Taming Tanner

It will be Tanner's birthday Sunday; he'll be four. We'll have a party, mostly family, Saturday evening and he'll have a number of extra treats and favors from Mom and Dad for the next several days. Not that it'll be easy…

Tanner is a complicated kid. He has a real built-in stubbornnesss that has been there since infancy. The other night I was talking quietly with him and he began to cry and say, "Daddy, I want to be bad. But I don't want to be bad, I want to be good." I knew what he was trying to say. There's a fire in him to resist, to kick against the goads (a reference to an ox kicking against a sharp prod). In contrast, his older brother, Brennan, has always wanted reconciliation, eagerly seeking company and wanting everything to be ok. Tanner, however, will often go off by himself and as time passes he'll only grow more upset. He'll dig in his heels just for the sake of resisting and will lash out for no obvious reason. He just gets foul sometimes.

That said, at other times he's our most sensitive child. He's deeply concerned for animals and can be very loving. He's usually a happy, soft-spoken little boy who loves stuffed animals and can show great generosity. If only he were like that all of the time.

I've determined in my heart to take a different tack with him. Where Brennan would be sent to his room (letting a guilty conscience thoroughly work him over), Tanner needs to be addressed persistently, forcing him to communicate his feelings and talk things through. He wants to be left alone, to brood and fester, and I won't let that happen. We love him and he knows how to be good. It's just that his first inclination is to oppose anyone and everything.

I've put a lot of thought and prayer into this and, though I don't have every answer, I'm certain of some things:

• Children are complex and changing (growing). There are principles that will always be true but the application of them will have nuances that are difficult to discern.
• A good deal of personality is there at birth. Having three (almost four) children, all boys, and all close together, the variety I see in personality and temperament is otherwise inexplicable.
• We are all subject to a fallen nature. I see beautiful tendencies in my children. But I also see ugliness and cruelty, selfishness and conceit. I never had to sit down and teach them to lie, but I'll spend the rest of my life teaching them to be honest.