BONUS : Training Toddlers With Valerie Elliot Shepard

welcome to gems of motherhood i'm your host sharon khan i'm here to connect you with some amazing gems of mothers from all walks of life each week you'll hear interviews as well as resources and actionable tips that you can implement in your daily life to be the best gem god has called you to be thanks for watching this journey with me today and don't forget to subscribe to the show also stay tuned to the end of the show for an incredible bonus with our partner cuckoo's playhouse now let's get into our bonus episode with valerie elliot shepherd i think so many mothers are so worried about hurting their child not not physically of course that's the possibility but i'm talking about hurting their psyche they're so worried about it that they won't be firm right and a child needs that understanding of hearing the mama or the daddy being firm today we're going to talk about training toddlers with valerie shepard now we all want well-behaved kids and training needs to begin at a young age valerie was the only daughter of missionary parents elizabeth and jim elliott they were missionaries to the kichwa indians of the amazon jungle valerie attended and graduated from region college in 1976 with a bachelor's in arts in english literature she has spent 42 years being a pastor's wife raising eight children home schooling and teaching bible studies they now have eight grandchildren and their adult children now live in california to the united kingdom valerie welcome to the gems of motherhood podcast it's so good to have you on the show thank you so much i'm happy to be here sure now as a mom of eight children i know you're going to have a lot of gem nuggets to share toddlers will test your buttons whenever they can and they'll just keep trying right that's right so how do you suggest we help these little tots to behave at home and in public the best thing i know and of course i'm not i was not a perfect parent and nobody is god is our perfect parent best thing i know is to practice using a low quiet and firm voice and when a child will not lie down because you want them to take a nap or to go to sleep at night i believe you should put your hand on their back and you should just firmly hold them down even if they're screaming and just say no it is not time to get up it's not time to scream it is time to go to sleep and then sometimes i would well yes i usually prayed right away even if they were screaming i would hold my hand on their back just firmly saying mama wants you to go to sleep now now they of course they don't know those words yet some of them do some of them yeah but they but they do know your voice of authority i think that's the most important thing that children need to hear from their parents besides of course loving words and helpful words and sweet words of course they need that but they need to know that you are in charge and that they are not well that's very interesting when you said you would put your hands on your back and be firm even though they're screaming and kicking obviously when they are little toddlers they are more mobile and they can jump and fight and kick what yes do you do do you still put your hand firmly and not move them even though they're moving you and kicking you i would um now some parents would say they should not be spanked if they're kicking and screaming i would say i believe they should be spanked just firmly once or twice and so i know that there's of course a lot of controversy about that but i believe bible in proverbs is correct of course i believe that the rod not using the rod spoils the child and when i say rod i used a paint stick those thin sticks you paint used or paint with i i just had to say sometimes mama has to spank you because you're not obeying me and especially if they're really throwing a fit now if they're just crying with uh kind of despair or sadness because you're making them stay and they're not kicking you know some children are of course much more persevering than other children and the more persevering children are of course the more difficult ones but i would say and i'm asking the lord for wisdom and how to say it it is so important to be consistently firm to help the child understand that you are their authority whether it's your husband or you or just as a single mom just you my mother had to do that with me and i was a pretty compliant child so she did not have trouble but she also started out with me as a tiny baby just firmly saying to me no you can't do that so i think so many mothers are so worried about hurting their child not not physically of course that's the possibility but i'm talking about hurting their psyche they're so worried about it that they won't be firm right and a child needs that understanding of hearing the mama or the daddy being firm they need it right give him security even though they don't like it so the more persevering you are in teaching them that they must obey and of course at the very i sent you the email about the very beginning of of them crawling around and touching things that they shouldn't touch you have to show them that there are things allowed to be played with and there are things that are not allowed and i don't really agree that a child has to be that a home has to be completely child-proofed right those two things um putting them to bed having them eat some food that you believe is the best food for them and not changing the food every time they start fussing because if you change the food then they think well i can always get something better right so just being firm about what you know is the best for them and that's with sleep now if the child cannot go to sleep then i would just say if you're not going to spank them you know that firm quack on the back of the leg nothing no beating i don't believe of course in beating i don't believe in hurting them terribly i just mean a little smack that makes them realize you mean what you say yeah and i would say firmly saying mama's going to pray that you can go to sleep and if you can't go to sleep then you will stay in your crib until mama comes to get you and it is just simply a matter of sticking to your word whatever you decide is the best amount of time you know some people would say make the child stay in there for 30 minutes and if they're still screaming after 30 minutes go back in and say now mama's not going to get you out of the crib because you're screaming i will get you out of the crib when you have stopped screaming and when you're being quiet and playing by yourself you can play in your crib here are some of your toys here are some of your books but we're not going to get you out because you're screaming again if they're getting their way because they want to get out then they're beginning to rule right it is so important for parents to understand their position as the authority over children and of course because we have a loving father who disciplines us for our good we have to model that to our children we're not going to be mean and horrible to them we're going to be simply firm and we stick to our guns that's not the right word right we persevere we persevere at it and i really think it doesn't take more than three to four days continuously saying firmly mama wants you to obey you have to do what mama says or daddy says it takes three to four days and i would say there are some children that may push a little bit longer than that but my youngest daughter was the most persevering i have four out of the eight that were all quite willful but i would say probably my second born and my youngest were the most difficult because they really pushed and pushed and pushed to get their way and i'm not naturally a persevering person i had to ask god especially when i was training my youngest to stay in bed after i'd weaned her in the middle of the night to stay in bed and not be brought to my bed because of course as i knew she was my last one i my husband had said we're not having any more after eight i had been a little more relaxed with her and letting her nurse and be in my bed at about 15 16 months but at 16 months i decided okay i'm weaning her no more bedtime no more time with us in bed yeah of course i would fall asleep usually nursing her and then i'd wake up in a little while and put her in her bed but i decided that had to stop so as i said i was a little more lenient with her right the old ones i nursed all of them till they were at least 12 to 13 months old and i i worked at weaning them between 13 to 15 months so anyway i i really do remember very specifically um going in to talk to sarah and to say you cannot scream you have to sweetly go to sleep mama can give you some water but i'm not giving you anything else and she screamed for three nights in a row and when she screamed i would spank her give her a swat with that rod again i don't want to you know shock people who don't believe in spanking i just want to say you have to figure out some way of showing them your meaning what you're saying right so i on the third night it might have been yeah it was probably the third night i just put my head down on the crib wall uh crib gate and i just said lord to myself i mean in quiet i said lord this isn't working again i having my first experience well not my first but having this experience with the child that was so determined yeah um it had been quite a while since my second born of course and so i just said lord what do i do how do i keep on spanking or is there another way to train her and do you know i truly believe the holy spirit reminded me of that verse in hebrews 12. all discipline for the moment seems painful afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness and that absolutely assured me that i had to give her another spank on the back of the leg hold my hand on her back firmly and saying you're going to sleep mama will give you water but nothing else you're staying in your bed it took one more night of doing that and she never woke up again after that now you said that you know she was very very persevering especially in the middle of the night if you know how many times was she getting up how many times did you have oh only once no she was only once getting up because it had been the habit to wake up from nursing she usually went to bed by 7 or seven thirty and then she was awake around two to be fed and so i had decided to that was probably her last nursing you know i i had slowly cut out the other ones during the day yeah i might have had her bedtime nursing and then i might have had the two pop nursing one of those uh probably then the bedtime nursing uh was the next to last to go and then the middle of the night feeding was the last very last and so that's what i was determined and i again i had to ask god to help me be as determined as i should be for her sake so that she would understand i wasn't going to give in to her but the time that she got up that one time and not wanting to go back to sleep fighting to go back to sleep yeah how long did that take do you mean that particular hour or do you mean each particular that particular hour yeah i think it usually took um 10 to 20 minutes okay that's that's not very long well yeah i think she she would just you know she'd try as long as she could and realize i wasn't gonna change my mind so as i said it took three nights and then my prayer and god reminding me of that all discipline for the moment and then the next night she did it again but i went and i said sarah i'm not letting you get up you may have some water but you have to go back to sleep and she did i mean it was incredible and i just felt i i felt that god was just he was assuring me that the discipline was good and right and that of course i didn't need to wake up every night for her um because i knew it was time to wean her i know that a lot of moms will nurse them longer and that's fine that's totally up to each mom but i felt like she was just old enough that she didn't have to nurse anymore i do i do know of a mom who kept on nursing a baby until he was three to somewhere between three and four and and it was so obvious that he was so demanding of his mother because the older they get the more they just think well i just want some comfort right now and right lift up the mother's shirt and i just don't think that's appropriate right well i'll tell let me tell you a funny story um about spanking i had to spank my daughter twice this week um and um after that she said to me mommy kiss it because it was a hurt place right yes yes what i said i am not kissing it i said you lied to mommy mommy said i will spank you you didn't listen and you didn't obey mommy i am not kissing it right and she said mommy kiss it yeah i said no well we laugh but at the time that that happens you know our hearts kind of break because we want to be really tender and compassionate with them but it is so important just to stay say you're i think this is right i think you're right sharon um just staying consistent saying no this is a spank because you disobeyed me right and so there are lots of times when i can give you a kiss on your arm a kiss on your leg a kiss on your face but this is the time when you have to understand mama man to what she said when she gave you a spanking you're not allowed to lie to me you're not allowed to disobey so it's just i think so many moms are just so afraid to be that firm and i don't think we're going to hurt now here my my youngest daughter is here at the house with us because she's been in med school and because of covid rotations kind of stopped but we've talked about training children and she totally agrees with me that you have to be firm or else kids will start ruling the roost right they really do they take over if you let them have their way right i know there there were moments of times when i just had her my husband would always remind me you're the parent she's not yes you're right that's right absolutely i had to be reminded about even with my second born who was difficult i remember saying one day i am the mother and i can say this to her i am the mother no you may not have what you want and she was almost seven or eight years old when i started saying to her i am the mother you are not in charge elizabeth i am the mother it just gave me more strength to say that so you know apart from being firm speaking in a low quiet voice yeah what are some other effective tactics we can implement to train up our toddlers well this whole idea of quiet time when she's you said your daughter doesn't want to go down for a nap and she's wide awake um i think the training comes in that continuous attempt to say this is a quiet time this is when you're going to play by yourself and you can't call mama they they may understand depends on the age they may understand about the word emergency but you just you just um make sure they have something i used to do 45 minutes sometimes an hour my daughter actually did her quiet times my daughter elizabeth has four and she had her quiet times for an hour and a half to two hours sometimes um and and i think that's great um she expected them to play by themselves i think i was a little bit more lenient as to the time of the of the quiet time i always have had to take a ten minute nap so i would do that first as soon as i got them down for their nap i i took a ten minute nap then i was out for the rest of the time while they had their quiet time and so i just think it's important for them to realize that they're not going to be entertained all day that this is a rest time and as they get older and they really are not sleeping at all i just tell them to they can color they can look at books they can talk to god they can sing um sometimes you might have them listen to music which is fine i just made sure that my children weren't making too much noise they had to basically do quiet type things and one time my daughter uh my two older daughters who were there they're not the older daughters of the of the five daughters i have they're actually the younger two but anyway they were probably about eight and ten and they were having their quiet time and i had finished my nap and my daughter came with about two minutes left on the timer and i kept the timer in my room said mama is quiet time over yet and i said no you've got two more minutes so just go back to your room but she said well colleen is outside and i said oh we'll tell her to come back inside the quiet time is not quite finished so i heard her go to the front door and she said colleen it's time to stop talking to god now [Laughter] she was perfectly serious because i had always said if they couldn't think of anything to do they could just lie on their beds and talk to god right i just said that because i figured well you know who knows right they might be able to communicate with god even if even if they have no clue what i mean by that you know it's just you know we have a course family prayer time and everybody gets a chance to pray and so i just laughed because of course colleen was not allowed to go outside before the quiet time was over the fact that evangeline very seriously said colleen you're supposed to come inside it's time to it's almost time to stop talking to god which means [Laughter] over but mama told you to come in so it's just i just think again the decision with of the parents and again the parents have to be in agreement or else the children are at wit's end i mean they're tossed back and forth who am i going to get to get my way right um so decide on an hour decide on what you're going to allow them to do in that hour and be firm with it and i mean if there's a way to even lock the door from the outside i don't know if that's really absolutely necessary but of course if they're if they're crying and there's something that had fallen or gotten they got hurt you know of course you go inside and you just see what's going on but you really leave them to themselves their own imagination god has given them a great mind to creatively play and i wouldn't allow screen time i would not right there's way too much of that and children's minds don't develop well when they see too much screen time so i just think books and coloring is just fine yeah so yeah that's awesome well you know there are some some tots that who can't be a little bit more demanding and they can be really loud how can we train them up to soften their voices and to be a little bit more gentle keep using a soft voice yourself and i i always acted out the way that i wanted them to behave and the way that i didn't want them to behave so i tried to take moments when they were in happy playful moods when they were they were happy they weren't demanding anything from me and i would say we're gonna learn what i mean by house voice or a voice that we use in the home that we don't want to hear with in the shopping mall we don't want to hear it in the car we don't want to hear it here at the house when you're outside and playing you can yell happily but inside we don't yell we and usually the yelling comes from their demanding their own way right um but i would just i would practice it with them i'd say this is the way you can play this is the voice you can use but then a yelling or a screaming of course is not allowed and i would say if you're going to scream at your sister or scream at your mama or daddy that i'm going to have to give you a spank i used to i we changed from spanking on the hand we'd have them open their palm and we'd take that uh stick and get a whack on the hand and of course it smarted but it wasn't a beating at all um then we changed to spanking on the back of the leg because my husband felt like our hands are to be always showing them uh gentleness and and love kindness and it's kind of hard to help the child understand these same hands will also punish i wasn't sure i completely agreed with that but yeah i of course submitted to my husband and we from then on spanked on the back of the leg and and i mean the pants would be pulled down not not the underwear i just just used if it was long pants it pulled along so they could just feel that smart yeah and it was a simple and quick thing it was not long and drawn out um it it if they hurt you know some children are so proud they're not going to show that they hurt right that's the way my youngest was um i had to take her i always took my children into the bathroom to discipline them i didn't do it in front of other people um i talked to them quietly and seriously about do you know why mama spanked you you know you disobeyed and or you were disrespectful and i said now mama's going to pray that the lord will help you to be respectful and i'd like you to pray well this particular one she did not want to pray out loud with me she'd look at me with this kind of pouty face or mad face and say i'll pray by myself and and that was kind of continuous i really didn't know how to change that because i knew if i forced her to pray it was just it was just forcing obedience you know like like a tyrant would and i just said well i'm going to ask the lord to help you to want to pray out loud with me and if you can't then i expect you to pray in your room and sometimes i'd send her to her room after after that discipline time um and she remembers that she got a little older maybe four or five and six she remembers that i'd send her to a room to think about how she behaved and she said mom i didn't know what i was supposed to think about she said you'd send me to my room and tell tell me think about it and i would sit there thinking what what am i supposed to think i know i've had i've had a moment this week as well where my daughter wasn't supposed to do something and i told her i want you to go into your room sit on your chair and when you're ready to obey mommy you're going to come out and tell mommy you are going to obey mommy are you ready to obey mommy and she goes no [Laughter] well then you give her more time right exactly i said okay well then you're gonna stay in your room mommy's gonna lock this door when you're ready to obey you're gonna tell mommy you're going to obey me that's good no i think you're very you're very wise in doing that i think again they need to see that you're in charge they need to see that so i know we were talking a little bit about quiet time early i just want to go back to it a little bit what happens when they don't want to practice quiet time it doesn't matter you just you still make them have a quiet time they may just have down cast faces and look pouty but you say all of us in the house need the quiet time right all of us need to know what it means to sit quietly before god and you may not see god i don't see god but we know that he's with us all the time so that's why i tell you you can talk to him and it's it is up to you to figure out what you can do to keep yourself entertained and if you don't want to use the word entertained and just it's up to you to do what you can do in your room without getting into trouble without hurting now sometimes i had to have most of the time i had to have two children per room in their quiet time and i don't remember ever having any of them hurt each other during quiet time it was just a matter of trying to keep them quietly playing and i think listening to a tape a story was very helpful but i just wouldn't i wouldn't let them say i don't want to do it anymore i think you just keep doing it right right it's part of our own lives we need time to reflect and they may be too young to understand reflect that's but you know you need it and you know you've got to get them in the habit of doing that right now we're almost at the end of the show but i wanted to know is there anything else that you would like to share with other gems of mothers out there well i would definitely say that mothers and dads need to pray together for their children women need to look to their husbands for leadership and for a long time because i had a very strong authoritative mother not a mean mother but a very strong one and of course i didn't have a dad till i was 14 my stepdad she was my authority and so when i got married i wasn't thinking although i knew it by principle that a woman leaves her family and joins together with her husband and they have a new family unit i wasn't thinking okay that means i need to start listening to my husband as my leader i still would ask my mother for advice and for wisdom and of course she had wisdom but she would always say val i only had one child and you were not you were not much trouble and she said i came from a family of six and we knew we had to obey and so that's what i would encourage you to keep teaching but she's but she never said to me i'm sure it wasn't it wasn't um it wasn't a quick response to her to say ask walt what do you think walt would say because she hadn't had a husband until she for 13 years since my dad had died so it dawned on me it took a few years i really don't know maybe 10 to 12 years before i started realizing i need to look to my husband for his ideas and his thinking on this and it wasn't that i was calling up my mother every day we usually talk once a week and so i'd tell her my troubles you know and she might suggest something but she was not she was not overbearing but she was strong and her words always made sense her words always made sense but um i began to switch over to look to my husband and talk to him and also ask him to pray with me and it took a while for him to really be comfortable praying with me he always had this feeling like i was trying to be more spiritual than he was if i suggested praying well i think it's uh it's very important for us wives to say to our husbands i want you to initiate prayer but if you don't then i'm gonna just ask if we can pray together if you still feel uncomfortable praying with me then i'm i'm gonna pray with you but i i'm not gonna force you of course i can't force you that has to be of the lord right so agreeing together to pray has had made a huge difference with my husband and me and we had two teenagers that caused a lot of heartache and it was really in those years that we prayed very seriously and very earnestly together and it really helped our marriage too so we're very we're very together we're and and it took a few years for me to really switch over from really expecting my mother to give me advice to looking to my husband for advice and just just his being the leader instead of my thinking well my mother can tell us anything to give us wisdom on anything which she was usually happy to do right but it really is important for a couple to sincerely work together to agree on what their children need to learn and really obedience is is simple it's yes or no and if you say no then you have to mean it that's awesome well thank you so much valerie for coming on the show i really appreciate all the gem nuggets you shared with us about training toddlers you're welcome you're welcome god bless you and you're training your daughter and you too so now i'm so excited to share with you our wonderful partnership if you are interested in exposing your children to spanish as a second language head over to cuckoo's playhouse they are live streaming their music and movement classes in spanish for babies toddlers and preschoolers every day from monday through saturday these classes are fun interactive and educational and they are offering our gems up to three free classes yup you heard that right just head on over to our episode show notes on gemsofmotherhood.com for the link and mention gems 2020. now i hope you enjoyed this episode of gems of motherhood podcast if you're wanting to connect with more amazing gems of mothers and more resources head over to gemsofmotherhood.com where you can subscribe to the show that's where you'll find show notes with actionable tips and any links mentioned by our guest most importantly i hope you will find inspiration and learn to cultivate your own journey you are loved you're an incredible gem to god he knows you intimately he knows what you're going through and he knows what you need remember you are fearfully and wonderfully made in him be sure to tune in next week for our next episode

Channel: Gems of Motherhood

Views: 1,560

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: v2-sD2m91eo

Length: 31min 40sec (1900 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2020