Teetering on the Scales of Parenting

Who is the perfect child and when can this measure be made? Sitting next to someone’s death bed with a checklist making sure they’ve never done anything wrong and in turn grew up with no emotion, physical, or psychological issues? Getting all A’s, clean driving record, and dated to marry the perfect girl? What should and should I not do to make sure my children are who they want to be with manners fit to meet the Queen. Yes I know to give him lots of kisses and I love yous, but what about when his innate human nature catches up with his balled fist holding a ball of pasta noodles? Should I tell him NO firmly, swat his hand, his hiney, his mouth, put him in time out? And who is going to tell me I’m wrong?
As Moses grows older and more defiant everyday we are starting to cross the bridges of discipline. One can read and read until they know every experts advice on reprimanding, but who’s right? A study came out yesterday that children who were spanked at three years of age were more aggressive at age five. Were they spanked for no reason, too hard, too frequent? Davy was pinched for discipline, I was spanked. We both made many mistakes in our lives but neither of us considers the other “aggressive”. We started swatting Moses on the hand and telling him no but lately our actions and words slip through the cracks. He’s a boy who likes to explore and finds it humorous to make us irritated. We see other child rearing actions and hate x, y, or z about it but don’t have the perfect formula. It’s hit or miss (no pun intended- seriously) and we need to find something that works for Moses. We both decided last night to “spank” less and try to use the seriousness of our words more. Even though he is young, we want him to know what’s right and wrong, as well as why he is getting in trouble for his actions. People could argue he is too young for any of this but when we can see in his eyes and actions that he knows what he is doing is wrong but does it anyways, we step in.
I promise to update on this more, not because anyone cares about my sons mistakes, but honestly it’s embarrassing to admit I’m not perfect and neither is my son. But I want to see our progress as parents; to learn from the 15-month-in mom and hopefully the 18-month-in mom will have improved skills.