Are My Kids Innards Turning into Moldy Rice?

Good question, eh?  Perhaps it is not the typical question a father or mother may ask themselves.  How about a teacher, mentor or grandparent?  Still no?  Maybe it should be.

It is now one that I ask myself every day and almost every time I have one of those moments of choice as a parent:  how should I respond?

Why in the world would I be asking myself this reflective question about bacterial growth and grains? Let me just say that it is one of God's most unusual yet powerful answers, and it came in response to a question I asked on Sunday.

That question?  How can I help my sweet Papaya, my beautiful five-year old daughter.  I have been struggling with my little Papaya.  She has been lashing out severely, extremely, violently. I have heard the phrase "oppositional defiance disorder" and that seems to fit, although I tend to shy away from generic labels.  I have tried many things but it seemed she was still struggling.

And as I held her and watched her on Sunday, I had a flash of insight.  My little girl was battling, not me and the rest of the world like it appeared, but she was really battling something within her.  She was hurting; she was crying out for help.  Her little five year old brain just didn't know how to communicate it.  Later that night, as I sat awake nursing little Zsa, I wept. I wept for my little girl as I saw that we as a family were all lined up against her in many ways, prepared to fight back, prepared to protect ourselves and our belongings, prepared to be strong in response to whatever she threw at us.

And there she was, precious little soul, facing this army of family, friends and community who were all armed and ready to fight.  Sure, "fight" may be a strong word, but it seems to fit.  Even if we were "seeking what was best for her," we had labeled her without words, identifying her difficult and often disturbing behavior as "just Papaya."

And her mother was at the forefront, battle gear ready.

As the tears flowed, I humbly opened up my heart to my Father and pled with Him, pled with Him so that I may know how I could reach her and help her.  His answer was to spend every possible waking moment with her, watching her, loving her, helping her, and to ask the rest of the family to pray for her.

Remember the rice?  I will get to it, I promise.

The next morning, I spread the word gently. "Please pray for Papaya.  She is little.  She is hurting and she is scared.  Don't worry about changing how you treat her.  Just pray for her."  Even that petition, just to pray for one of our number that was suffering, has softened the attitude and language towards her from her siblings.  Just pray for her.

As I continued along, seeing glimmers of improvement and thinking of ways I could help Papaya, I still felt a little helpless in moving forward.  On Tuesday morning, almost as an afterthought, Avot brought up a video that a friend had shared with her that Avot felt applied to what we had watched and discussed for devotional: the rice experiment.

Just looking for this experiment online brought up example after example of people who, like me, probably thought "Really??"

As my skepticism battled with the "evidence" before me, I thought, Why not?  Why not believe it enough to accept that how I think about something (or someone!) affects them?  I knew that was true.

Months ago I was really struggling with one of my children.  They were bitter, battling and antagonistic...and so was I.  No matter what my husband and I did, we weren't reaching them.  The child was dark and I felt dark too.  The child was aggressively anti-everything we had to do and say.  Many times I wondered, what in the world am I doing wrong?  And, even as I knew I loved this child, I was at war with them and sometimes in those desperate moments many parents experience wished either they or I would leave so that the battle would be "over."  It was horrendous.

As I prayed for what I should do one frustrating night, I had one of those flashes of insight.  My child was hurt. My child was tired. My child was bruised.  My child was suffering.  And they needed my love.  What?!  How could I show love and still be the strong parent I felt like I needed to be? It felt so fake sometimes and this child could see through fake.   And yet...God opened to me a glimpse of how He saw my child and my heart was overwhelmed with love. I knew that I needed to change my thought processes from battle-mode to "see the genius and beauty"-mode.  I knew, deep down, that my child's emotional life, their future life, depended a great deal upon my choice at that moment.

How to do this?  Flash of insight.  Inspiration. I started by buying a notebook.

I opened to the first page and wrote down: "You were born for greatness and I see it everyday.  Today I saw it as you..." Then, I wrote down something that I saw that was good in that child's behavior.  Everyday, I would write down on a new, dated page, "You were born for greatness and I see it everyday. Today I saw it as you..." and then follow it with a new specific observation. Some days it was very, very hard.  We still fought.  We still didn't see eye to eye.  Sometimes I wrote a lot and sometimes I wrote one line.  But it was always true.  And it was always every day.  Every once in a while I would miss a day, but I always went back and wrote down something for that day.

Over time I would see him leave it out where I could find it easily in the dark, or see some pages turned back from where I had left it.  No matter how hard the day had been, I would find it.  It was never mentioned.  Never discussed.

One notebook became two.  One was lost during one of the many moves we experienced earlier this year so I bought another one.  When the other one was found, I went back to the first and finished up that one then continued on the new one.

Every day.

I saw some softening, some glances of pondering: Does she really mean it?

My mind went back to this experience when I saw the moldy rice video.  Through some additional challenging times for us all, my husband and I continued to imperfectly love and reach out and our child continued to imperfectly try to make things work at home.  However, over this time I had seen that my attitude toward the child had become not one of  "Oh no, what are they going to do next? How should I prepare for the next battle?  The next challenge?" to "I know they will get it eventually; I just need to keep loving, praying and hoping; they are awesome and I love them so much!"

The miracle was the softening of my own heart.

So when I saw the rice experiment, I decided to accept it as a truth, because my application of that truth has already changed my family and my parenting.  As I looked at little Papaya, I saw the years since our move to Hungary when her assertive, confident behavior began, the years full of thoughts of darkness, frustration, anger and even (horribly!) moments of hate directed at this spunky little body.  Hate at what I felt she was making me become, when I knew it was me.  Hate at myself and my behavior and thoughts that I directed at her.  I thought of the rice.

I thought of how I looked at her when I was upset.  How did that lady look at her jars, the one labeled "hate," the other labeled "love"?  I thought of the rice.

Yesterday, as she thrashed and yelled in my arms, I directed thoughts of love at her.
When she threw toys and ran away from me, I directed thoughts of love at her.
Late last night as she finally dropped off to sleep, I directed thoughts of love at her.

Since then, I have taken so many moments with my children to think thoughts of love their direction, shaping their "rice," their hearts, with their mother's love.  And do you know something?  I am less abrupt, less forceful, less coercive, less demanding, less critical already. It is hard to feel despair and criticism when you are directing thoughts full of pure love emotion to them.

Imagine the jar. Imagine what someone would have to do to the jar to "give love." Look, talk gently, think love to it.  Seems corny but, hey!  What are the fruits? Is there any possible way that doing this to our children, our spouses, our friends would produce a negative outcome?

Not that I can think of.

So what if it did make a difference and the only thing we had to change was how we directed our thoughts?

For the last 36 hours I have been looking at my children as jars of cooked rice, and I may say, as Robert Frost did in his poem, that this has made all the difference.

Road less taken, baby.  

Powerful stuff.  

Just think "rice" and the power of your thoughts.  

Anyone can think "love."

Try it.