Old Habits Die Hard

I find that when times get stressful it becomes very easy for me to resort to old parenting habits. Unfortunately, the foundation of my parenting was rooted in some very bad habits, and it has taken a lot of years for my first reactions to be positive, gentle discipling rather than a punitive "quick fix".
Gentle parenting is a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of time, a lot of patience, and a lot of dedication, but the end results are definitely worth it!
Over the years I have learned that punitive parenting methods may quickly solve the outward present problems, but they fail to address the deeper, longer lasting issues.
Let's say a friend calls to say she is five minutes away from my house and wants to stop by. I am going to do a quick fix of my household situation, quickly stacking dishes in a sink and covering them with a dish towel, shoving toys into closets, and hiding baskets of unfolded clothes in a closed-off bedroom. This gives the appearance to my friend that my house is clean. And it is presentable. It will do for the time being. But it isn't really clean. The mess has just been moved out of sight, hidden away to be dealt with at a later time.
This may be okay to do occasionally, but if this becomes my only method of cleaning, I will soon have too much stuff pushed into a closet, and it's going to start to trickle out. I will soon run out of room to hide stuff, and my messes will start to be noticeable.
This is what happened with my parenting practices. I thought that a spank, a yell, a "go to your room" was a quick and lasting fix. It seemed to make the problems stop for the moment. But forcing outward changes did not help my children grow and develop inwardly into responsible, self-controlled children. What happened was that so many issues went undealt with and got packed into their little bodies that soon I was dealing with every issue all at once and my quick fixes were not working at all!
When I learned about gentle discipline, I thought it was a bunch of bologna. Really, I thought the people that talked about it were loony and had no touch with reality. How could you make a child change their behavior through gentleness? It didn't make sense to me.
And then, when I started to try it out, my life fell apart! Everything was difficult and my children and I were all out of control! How could this be better than what I was doing before? But it was like cleaning my house after a month of doing quick fix cleaning. That over-stuffed closet needed to be emptied before I could get it really clean. Everything needed to be taken out, an even larger mess needed to be created, before it could become clean and organized.
I found out that I needed to get to the root of the problems my children were dealing with. Hitting a sibling was not going to solved with a hit to the bottom. That is not getting to the root of the problem and setting it right. All of this "stuff" started spilling out all over the place, and instead of shoving it back in, I now needed to find out where each of these things really belonged. Hitting a sibling now needed to be investigated. I started asking more questions, and what I heard astounded me. I began to listen to the heart of my children, and found that their true needs were not being met by me. Instead of a swat, they really needed a hug. They needed reassurance. They needed a mother who cared about them, rather than just dealt with them.
Things had to get worse - a LOT worse - before it started to get better. But it did get better. And it eventually got easier to know what to do. It is still difficult. Parenting is difficult! But it is worth it!
But, like I said in the beginning, old habits die hard. When I'm stressed, I become impatient. I don't want to deal with the heart of the issue, I just want the issue to be gone. I start yelling and threatening, and even spanking. And it usually ends up making things so much worse! The quick and easy solution usually just leads to more disaster for my children and me.
So, even when things are stressful, even when life is chaotic, it's important to stop and take moments to listen, to dig deeper, to work toward the heart of the issue. Because you'll have to deal with it at some point, and really, it's much easier to handle it while it's still small. The longer you wait, the larger it will become. And then you'll have an angry teenager, young adult, grown adult! who is still trying to work on the issues that were present when he was three!
Stop. Pause. Breathe. Embrace. Look. Listen. Think. Then lead.