Children are not evil

Here I am again, still agonizing over spanking. My general opinion remains that it may be right in some instances and for some kids, but wrong for others. I also believe that it is completely possible to raise good children without spanking -- because some of my awesome friends were spanked, and some weren't. I was. I think I'm an okay person. I don't resent my parents. I have a good relationship with them.

And yet I can't abide the opinion that spanking is required to raise a "moral" child. They cite Bible verses about sparing the rod and spoiling the child, and insist that you start hitting your children with a switch by the time they can walk. The whole thing strikes me as rather brutal, as well as encouraging parents to ignore everything they know about their child and all of their instincts, just so they can follow a plan which is touted as "biblical."

I got an answer back from Kimberly at Raising Olives on our discussion about disciplining toddlers. I had asked if she could provide more details about her system of discipline, by which she claimed she could teach one-year-olds to obey. Here's what she said:

Hi Sheila,

The most basic duty of a child is found in Ex.20:12, Deut. 5:16, Eph. 6:1-3, Col.3:20, jn.14:13-24 and more. Scripture is clear about the blessing and curse attached [to] children obeying their parents. This is about life and death.

The people responsible to teach them their duty: Deut.6:6-7, Eph. 6:4, Prov. 1:8;3:1, 4:1-2;6:20, Deut. 4:9-10, etc.

Tedd Tripp, in his book Shepherding a Child’s Heart, says this,

When your child is old enough to resist your directives, he is old enough to be disciplined. When he is resisting you, he is disobeying. If you fail to respond, those rebellious responses become entrenched. The longer you put off disciplining, the more intractable the disobedience will become.

The time and manner for teaching them: Deut. 6:7-9, Prov.29:15-17, 13:24, 23:13, 19:18.

Simply because our children are young we do not allow them to regularly participate in what God says will bring a curse and judgement to them. If our child is knowingly resisting our authority, he is sinning against God.

I actually looked up every single Bible verse she mentioned. All quotes are from the King James Version, which seemed the most likely one that she might be using. My source is biblegateway.com, which is a really handy tool for searching the Bible.

The basic duty of a child:

Ex.20:12 - Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Deut. 5:16 - Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Eph. 6:1-3 - Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

Col.3:20 - Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord.

Jn.14:13-24 - And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (continues for 11 more verses, but I still don't see the connection ... perhaps she meant a different verse)

The people responsible to teach them their duty:

Deut.6:6-7 - And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

Eph. 6:4 - And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Prov. 1:8 - My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother.

Prov. 3:1 - My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments.

Prov. 4:1-2 - Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law.

Prov. 6:20 - My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother.

Deut. 4:9-10 - Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons; Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.

The time and manner for teaching them:

Deut. 6:7-9 - And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Prov.29:15-17 - The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth: but the righteous shall see their fall. Correct thy son, and he shall give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul.

Prov. 13:24 - He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

Prov. 23:13 - Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.

Prov. 19:18 - Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.

Okay, so I understand her argument: One of the commandments is to obey your parents. Parents are supposed to teach their children the commandments, including the one to obey their parents. And the way to do that is to start young, and to hit them with a rod.

However, it seems to me that there are some problems with this argument. First off, it's exclusively from the Old Testament, except for two verses. All the ones in Deuteronomy and Exodus are addressed specifically to the Jews. They take them quite literally and actually do bind the commandments on their foreheads and doorways. But my guess is that Kimberly does not. Why not? Two reasons: First, the Old Covenant is for the Jews, and we are not bound by the strictures of the Law (as you can easily find in the Epistles). Second, it was probably a poetic way of saying, "Keep the law always on your mind." Modern day Christians do this.

Can't we also say that the phrase "with a rod" might also not have been literal? My grandma might have said, "Smack 'em with a hairbrush," but I don't go around saying, "Only hairbrushes are appropriate to hit children with." She just meant smack the kids, but not hard, and in a way that means discipline. If she just said "hit 'em," I might have thought she meant to punch them in the nose. I don't see an actual difference between hitting with a rod and with the hand. You can tap lightly with a rod; you can kill someone with your bare hands; but it doesn't really make a difference what your tool is.

And as far as age, the only thing we hear is "betimes." I've also heard, "while he is young." Nothing states, "by the age of one" or "while he's a toddler." The word "toddler" wasn't even used in Biblical times. Children were called babies or infants or nurslings until they were weaned, which was about three years old. I'm not sure what form of discipline was common at the time, but I'm pretty sure kids were pretty much left to their mothers at that age. Often, in more primitive cultures, nursing toddlers are considered equivalent to babies and mainly left alone -- actual teaching would begin later. I'm no expert, but there's nothing in the Bible that suggests any differently.

In short, I don't think the Bible has anything that specific to say about the discipline of very young children. I think a bigger source of this point of view is people like this Tedd Tripp fellow and others, who write books about discipline and sell them by passing them off as "the Biblical way to raise children."

It was the rest of the comment that really bothered me: "If our child is knowingly resisting our authority, he is sinning against God."

First off, how old does a child have to be to commit a sin -- when does he "know" he is resisting? Is it when he tries to roll over at four months old because doesn't want a new diaper on? Is it when he puts his hands in front of his mouth at six months old because he doesn't want any more pudding? Is it when he crawls away laughing at nine months old, because he sees you chasing him and would like you to keep chasing him -- because it's fun? How can he really understand the concept of "authority" at that age? How can he know the difference between being chased for fun and being chased because we really want to catch him? These are subtle differences!

The Catholic Church generally considers the "age of reason" to be seven years old. Before that age, a child is incapable of sin because he's incapable of understanding what sin is. He is certainly capable of getting on our nerves, destroying property, and endangering his life, but he can't sin. We stop him from doing harmful things because we don't want him to do them, and because we want him to have good habits, but not because he is sinning.

There is, in my mind, no point in disciplining a child before he is capable of understanding the thing he is supposed to do. Once he can do it, we use age-appropriate strategies to get the child to do it.

For instance, Kimberly gives the example that a child of one year old can understand the command, "sit on your bottom." Perhaps what she means is that, when she tells her one-year-old, "sit on your bottom," the one-year-old sits down. Okay, fine. I'm all for that.

But someone could interpret what she said like this: A one-year-old is quite capable of understanding "sit on your bottom." When I tell my one-year-old to sit on his bottom, he doesn't do it. He must know what I meant and be willfully disobeying me. I will spank him every time he disobeys that command. By the time he's eighteen months, he will be sitting on his bottom when I ask him to.

What I ask is, how do you know a one-year-old understands? I am pretty darn sure my son didn't, at 12 months. At 15 months, he learned the word "sit," and would sit down and stand up saying "sit" and "stand," making a game of it. So I knew he knew what the word meant. But still, when I said "sit," he wouldn't necessarily sit. Sometimes he would sit and then stand, because that's the way his game goes. So when he is standing on a chair and I need him to sit, I gently sit him down. That way he understands that when I say sit, I mean sit down now and stay sitting.

At 16 months, he's beginning to get it. He doesn't know what "quiet" means, but perhaps in a few months he will. It's a process, and I'm finally beginning to feel confident about my ability to foster and respond to that process. At his age, if he insists on standing on a chair, I put him on the floor and take the chair somewhere he can't get to it. In another year, he will probably understand that chairs are never for standing, only sitting, and I won't have to remind him every time. Eventually, it won't be an issue, and I will be able to trust him not to stand on chairs at all.

So, are children evil? I don't believe so. I do believe that children have concupiscence, the effect of original sin. Concupiscence is interpreted so many different ways, but this is how I understand it: Concupiscence is why man is the only animal that doesn't want to do what is good for him. Every other animal has instincts that incline them to do what they are supposed to do. Wolves want to hunt, mosquitoes want to bite, bees want to obey the queen bee; but people become anorexic, suicidal, and self-hating. We are social animals, so it is good for us as a species to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others, but what is easy to an ant is difficult for us. Our instincts tell us a lot of useful things, but they don't teach us what we're supposed to do with these non-animal faculties we have -- reason and free will. Concupiscence means it's difficult to be human. Most importantly, we are not punished for having concupiscence, because it's not our fault.

So, when raising a child, you're raising a being with concupiscence -- a small person who naturally thinks of himself first and doesn't realize that other people have wants and needs too. It is hard for him to do the very things that are most necessary, like share his toys, eat only one cookie, and stay inside the front-yard fence. That doesn't mean he's evil -- just that he doesn't get it. He's going to spend his whole life struggling with this reality -- his inclination to sit in front of the TV eating cookies when he knows he has to go to work, his inclination to sleep with every girl he sees when he knows he can't operate that way, his inclination to lie or cheat or steal to get to the top. His reason will help him out in that struggle, and so will his good habits that he learns from his parents. But those negative inclinations aren't evil -- they are only a problem if he follows them. And they can't be trained out of him with enough spankings. He's always going to be tempted to do the wrong thing. But if he knows what the right thing is, when he sees it done by people he respects, and when he's stopped from doing the wrong thing so that it's never a habit, that will help him choose right.

No matter how hard we try, though, our children's choices are their own. We could do everything exactly right, and they could still grow up to choose all the wrong things, living a life that is harmful to themselves and others. Or we could do everything wrong, and live to see them turn their lives around and do exactly what they should. That's the mystery of free will.

The child-training types try to scare you with the fear that, if you don't train your child to be obedient by the time they are two or three, you will never raise a Godly child. In reality, kids are pretty flexible. Kids raised on no discipline can learn it once they're introduced to it. They know where the speed limit is 25 and where it's 50. As they get older, it gets harder, sure -- but there's no cut-off date for teaching children. Even after they leave home, children still care what their parents think of them, and we may influence them that way.

In short, I just don't believe that spanking is this magical, divinely-mandated discipline tool, and that we're bound to raise up little sinners without it. I think it's one way of disciplining -- one that doesn't really make much sense with a very young child who might or might not understand what is expected of him -- but that there are many more, and there's no need to feel obligated to use this one or that one. Instead, we should watch our children to figure out what they're capable of, and encourage them to do it however works best.

I don't think I could ever convince Kimberly, because my argument rests on the doctrine of the Catholic Church -- original sin, the age of reason, and a non-literal interpretation of Scripture -- which I don't think she would accept. But I have sufficiently convinced myself that I don't need to do things her way.

I am beginning to have a bit more confidence that I'm not going to ruin my child, that I know (at least a little bit) what I'm doing. After all, right now, he is a happy, fun, affectionate little boy who loves hugs, games, and pleasing his parents. I think we're doing okay.

What about you? Were you spanked? Do you spank? Do you think it is necessary?

Blind loyalty

John and I were talking last night about loyalty -- the kind of loyalty Americans love to have to our sports teams, our favorite store, our favorite car, our favorite brand of soda. It's funny, because all of these loyalties are basically meaningless. We might love Pepsi and hate Coke, but the fact is that they're almost identical. So why the strong feelings?

Perhaps we just want to have labels that will tell us who we are. I'm a Pepsi person, or a Sprite person, or a Fresca person ("It's not for everyone. It's for you"). That way I don't feel like just one of a crowd.

When I was a kid, I absorbed my family's loyalties: I preferred Fords to Chevys, Pepsi to Coke, baseball to football, the Huskies to the Cougars, the Republicans to the Democrats. I had no more reason for my political views than I had for my sports views. I simply absorbed them. My elders discoursed about politics, so I did too: "Bush has a nicer name than Clinton. How could anyone be a Democrat when their animal is a donkey?" Yeah. Deep opinions there.

Nowadays I can't really bring myself to announce a party affiliation. Even the old way I used to do, saying, "I am not a Republican, but I find that Republican candidates more often agree with my views," doesn't really seem to work. Republicans never give my views more than lip service, and I find them just as bad as the Democrats in most things, and worse in some things.

These days I have a grab bag of political opinions. I am pro-life, anti-death-penalty, pro-environment, and anti-war (for the most part). I care very much about poverty but am not quite sure what the best strategy is for ending it. I care very much about education, but my solutions are not supported by anyone within the government. I would like to see more of our decisions being made at a more local level (this is called subsidiarity). I would like to see less government, overall. I think we need to be more concerned about our national debt, and maybe do the unthinkable and actually start paying some of it down.

As you can imagine, neither of the two parties have been able to convince me they will serve my interests.

I would say my most important political opinion is my opposition of abortion. I feel very strongly about it, to the point of sometimes becoming a single-issue voter. This seems to me the only logical conclusion to my belief that an embryo is a human person. If it is, nothing is more important than making sure kids are not being killed. No-brainer.

And yet, my number two is the reduction of war. I think we are at war with way too many countries, way too much of the time. I didn't want to vote for McCain last time around, because I felt he would surely increase our military involvement around the world. I think it's ironic that Obama did just that.

In 2004, the first time I ever voted, I picked Bush because I thought he would do something for the pro-life cause. But he didn't do much. I was pretty disappointed. I shouldn't have been surprised -- the pro-life "plank" is not an important one to the Republican party. They mostly included it because they knew they could get people like me to vote for them with no additional effort, since, after all, the Democrats weren't even going to give me lip service.

In 2008, I was even more conflicted. I was pretty sure McCain wouldn't do any more about abortion than Bush did. But I knew he would increase our military involvement abroad. But Obama was so pro-abortion there was no way I was voting for him. I seriously considered voting third-party, but knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that whoever I chose wouldn't win. I would just be making a statement and gratifying myself. But why should I bother voting for someone that I didn't actually want running the country?

In the end, I think my subconscious decided everything for me. The very idea of voting got me so distressed that I would put it from my mind whenever it cropped up. And the next thing I knew, the deadline for registering had passed. Oops. So I didn't vote.

But that's kind of where I am right now: stuck with a rather unpopular amalgamation of opinions, each of which I actually researched and considered thoroughly, only to find that there isn't any room for my points of view in a world ruled by blind loyalty to a dichotomy of political parties. In this country, we are forced to choose one of two options, neither of which actually represents us, and both of which have a vested interest in remaining in power and increasing the power they wield.

As the years go by, their positions seem more and more similar. They vote more and more spending, but quibble on what, exactly, to spend it on. They are aware we need to cut, but no one is willing to cut their own pet programs. More and more I'm hearing the powers that be make veiled references to the stupidity of the American people, how they shouldn't have to explain things to us because we wouldn't understand, how they know better than us how things should be done.

This is just not what I was led to believe our government was like, back in ninth grade civics. Our form of government sounded much more democratic on paper.

I really don't know what I'll do in the next election. All the candidates I see being fielded so far seem every bit as execrable, or more, as the people currently in power. I refuse to vote for someone simply to vote against someone else. I want to at least be okay with my chosen candidate actually taking office. But so far I haven't seen someone put forward who I would like to see as president.

I don't really have a conclusion or closing point here (do I ever?), but surely I'm not the only one frustrated with the way our government works, am I?

How does your fall garden grow?

When we moved here, I knew I wouldn't have time to plant much in the spring. So I put my hopes in the fall. The plan was to plant green beans, peas, lettuce, and spinach in the fall, and then to achieve my "full" garden dreams (though, you know, I'm sure to add to those) next spring.

So how is that going?

Beans are doing great. I should have planted them earlier, like right when my first planting of them failed, but I was caught up in things and didn't have much time to break ground. Then I made the mistake of breaking ground at midday on midsummer, and that wasn't so smart. But they're doing fine, and have begun to bloom. That means beans are right around the corner, right?


Next to them, I have a plot for the peas I just planted. I was waiting and waiting for the right time to plant peas, and then someone told me I should have planted them already. So I decided to stop agonizing and put them in already. I only got a little bit planted, but at least we'll see if that was the right date.


As soon as I can finish killing the grass in the rest of this bed, I'll plant more. They might not give me anything, but they'll enrich the soil anyway. This is how I kill grass: I cover it with newspaper, and then weigh down the newspaper with wood chips, cut grass, planters, tree branches -- really whatever I can find. When I pull it away, the ground is SO much easier to dig than it is with live grass. Our grass is knotted together under the surface with tons of runners and is just impossible to get out.


Last weekend I planted a little lettuce and spinach. I'm not sure if it's too early or too late, but the weather has turned and is less hot, so I thought I might as well try. Their bed gets shade after about two p.m. I planted a little of each kind, and will plant more each week for awhile. This way, either I'll have a long harvest, or at least something will survive and I'll know when the right date to plant might have been.



My tomatoes are pretty much done. I've saved my seeds for next year, and everything else I get is gravy. The beefsteak tomatoes have succumbed to their disease, and it's time to take them out.


The Cherokee Purples are doing better, but they're a bit droopy, especially since they outgrew their cages a long time ago. They still have some fruit, though it is much smaller than the first fruit that grew there. It's probably because they've exhausted the phosphorus in the soil (or something like that). Keep in mind this is unamended, plain soil here -- these plants have had no fertilizer (save one application of "Marko-nure" water), no compost, no nothing. Next year I plan to enrich the soil with a lot more organic matter, and perhaps keep some seaweed emulsion on hand if they start to look peaked.


My cilantro has gone to seed. I decided to let it, so that I could find out what coriander tastes like and save some for the winter. I think I'll also take some seeds and plant them indoors in pots during the cold weather, so that I can have delicious tacos all year long.



The basil is still producing away, albeit somewhat smothered by drooping tomato branches. And here is a mint that my dear friend Dr. Thursday brought all the way from Pennsylvania. It's survived great -- in fact, I think it's ready for me to harvest a few leaves for my iced tea!




Anyone else have a fall garden? Or are you fully in harvest mode now?

Companion plants in my lawn

Some people might say I have weeds in my lawn. My opinion is that I have companion plants. That is to say, rather than having a monoculture of just grass, I have a biodiverse lawn with a variety of different plants .... which leads to a nice-looking, healthy, green lawn.

Besides grass, here are several other plants that live in my lawn and keep it interesting:

Clover: Clover is the ideal companion plant for lawns. It harbors nitrogen-fixing bacteria, keeping the yard rich in nitrogen so that fertilizer is unnecessary. It also is soft on feet, doesn't need mowing, and stays green in all but the most severe drought.



Dandelion: I actually had to hunt all over the yard for a dandelion -- I guess they are being crowded out by all the other plants! Dandelion breaks up hard subsoil with its long, tough taproots. This helps make nutrients deeper down in the soil available to the shallower-rooted grasses.



Plantain: Plantain is invaluable in our climate. We have a big problem with bare patches here in Virginia. Once the soft clay soil is denuded of grass -- say, because of high traffic or erosion -- it bakes into a compacted, bricky pavement, which won't let anything sprout. I've seen a lot of attempted solutions, from just seeding it and leaving it to piling it all with straw mulch and seeding it, and nothing really works all that well. Grass just won't put a root through that compacted stuff. You know what will, though? Plantain. It easily sprouts in compacted soil, loosening and shading the soil to make it hospitable to other plants. The bare patches that covered half our front and side lawn when we bought the house are almost completely gone now, mostly thanks to plantain.



Purslane: Like dandelion, it brings up water and nutrients from below the soil. Its succulence makes it extremely drought-tolerant, and it makes a humid microclimate for the plants around it. In other words, it's happy to share its water stores with others!



A lawn of plain grass easily browns, requiring fertilizer, frequent watering, and weeding. But a diverse lawn full of "companion plants" (that is to say, weeds) stays healthy longer. Don't believe me? We're still mowing our lawn, despite intense heat and drought!

Tons of tomatoes

When I started growing tomatoes, I hoped to save a little money. I knew what I spent on tomatoes: $2.69 every two weeks for a plastic clamshell of six Romas at Aldi. So I should save about $5 a month for 1-2 months while we were harvesting. Perhaps a couple of bucks more for a few jars of salsa or pasta sauce. Since the plants themselves cost about that much, it wasn't going to be a big saving. But it was also a learning experience, of course.

This is how many tomatoes have been ripening on our table for the past several weeks. As we eat some, we pick more. It turns out to be more than three per week.

I had forgotten my Rule Number One of Food Buying: Whenever you don't eat one thing, you're going to be eating something else. This rule gets invoked all the time when I cut something out of my grocery budget -- say, ice cream, pretzels, or white bread -- and find that I don't have enough to eat that week because I forgot to replace those calories with something else. It turns out the inverse is also true: when you're constantly eating tomatoes, you may find you eat fewer bananas, peanut butter sandwiches, and lettuce. With such an easy (and free) food to snack on all the time, you end up eating them all the time and saving money elsewhere.

Use #1 for tomatoes is as a baby snack. Usually an outdoor snack, because he tends to spit out whatever part he doesn't like (mostly peels).

Use #2 is caprese salad: tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, oil, vinegar. Can't beat that.

Use #3 is sandwiches. Today's was tomato, cucumber, mozzarella, basil, and a teeny bit of onion on bread spread very lightly with mayo. (Pesto is better, but I had none made.)

Use #4 is in this pasta dish:

Cold cooked pasta, mozzarella cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, olive oil, torn-up basil. So yummy and summery.

Use #6 is salsa and spaghetti sauce. I haven't really had any success with spaghetti sauce -- it tastes fine, but just isn't the texture I'm used to -- but the salsa is excellent.


Marko approves. I have no idea how much money we are actually saving, but it's more than $5. My garden has officially paid for itself! Plus, we're eating a good bit healthier thanks to the displacement of other snacks.

Later I'll show you how the plants look now (which is kind of dreadful), but keep in mind, I've gotten at least 50 tomatoes off these plants. My only costs were four seedlings and one seed packet. Some tomato cages I found in the shed supplemented. I did not amend the soil at all beyond breaking it up. In fact, I spent very little effort on these little guys at all -- and they still rewarded me! Next year I'll do more, having learned more, but for now, it's nice to know that you can do everything "wrong" and still get some tomatoes.

My confidence is shattered

I have a confession to make: in the past, I've fallen prey to pride. I actually thought I was a good mother. I was pretty sure I knew what I was doing. I got a lot of compliments on how well I seemed to understand my baby, and I ate them right up. I knew how to cheer him up when he was down and how to make him smile when he met someone new (discreetly tickle him while I introduced him ... because some people will not leave till they've coaxed a smile out of a baby). I didn't really care if people questioned my parenting or gave me a ton of advice, because I knew I was doing the right thing. I'd researched every option and picked the best -- and it was working. When someone criticized, I would simply say "This is working for us" and be on my way.

I am not nearly so sure of myself now that Marko is a toddler. How do I know I'm doing things right? How do I know I'm not creating a monster? I know babies can't be spoiled ... but can toddlers?

I got all frustrated the other day, reading blogs. Someone happened to list the things they thought a child could be taught to do at each age: "A child as young as one (younger actually) is perfectly capable of obeying simple commands (come here, don’t touch, no noise, sit on your bottom)." She has eight kids, so it seems like she would know. But my child does not obey simple commands at all. He might sometimes come when I call him, or bring me a toy when I ask him, but he certainly does not listen to "don't touch" and I think "no noise" is waaaaaay out of his comprehension.

So I asked this experienced mother what she does. Her answer? "No secret. By just attempting to consistently apply the child training principles taught in Scripture and we’ve found that all of our children have precisely understood the meaning of the word ‘no’ by the time of their first birthday."

That is just not specific enough for me. I've read most of the Bible and never ever saw a passage where it says, "This is how you discipline a one-year-old." I know I ought to be "consistent," but consistent doing what?

Normally I just distract him, redirect him, remove the temptation (like take him inside if he's grabbing my tomatoes, or take him outside if he's messing with the cat box), or give him something else to play with. I do say "no" but he just laughs. I've tried swatting his hand or bottom, but he thinks that's just hilarious. So long as he's getting an interesting reaction, he'll keep doing whatever it is. But if I ignore him, I could lose a lot of tomatoes before he gets bored.

I'm just afraid that by avoiding battles with him, I'm going to create a monster who has no notion of limits. So the other day I did make a battle out of something. I wanted him to sit on the potty, so I told him he couldn't have any milk until he did. It was EPIC. He screamed and cried and begged for his milk cup and thrashed around. I took him, as gently as I could, set him on the potty, and gave him his milk. He flung the milk, screamed, carried on, and eventually I just put the milk in the fridge and let him go play again. But he was still angry at me for over an hour.

I just don't think that's the right way to go. He's a stubborn little guy, for one thing. I did feel he understood the deal I was making him, but he did not want to make a deal. I felt awful for making a battle out of something (the potty) that maybe he's just not ready for.

I don't intend to do that again. What I have been doing works better, for all its flaws. I know he's at a very willful stage (the "Knee-High Neanderthal") and he will probably be more cooperative in six months or so.

And yet ... when I hear people say their toddlers do what they are told, or give me the stink-eye for not having more control over my kid, I don't feel the confidence that I used to. I honestly don't know what I'm doing. I've read the books; I've researched on blogs; but I still don't know which of the many methods is best. Some people say you should never spank; others say you should start spanking at four months old. Some people are all for counting to three or putting kids in the corner. When I was a nanny and big sister, I knew all about disciplining toddlers. I just don't have that kind of certainty anymore.

For now, I guess I'm just going to keep on keepin' on, dragging him away from dangerous things, distracting him, and waiting for him to be rational enough to understand some basic consequences. It's funny, because what I'm doing doesn't at all fit what I had intended to do before he was born. But that method just plain doesn't make sense with my particular child at his particular age. The times I've tried, it's been an abysmal failure.

What can I do but watch my child and try to learn as he grows?

Cool cucumber recipes

Yesterday I received a windfall of cucumbers, if one could call it that: a friend was drowning in the excesses produced by her plants and gave me a big bagful. Normally I just chop the cucumbers, add some chopped tomatoes and basil, and dress the salad with oil and vinegar, but I can't have that every day of the week. Even if I did (and I might after all -- it's so delicious), I wouldn't finish up all these cukes!

John puts them in baloney sandwiches, which is good. And I've tried them in my BLT's -- definitely a nice touch. (I also use pesto instead of mayo -- seriously, try it.) But even that is not enough. I am wallowing in cucumber riches, and I want to mix it up a bit.

So I'm turning to a few other favorites. The first one is from my mom, who told me it was a favorite dish in Iran. It's terribly simple.

Peel and chop cucumbers into chunks. Mix with plain yogurt -- thick Greek yogurt is best, but any is fine. Add salt and dill to taste.

I don't know what you call it, but it's definitely a staple all around the Mediterranean.

The other one is a recipe I pulled out of The Joy of Cooking when, as a pre-teen, I hosted a Valentine's Day tea party. What's a traditional tea party without cucumber sandwiches?

Peel cucumbers and grate them. Put in a strainer, in a cheesecloth bag, or between paper towels and squeeze as much water out as you easily can. Move the grated cucumber to a bowl and add cream cheese until it's a thick, but spreadable consistency. Add grated onion -- say 1/4 onion for each cucumber. Season with a teeny dash of red pepper sauce (like Tabasco), salt, and white (or black) pepper. Spread on white bread and cut into triangles (or, as I did, hearts).

The Joy of Cooking has several cooked cucumber recipes, but I never tried them. What's the point of cooking something that is so fresh, delicious, and summery raw? I am going to rustle up a recipe for chilled cucumber soup, though. That sounds perfect.