’m reading. It’s called Unoffendable, by Brant Hansen. (It’s such a foreign concept that Microsoft Word is telling me that I spelled it incorrectly.) In this book, Brant Hansen addresses the anger that so prevalently fills our world. Most of it is “righteous” anger, at least according ourselves. We have a right to be angry because someone provoked us or wronged us or wronged someone close to us. If being wronged really gave a person the right to be angry, we would ALL have a right to be angry 99% of the time. The world is full of imperfect people who inflict harm on each other all the time, with or without realizing it.
Brant Hansen said a funny thing in his book on p. 5-6:
“It turns out that I tend to find Brant Hansen’s anger more righteous than others’ anger. This is because I’m so darn right. I’m me. I tend to side with me. My arguments are amazingly convincing to me.”
And this is SO true. This is a natural response. We obviously think we are right, otherwise we would change our mind to believe what we thought was right. The problem comes when two different people (let’s call them Andrew and Becky) have different ideas about what is right. Andrew can’t see how Becky could find flaws in his perfect reasoning (the ones Becky pointed out are pretty insignificant, after all), but he can see all the flaws in her reasoning and she just won’t listen! They keep going back and forth convinced that they’re right. Now both Andrew and Becky are angry and calling names because…. Why are they angry?
Each of them will say, “I’m angry because he/she refuses to listen. I have a right to be angry because he/she is basically telling me I’m wrong.” Since I didn’t include a topic of argument in my example, it’s easy to say, “Maybe they’re both partly right,” or, “It’s okay to disagree,” or even, “Why does it matter who’s right? They should still be kind to each other.” However, if I were to have them fight over a favorite ice cream flavor, the best sports team, or (heaven forbid) a specific political issue, it’s hard to resist having your own opinion and siding with one or the other. Some people will say, “It’s dumb to get angry about ice cream flavors, but politics really matter.” However, even in the midst of threats on his life, Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
Brant Hansen goes on to say, “But an emotion is just an emotion. It is not critical thinking. Anger doesn’t pause. We have to stop, and we have to question it” (p. 6). This brings be back to my daughter. When something upsets her, she lets everyone know it. She sits on the floor and screams until we pick her up and tell her that throwing a fit is not an appropriate response to feeling anger. As her parents, we have to teach her to pause and think about the way she is behaving. Because she is still young, it is our responsibility to help her learn how to express her emotions.
However, as adults, we become responsible for our own emotions. We have to recognize what we are feeling and deal with it appropriately. We may not sit on the floor and kick our feet, but we are pretty good at name calling and disrespecting those we love in a moment of heat. We later regret that we behaved that way.
As a parent, I am teaching my two-year-old not to throw tantrums. Right now, it’s a matter of reacting immediately when they happen; but in a few years, she will have learned not to throw tantrums at all. As adults, we need to set our own goals. I certainly don’t expect my mom to correct my behavior now. (In fact, that would probably provoke me to get a little angry.) We need to acknowledge the way we respond to situations and change the responses that are inappropriate. For Christians, this means getting rid of anger altogether.
It’s a gradual process, but it can start wherever you are. If you have a problem yelling at your spouse when you’re angry, learn to notice that you’re yelling and stop yourself. Soon enough, you’ll be able to stop yourself from yelling before it happens. With God’s help, you can go beyond that and ask God to be your Father and make it obvious to you which behaviors are not acceptable. If you don’t believe in God, set your own standards of behavior. What kind of person do you want to be? Write down your problem areas and really discipline yourself as you would a child. Become the best person you can be.
For the Glory of God 