My Personal Learning Experience - Dealing with My Son - Part 2

I have a very energetic first born. He is strong-willed, impetuous, and lazy. He is also fun-loving, energetic, very bright, a very gifted speaker and guitar player. I, so unfortunately, used to think of him as the bane of my existence. I could not see him as the gift which God has given to me. He is another agent of change from the Lord.

I asked a very wise, and very unlike me, friend what she would suggest that I do with Ian. After taking some time to answer, she suggested that maybe the problem wasn't only an "Ian" problem, but a "Karen" one as well. While I was not at all offended, I brushed her answer off as being very well meant, but a little naive to the situation at hand. I did not have six hours in the day to devote to keeping my son on task at school while I had three other children to deal with. I refused to consider her answer because I refused to change.

Meanwhile, I was irritable and even angry when every time I would walk by him that he would be staring out the window or lost or not on task in one form or another. Why did the Lord give me such a stubborn child. None of my other children are prefect, but compared to Ian, they seem quite tame in most cases.

One day when I was tired of being frustrated with my son, I sat down with him for him to copy a composition that he had written the day before into his composition book. I went over every stroke with him, pointing out what he was doing wrong and praising what he was doing well. While the recopy of a 9 sentence essay took two hours, with me at his side, he stayed on task, his handwriting which is often barely legible was definitely better, but TWO hours?!? Was it really worth it, I asked myself. Those two hours exhausted me, but at least I was not raising my voice in irritation or frustration with him. I was actually able to praise him during that time.

I have a cousin who told me that God had better never allow her to run from her circumstances (which she knows are God-ordained) because while she doesn't want to deep down in her heart, she knows that she would. I feel the same way with spending at least two hours or more with Ian working on his school. It is right. it is good. He actually gets praise instead of just remarks asking him why he isn't done yet, but I feel like if the Lord would in some way open the door for me not to have to sit there for two hours with him, I'd take it in a heartbeat.

I'm learning a lot from all this however, and God continues to show me that He's not done with me, and like I am learning about my son, He isn't going to give up on me just because I'm being stubborn and willful.

I'll share more in my next post.