Why the Duplo is in Time Out.

So this morning, Jason offered to do the grocery shopping and take Miranda out while I cleaned (BLESS him) and I was getting the playroom ready for a vacuum before they left. I asked Miranda to put away her Duplo with me so the floor was picked up.

Miranda: "No thank you mommy - you can do it"

Me: "I'm not asking you, Miranda. I'm telling you. It is your job to pick up toys you are playing with.I will help. We can each do half"

Miranda: "I don't want to pick them up."

Me: "that's too bad. If you can't pick up your toys when you are done with them, they will go away. This is your last chance. If you don't pick up your toys, they will go away"

Miranda: "Okay mommy, I will not paly with them"

???!

This is currently her favourite toy. We're talking three hours or more a day in block-time. Oh well. Right now the duplo is ontop of the freezer in the laundry room, where they will stay until she misses them. And then an extra day.


And this brings me to realize that WOW am I doing a bad job of being consistant and setting rules for her. This is the problem with my little girl. She's such a GOOD child, naturally. (the above conversation is an exception, not the rule). She is very concerned with how her behaviour makes me feel - when she is disciplined, she is primarily concerned about wheather or not I am happy or sad!
In the summer, we worked on one new rule a week, things that she was already doing - like always holding my hand when we were outside near a street, NEVER leaving the house without me - front or back yard, NEVER going into the fridge for a snack without my permission, etc. These weren't things she needed me to say to her more than once, and it didn't even cross her mind to NOT hold my hand until it became a rule. It was only after these rules were in place that she began to break them, but in a way that made me happy. It's very difficult to talk to a child about their sin if they do not REALIZE they are sinning, if there is no law before them they know they have broken.

Miranda knows the summer rules by nature, and a few more that we've been praciticing along the way (asking to be excused from the dinner table, playing only with quiet toys when Simon is sleeping, etc.) but I realize I need to be much more disciplined (myself!) about seeing what rules and structure will help Miranda to self-discipline and contentment. Like always picking up her toys.

These conversations about her own sin (along with others about the nature and presence of God, the life of Christ, etc.) are all what I am hopeing will prepare for future conversations about salvation. Right now, there is no reception to that language and those concepts - which doesn't mean it isn't used, of course, but I can see what I have to build.

The other big hole is, of course, Miranda's complete lack of understanding of death.

This again - my fault. I was talking to Nancy on thursday about this when we were planning some pre-school things this year about how the discussion of salvation, heaven, the sacrifice of Jesus is irrelevant if there is no understanding of death. But I somehow can't bring myself to explain it to her without tears. I look at her, and realize that at her age, I was sitting by my mother's hospital bed, and a by the time I was five, was praying that God would make ME die instead of her so she could stay and take care of my little brother. And I began sobbing to Nancy, realizing how much I miss - if not my mother, than having had a well mother and normal childhood. (For anyone reading this who doesn't know, my mom died of cancer when I was 10, and pretty nearly my whole childhood and beyond has been coloured by the absence of my mom). Miranda doesn't know about my mom. I can't see myself sitting down with her and breaking her heart and causing her to fear that I won't be there for her.

It's what I fear most.

(here I am crying again)

Obviously there are still deep portions of this wound and this lonliness that are far from healed. But I have to go there, I have to find a way to show her life and death and the hope in Christ and to show her tender, world-innocent little soul the truths that I know.

With Simon I can already see that teaching him the sin of his nature won't be nearly so difficult (in between this paragraph and the last, I had to rescue him from trying to go swimming in the toilet, after he pulled all of my books off the bookshelf. I have to wrap this up, obviously) but it will be harder to show him the wise and responsible choice which Miranda almost always makes after it is presented to her.

I am so thankful that God has given US His law to show us our need of him, and so thankful that he barred us from the door of Eden so we might not eat of the tree of the fruit of life - imagine, if we had no knowledge of death, if there was no death, what need would we know if our saviour? Leviticus is such a rich book showing us how God's standard covers every piece and every moment of our lives, and our fall from that standard is so complete.

And meanwhile I can only pray that GOD will teach my children's hearts and that I might not stand in the way too much of them growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ!

(and that I can stick to my guns and keep the duplo in time out).