Other people disciplining your kids ...

I never had to deal with this before, but I'm in the full time mommy world now and I've seen it for the first time. What do you do when someone else disciplines your kids? For the most part, it's happened mostly with people I feel somewhat closer too. But I have also had it happen with people I barely know. Sometimes these people will have drastically different parenting styles than you, and sometimes the correction comes with obvious frustration and anger.

Now, let me be clear. I am not a parent that can lay claim to sainthood. I do get angry and frustrated with my children. However, we have rapport, a relationship, and the bonds of family that allow us to communicate despite less than saintly moments. I also work hard to talk with my kids, even at 2 and 3, about anger and apologize for behavior I wouldn't want them to emulate. That being said, I pray for saintly behavior daily from myself.

My issue is that when people do these things they can't draw from an emotional bank account from my kids the way I can. They don't know what could be causing the problem and they don't bother to find out. They don't allow me to use the discipline that I believe in and accept, and  they may scare my kids!

All that being said, this is infrequent, and only once did I need to talk about what happened with Celia. I think a cornerstone of the problem is that our style and approach to parenting has a different goal and end-sight in mind. My goal is not perfectly well-behaved children. I would love perfectly well-behaved children, but that is not the task I took on at their baptism. My job is to form little saints that will go to heaven. My job is to make sure my kids know God and will live their faith for the rest of their lives. I hope that this means they will be well-behaved children, but it also means that when they act out and misbehave now I don't come down with a hammer. I show them understanding, compassion, and unconditional love and then I teach them how to behave. Sometimes they do need corrective discipline, but I prefer to treat them as students and not miscreants. Usually, correction from other parents has come without communication.

I've heard it said that this is the difference between Protestant and Catholic parenting, and I honestly think that is much to broad a statement since you'll find those on both sides in either camp. Unfortunately, thus far though, the stereotype seems to be true. The people that I've seen this with are not Catholic families, which makes me wonder about how religious philosophy plays into parenting. Hopefully I'll learn how to handle this better in the future, but for now I think we'll distance ourselves from the parents that I've had this issue with.