Friday 6 July 2007 It does pay off.

training that is.
All the training does pay off. Today we were out all day. We spent the day time at the Melbourne Markets. That is a food and clothing market here in Melbourne. We carried Cathy in a baby pouch, ours is a Baby Bjorn. She slept most of the day. Michele walked with us all day. Poor kid, she's only 3.5 but she did well. Not a hint of trouble all day. She stood whilst mum and dad looked at this and that. Not a hint of grumble at all. Made no effort to touch anything but showed interest in everything. It has taken us 3 long years of training and correction to get her to this point. She is polite to strangers and talks to us like a well trained child should. At times we despaired we would ever get to this point. But we are slowly getting there. There is still a lot of hard work to go. What has been the secret? I wish I could say correction but that is not so. Discipline has been a large part but not the main part. It is training that has been the most part. Modeling how we want her to behave. Getting her attention then getting her to copy the behaviour. Train train and train again. Correct, yes, but mostly train. I want to add this. After all that time at the market, we then had to go to the bank. That took the best part of an hour in the bank. Did she grumble? No. She had every right too, but not a hint and it is boring for a 3.5 year old in a bank.They always say you learn from your mistakes you make with the first child. We did. We originally had too much discipline. How can we expect a child to behave if we don't train.How early? 12 months before their first birthday. We started to train Cathy about 8 weeks ago, she is now about 18 weeks old, to put her legs down when we change her diaper. And she does it. When asked, she will put her legs down and keep them down when we change her diaper. Today Stephanie was asked by a total stranger how we got a baby so young to do this. It's called training. Not correction, she is to young to understand that. Take the leg and gently but firmly place it down whilst saying "Leg down" and eventually it happens. It took about 2 weeks for Cathy to catch on. It has been a time of consistency. Each and every diaper change we go through the same routine. It is now almost a formality. Some times she will do it even before we ask and a lot of the time when we ask. I well remember the nightmare of changing Michele's diapers. I wont go there again.At the same time I will say correction is useless without training. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. The diaper is just one area we are working on. Cathy has a very loud screech when she puts her mind to it. But we are working on that as well.I give thanks to Christ for getting us to where we are now and pray His guidance as we keep on keeping on.