Since the time I was pregnant with my first child, I have had the opportunity of being a stay at home mother.
While I was pregnant with my first, I spent my time sewing quilts, making baby clothes, and dreaming of how life would be, with me as a perfect mother. I felt very experienced as the oldest of 10 (11 now) brothers and sisters, and I babysat regularly for several families with “difficult” children. I planned to have 3 children, and like I said, be the perfect mother.
Of course, Heavenly Father knew I needed to be humbled, and sent me my first baby. She was the most beautiful baby girl. She was also the most colicky baby I’ve ever met. When I asked my mother how to help my sweet child, she said, “I don’t know, none of my kids were colicky!”
Since then, I’ve been humbled regularly with other unique family challenges- mental illnesses, a larger family than I had initially planned on (7 and counting), a son with a congenital heart defect, allergies, etc. Each challenge leaves me totally feeling dependent on a loving Heavenly Father to whom I have to turn to regularly for advice and help in raising His precious children. I am quick to say, I don’t always know what to do, and I’m also quick to say– I am not the perfect mother! But I’m trying to be, and I think I’ve done okay with the challenges I’ve been given.
Last month, I was working with my just-turned-3 year old, trying to get him potty trained. He was getting very consistent with #1, but seemed deathly afraid of doing #2 in the potty. Every day, I would find him hiding behind a chair, or hiding in a closet where he would do his duty, and then I was left with the cleanup (I tried to say that as nicely as I could!) At any rate, after 2 months of this, and my frustration level was at it’s very highest, I started scouring the Internet for ideas of how I could help my son overcome this fear.
I actually became even more scared as I read about people with disorders, still to this day, who never overcame this fear. One of the things that I had read talked about how the worst thing you could do for this child, is to yell and get mad, as they start to feel that “they” are bad. It becomes their own mentality and they label themselves as “bad” and that they “can’t do it”. Of course the last month played out in my head, of all those times I’d gotten mad, yelled at him, and got pretty upset.
After trying to get ideas from anyone I could, a good friend suggested I fast and pray about it. I did. I knew I had tried everything I could, it was time to turn to his Heavenly Father, after all, he’s God’s son too.
After praying about it, the feeling I had, was of how blessed I was to be a stay-at-home mom. It gave me the idea, that since I’m home with him each day, I could watch him, around the clock. For the last month, if I even turned my head for a second, that was when he would do his duty… I had been trying to watch him, but not every second.
For the next 4 days, I dedicated my life to watching this poor, sweet child. I watched him every second of the day. If I had to go to the bathroom, and no one was with me, he came too. It became a full time, round-the-clock job. I don’t know when I have worked harder, or been so exhausted at the end of the day. I had all my other children on alert too, so that I could call on them at any time to find him- and find him fast if he disappeared.
I was going to go into graphic detail of the next 4 days, but I won’t. Suffice it to say, it worked. I still had to watch him regularly for 2 weeks after that, but he’s all trained now. He’s actually pretty proud of himself. You should have seen him after the second time, dancing in his room singing, “I’m a big boy now!”
The treats I’ve had in my closet have run out, and he’s still going. I’m so proud of him. It’s amazing to me how excited I can be about something like this! But I also recognize that there was no way this could happen if I couldn’t have been with him around the clock. What a blessing it is that I could do that!
Being a mother is definitely not a picnic. I have to deal with potty training, and cleaning up a whole lot of stuff you really don’t want to hear about– but it is definitely one of THE most rewarding jobs I could ever have.
I love being a mother!