You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.
- Henry Drummond
One Saturday morning, my normally bright and happy sixteen-month-old daughter Kate awoke in a foul mood. All morning, nothing suited her - breakfast was all wrong, her toys were all wrong, and her mother was most certainly all wrong. As a result, she sought out every possible way to demonstrate her frustration. She cried; she whined. She did every single thing she knew she was not allowed to do - and she did each one repeatedly. Pulling her away from the television set for the fifth time, I decided to remove her from temptation by taking her upstairs to change the shirt she’d smeared with jelly while rejecting her breakfast. Sitting on the changing table as I struggled to remove her shirt (she certainly wasn’t going to cooperate!), she began yanking hard on my dangling earrings. When I scolded her, she hit me.
My patience completely expended, I put her into her crib for a time-out. She sobbed during the forty-five or so seconds that I was out of the room. When I returned, I said to her sternly, “No hitting!” As soon as I picked her up, she hit me again. So I put her in time-out again.
We went through the process several times: I’d return to the room, admonish her sternly not to hit, then pick her up - only to have her hit me again each time. During the final time-out, I realized that there was no possible way to change her behavior until I changed mine. I returned to her room, looked down at her and said in my kindest tone, “Kate, I love you. I am sorry that you are having a hard morning, but I still love you very, very much. You are a wonderful baby.”
I didn’t know if my words would have any effect, but as I lifted her from the crib, she immediately reached up - and hugged me.
- LeDayne McLeese Polaski