The Surprising Secret (that's not really surprising)

Ok, I admit that I'm one of those moms that always wants to know the answers in advance.  I want to always have it together and know how to react in every situation.  Advance planning.  No surprises. And because I became a mom later in life (at the ripe old age of 34), I believed to a large extent that life experience, observation, and lots of reading had equipped me well for this journey of parenthood.  I was not a nervous mom with a newborn.  I didn't panic when I was alone with my daughter for the first time.  I put my plans and reading into action and, for the most part, everything worked smoothly (or perhaps time has erased my memory, haha).

Until she threw her first tantrum a couple months before her second birthday.  

Until the tantrums increased to almost every day.

Until she began biting other children in the nursery.  

Bewilderment was my initial reaction. Then frustration gave way to emotional exhaustion as the tantrums increased instead of abated despite resorting to various tactics to alternately ignore, then deter her misbehavior.  Finally, I hit upon The Secret. Rather, it was actually suggested to me by a wise mom.

"Have you prayed with her about it?" she asked me.
Caught off guard, I stuttered, "Well... no," thinking, "Pray???  With a not-quite-two-year-old?"

Of course, we prayed with her at night and over meals. But in the day-to-day, moment-by-moment real-time issues of life?
Of course, I knew that's what I ought to be doing as a Christian, as the adult, as a godly mom -- praying for God to give me wisdom  -- but silently, in my head.  Not out loud. And not with the source of the problem -- at the moment, my daughter.

But nothing else seemed to be working, and in my heart of hearts I knew that I wanted to point my daughter to God in all of life's struggles, to teach her at a young age to flee to the One Who is Able to Help. Shouldn't the first tendency of our hearts be to go to Him with our cares, concerns, and frustrations?  Honestly, it's not usually my first tendency, though I know it ought to be.  But what a gift to be able to give my daughter -- to establish this habit early on, to train the young, malleable bent of her heart toward God.

So, eagerly, (while still cautiously instructing my heart to not see prayer as a magic formula), I anticipated the next occasion that usually precipitated some type of explosion.  Pausing before we reached the top of the stairs leading to the nursery, I beckoned for my daughter to stop with me and announced that we were going to pray together.  Asking her to repeat with me, I prayed simply that she would be kind to her friends and share with them instead of getting angry with them and hurting them. When we would go to the playground, we would stop and pray together, asking God to help Jacie obey Mommy with a happy heart when it was time to leave the park.

Almost miraculously, her tantrums began to subside.  My shamefully skeptical mind ran over a list of possibilities other than God's direct intervention:  perhaps she was developmentally about at the end of the tantrum stage anyway, perhaps just the verbal reminder via prayer stuck in her little mind, perhaps..., perhaps...  But I want to give full credit to God.  And to acknowledge His work in my heart.  Perhaps (and probably likely) the lesson was for me.  I can tell you, it's stuck with me.  I make a conscious effort to incorporate prayer in any discipline efforts with Jacie now.  I forget sometimes, even for days in a row.  But sooner or later, I come back to it; it's something I work hard to be intentional about. I need to be reminded of my dependency on God just as much as my daughter does.  And prayer reminds us of our great need for God, and positions us to be alert to His work in our lives.

So PRAYER is the not-so-secret Secret ~

Not earth-shattering, but heaven-and-earth-moving.