A realization

I have had an eye opening experience on children. If you have well behaved children without lots of issues, regular discipline works very effectively. You can do time outs, behavior charts, reward incentives, etc. Michael never needed those things, just always behaved, but it works fantastic for Erin and for Andrew for the most part. However, if you have children with issues regular discipline does nothing. It doesn't even matter to them. They are so strung out that it's like they cannot even understand what is happening. It is really like their brain is just stuck ... crying, misbehaving, raging, hitting, etc and you cannot reason with them. They also do not have the ability to feel remorse until it is all over. I don't know how much good counseling does when they are in that mode. I say this because we have been though years of counseling, first with Michael and then with Lindsey, Jenna, and still Michael. Michael is easy for counseling because he does not want to feel anxiety/ocd thoughts and so he is very motivated to take whatever they have to say and implement it. Lindsey, however, had no vested interest in the counseling. She did not care how she was making others feel, I think because her feelings/actions were too complex for her to understand and I also don't believe she had the maturity required. I say this all because now that Lindsey's moods are controlled, she does not require discipline but if she did, she has the ability to feel badly for what she has done. She also is in a "normal" state of mind where charts,incentives, etc are appealing to her and I believe would work. It is very easy to look at others and judge -- they should do that with their child, etc. and I know there are things that Jonathan and I have totally failed on, but when you have children that are constantly crying, screaming, raging, whining, etc. and the regular discipline does not work, you get very, very tired. I told our bishop last night that we only started scripture study again because our children truly could not be in the same room together. Now that would be easy to look and judge again from someone else's perspective, no you have to do family scripture reading, your family will be blessed, but when you have the kids to yourself and no spouse to help and they are about killing each other, it put my stress level up to unhealthy leavels. At times, they are misbehaving because you have not done what you need to do but you just don't want to do it anymore. You just want to have a well behaved child. And most of the time, you have done all the right things, but the end situation is no better. I'm not talking about a kid whining for candy in the grocery store or having an occasional tantrum or misbehavior, I am talking about the constant issues -- they wear on you and make you feel defeated. You get tired of constantly being on guard and waiting for the next problem. When we went bowling something happened with Lindsey and I said, you know we don't do that and so you need to stop and she said, okay and stopped and that was it. What, I thought, where is the screaming, crying, raging, hand flapping,etc. Not there ... oh my goodness, I felt like it was way too easy.