Nothing for which they cry for.

So last week we spent a few days at Virginia Family Campmeeting. It was such a blessing for my little family. My husband and I got to sit down and reassess some things. We heard uplifting and encouraging meetings and my toes got stepped on. (But in a good way.)

You see Family Campmeeting is about restoring families. About giving God based principles for your marriage, for your finances, for your children, and for just living the day to day Christian walk.

One of the messages was about practical parenting. I've been going to these since before I was married with kids, so you'd think I'd have it down by now. But I don't.

In fact one the things that was gone over was not giving your children everything they cry for no matter what. I am usually sometimes good with this. But I have a screamer.

L is the baby and she's my baby girl. See now I'm making excuses. L pouts. It's actually kind of cute to see her pop that bottom lip out, that is until she starts wailing.

But I have a tendency to either a. ignore her until she stops or b. give her what she wants. And I really need to stop that. I don't want spoiled kids. So this week I have been praying every day in my devotional time that I would be aware of the situations.

Now I know you're asking "Aware of the situations? How can you not be aware?" Because I think as a mother sometimes I am on auto response. I just do what I've always done.

So I prayed the prayer that I wouldn't give into my darling little princess. And guess what! I was totally aware of when she doing it. Was I successful every single time? Nope. But there was progress made. By the end of the week L and X were doing so much better. I'll share an example that happened with X.

Yesterday I had to run some errands and I had to go to Wal*Mart. (Hate Wal*Mart) but we are about to go on a very long trip and I wanted some stickers for X to play with on the way down. So we picked them up. Well the store happened to only be taking cash and I didn't have any. So we had to leave. Try explaining to a two y/o that you have to take back the stickers. Yeah not so easy. So he proceeded to have a melt down. I then explained to him that he was not going to get them because he was crying for thing. I said I was sorry that we couldn't get them in that store, but he needed to stop crying immediately or he wasn't going to get them at all. (I told him we would get them at Target--LOVE Target :)

We had been going over this pretty much all week with other things. He just stopped crying. Now he was still sad, I could see that, but he wasn't throwing a fit. He later did get the stickers.

With L, I know she understands. Because I tell her that she needs to stop crying and if she doesn't stop crying she will get sent to sit on the step until she is happy. Sometimes she drys her tears up, other times she sits on the steps and sobs "I'm happy! I'm happy!" over and over. We're working on that.

I know I still have progress to make with the children. I also am aware that it also applies to me. How I respond when something doesn't go my way. Do I sit and pout, or do I just smile anyway and go with it. My kids are watching me. If my kids see me being able to through a grown up fit when I don't get something I want, they are just being programmed that that is okay. So little people principles also are for big people!