Lets Talk Brain Surgery!

OK I know what your thinking, 'kayla, i know your ambitious but isnt posting a lecture on brainsturgery a little over your head?'. . . and you would be completly right, it IS a little over my head but I want you to think for a moment about this. Imagine the person you love the most... now imagine that for some reason they had to undergo a strenuous procedure such as brain surgery. The emotions you would feel would be vast. I can image I would feel worried, stressed, prayerful, and a little helpless. The only options you have are to pray, comfort your loved one and find the most qualified doctors in the most comforitable hospitals and the best equiptment possible for the procedure I know that I would want to be as involved as possible to make sure that whatever was causing this problem was removed, cleanly, precisely, and as painlessly as possible.

Now Imagine the panic and fear that you would feel if you knew that this was the tool being used to operate on the person you love more than anything. A butter knife. A dull blade that was designed to spread oily butter over your crispy toast is now going to have to make perfect slices and incisions surrounded the delecate nerves and arteries. It just wouldnt work, the procedure might be attempted but the damage to the surrounding skin and nerves would be far greater than any good that came from the attempt. It would make things so much worse.

I know that was a little weird to think about but In our family class we talked about preforming brainsurgery with a butter knife and it helped me to understand the best ways to handle marital and parental issues. What, it still doesnt make sense? We'll get there, promise!

In my text book, chapter8, Understanding and Applying Proclamation Principles, we discussed marital issues and how they are handled. quick note, I LOVE the way that we dont just learn the correct way to handle situation, we talk about the tendencys, the diverse ways that people react to situations and thier consiquences. This has helped me SO much because sometimes im doing it 'right' but other times I can identify myself using a method of problem solving that has many weaknesses and might be causing other problems for me. Its really allowed me to catch myself, its been a very humbling semester :)

Anyways, we talked in class about parenting and how there are so many ways to screw up! No, not really, but I think my testimony of the phrase, 'all things in moderation' has been strengthened and expanded to every aspect of life. I'll explain why. The three approaches to parenting that i wanna touch on are coersion, induction and love-withdrawl.

Coersion is when a parent practices control or authoritive power over a child. Some examples are yelling, grounding, punishing and hitting a child. It a fear filled relationship. That might sound extreme but its using 'tools' like yelling and threatning punishment to frighten the child into submission and is ineffective. It takes way thier agency and teaches tham that under your power 'this' will not be allowed or they cant do this with out "this consiquence. It might teach them that sense of obedience but once thier are given back thier agency, they will have never been able to use it and might make poor choices.

Love-Withdrawl is kind of EXACTLY what it sounds like. It when the parent offers and ultimatum or restriction to thier love or support in order to get the results thier want with thier child. It shows disapproval and suggests that the relationship is some how suspended until the child changes. To me this seems to be the most distructive and one of the easiest traps for a parent to fall into. When your childs doing something that isnt favorable its easy to be disappointed and saddened by thier poor choices but restricting your love will only push them further from you and decrease the chances that they have of listening to your advice. Its munipulative, parents love thier children( or at least they should) unconditionally and to make your child think that you dont can be fatal to you relationship. It can also cause excessive guilt and depression. Children want to be excepted and loved my thier parents and if they see over and over their failures in the eyes of thier parents, their self-worth and confidence can be damaged indefinatly.

Induction is when the parents wins the childs voulentary compliance. The parent uses reasoning and examples to show the child the consequnces of the actions that they choose to make and allows them to learn from experience with reason. Obviously this doesnt mean that you allow your child to make mistakes that would harm them or others but if the consequenses are mild and a lesson can be better taight through experience, this techniques allows that. It also allows the parents to help thier child understand and better use thier agency.

The Lord said, "bypersuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love-unfeigning; By kindness and pure knowledge which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile." (D&C 121:41-42) This isnt a psychiatric method or anything but I dont think there is better parenting advice than from our heavenly parents.

SO... now that we have a background, lets get to the meat of the discussion here . . . Disipline.

How do we allow our children agency, show them love in a way they can understand and still protect them and teach them?

I wanna focus on this phrase.

"Reproving betimes with sharpness"

lets brake it down...

Reproving- to find fault or to correct

betimes- seasonally or in the appropriate season or time

sharpness- focus or percision

So when teaching our children we should only find fault or correct them in the appropriate season or time. I feel like this is asking us to not seek fault or issues with our children, but to instead correct on occassion. I know that with my marriage, waiting for eachother to mess up is a horrible way to help eachother grow. Im so glad my husband knows when something needs to be discussed or sorted out and when to leave something alone because im working on it or it will work itself out. I make it a point that if my husband is doing something that is disagreeable, I will talk to him about it right after it happens and make sure he has a clear understanding of why its disagreeable and then not bring it up again. THIS IS WHERE THE BUTTER KNIFE COMES IN!!! When your dealing with disipline and disagreements, its so important that you use the right 'tools' to solve the problems that you face with anyone, not just children. I was able to apply this to my husband and I. Our issues or one we wrong one another, the way we solve those problems can be compared to brain surgery. We do want to take a fault of a loved one and rub it in thier faces, we want them to know how much we love them and how much we want the contention or issue between them to be resolved. In surgery you'd want the same thing, a nice clean procedure with little to no recovery time and the least amount of pain possible. but if you approach a problem with the idea of railing them for all thier mistakes before you resolve the issue and then continue to bring them up over time its like doing surgery with a butter knife, its painful, you dont actually solve anything, you just complain to your loved one about something they did or are doing, there is no 'sharpness'. and by 'sharpness' i dont mean cutting remarks I mean, to the point, exactly what you need to say in order to resolve the problem nothing more and nothing less. Reproving betimes with sharpness is such a constructive and productive way of teaching and problem solving. I know that it has strengthened my marriage, and that I will use this with my children. I want my children to know how much I love them even when they make mistakes. I loved this comparison, it really helped me realize how reproving and be preformed with love. In conclusion, there will be no butter knife surgeries in MY house!