In October, I potty trained our daughter Q. I mentioned around that time that a friend of mine had encouraged me to throw out diapers even during sleeping times from Day One. And, we had early success with that, which was very exciting. Around the time I announced our “success” {there is a reason I put it in quotes}, another friend commented on the post and asked what I would have done if we’d had continual failure night after night.
Well, we had some regression recently, so now I’ll tell you the truth about what we have actually done, not just speculation.
I tried at first to just change the sheets. I required her to help as much as she could because that is part of growing up in this area of life. But when she wet the bed five nights in a row, I started to reconsider the idea of daily changing sheets or bed pads or whatever became wet during the night. Also, we were still offering rewards for nighttime dryness {one or two chocolate-covered nuts}, and I wondered if this was effective.
My prayer for my children in general is that they will learn to love the things I am trying to teach them for the their own sake: not because they get a piece of candy, or a high grade {this is why I don’t do grades}, or even praise. In fact, this is why, in addition to all my other angst, I have angst concerning my children participating in Awana.
*tangent alert*
Awana encourages children to memorize Scripture by having them earn patches for their club vest, candy, points for their team, and also “Awana Bucks” that they can spend at the club store on trinkets. On the one hand, I am content with their participation for reasons unrelated to this, but, on the other hand, I fear for the souls of children {including my own} who are trained, even for a short time, to see something other than God’s Word itself as the reward when memorizing Scripture.
I think of these Scriptures:
Your word is very pure,
Therefore Your servant loves it.
And:
O how I love Your law!
It is my meditation all the day.
I have seen my oldest child begin to memorize a passage of Scripture, on his own, just because he loves something about it. Maybe he found it interesting or beautiful to the ear. He has done this with poetry also; something catches his attention and in the weeks to come he’ll be chanting little snippets to himself while he does his chores or while he plays.
The difference in attitude has been interesting to me. When he is memorizing something Good because of love, he seems a different person than when he is trying to earn points or patches or whatever else he thinks he’ll get out of it.
I see this also in my own experience. There is a difference between trying to earn the grades in school, and truly seeking wisdom. Grades almost completely short-circuited that for me. There is also a difference in the pride that comes from good grades and praise versus the humility which comes from a having a truth revealed to the heart.
To bring this back to potty training, it just happened that my daughter saw the thing itself {being a Big Girl, as she puts it}, as the reward. I would like to say I know how to make this happen, but I don’t. It came from somewhere deep inside of her. She decided to grow up.
Concerning the situation of wetting her bed, when I realized this I told her that she was going to have to wear a Pull Up at night. I just couldn’t change sheets day after day. But then I told her that if she could stay dry three nights in a row, she could go without a Pull Up again. Her eyes lit up: this was what she wanted! She didn’t want candy, or even praise. She wanted to take her place in the land of Big People.
So she has worked at it. Whenever she wets the bed, we go back to three days of Pull Ups, and she disciplines herself to get back out of them.
I keep praying that God will show me how to arrive at this place in every area. This is really one of the biggest differences between mere schooling and real education. In one, the student works through a system and earns merit along the way, the final merit being the diploma. In the other, the student pursues truth and graduates as a different person from when he began the process.
So the question is how do we do this? How do we help order the affections of our children?
The answer, or the beginning of an answer, lies in learning to identify the things which distract the child from loving the thing {whatever it is} in proportion to its worth and then removing those distractions from the landscape.
I have recently begun reading Umberto Eco’s Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. The first chapter is titled The Medieval Aesthetic Sensibility. In his second point of the chapter, he discusses a twelfth-century campaign against “superfluous and luxuriant art in church decoration.” The Cistercians and Carthusians both were up in arms over the pomp of the church buildings.
Now, what is really interesting is the rationale for their objections. They were not, according to Eco, objecting to decoration or luxury in general. However, they objected to it inside the church building proper because:
[it] merely distracted the faithful from their prayers and devotions…It was attacked just because of its powerful attraction, which was felt to be out of keeping with the sacred nature of its environment.
To lift this objection and apply it to learning: we adults {based on a Darwinian view of the child, by the way}, assume that children have no natural love of learning or wisdom or goodness, even Christian children who the Bible clearly declares holy. Therefore, we introduce bribes of various forms.
We think we are doing them a favor, that this is the only way they will learn anything or grow in any virtuous direction. And in the process, we compromise their souls, for we are, through our own actions, training their affections to love physical reward more than they love what is good and true and beautiful.
It is my habit to use reward when teaching physical skills, such as potty training. I also use praise. But seeing that it is possible for the child to learn to love maturity more than reward has been eye-opening for me. Even in skills, we see there is something worth loving for its own sake.
This is the time of year when I start to reflect on the year behind us and ponder the year in front of us. If I could work at one thing this year, I think it would be training the affections. I say this knowing that this isn’t a simple thing to do. But I want them to graduate from childhood with hearts full of love, and I don’t mean this in a warm and fuzzy sort of way. I mean in a passionate, full-of-care sort of way. I want them to care, in a knowledgeable, passionate way, and with appropriate proportion, about a poem and about a sunset and about history and about mathematics and about the God above them and the men around them and the earth beneath them.
I am reminded that God rewards His people. In Revelation chapter 4, we meet the twenty-four elders who are sitting on thrones and dressed in white and crowned with golden crowns. If anyone has attained reward, it is these men. And yet here is where we have the most beautiful glimpse of well-ordered affections I can think of {emphasis mine}:
And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying, “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”
And so we see the reward is nothing when compared with Him.
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