Now, an infant or young toddler may not yet have well-developed language skills, but he is highly intelligent nonetheless. He is drawing inarticulate conclusions concerning the workings of things in his microcosm (which is the one-and-only world as far as he is concerned), one of which is that his mother is there to do his bidding and that he has power and authority over her. He verifies this by crying, at which his mother appears and does everything in her power to fix whatever it is that is causing his distress.

Grandma understood that whereas her ministry was a necessary one, she was slowly creating a monster. If she did not bring this first season to a close, she was in danger of raising a spoiled brat—a child who would believe that as his mother was continuing to do, so the world revolved around him. She realized that out of absolute necessity she had caused her child to believe that he had power over her, that she was his gofer; therefore, she had to step up to the plate and correct that impression. And so, around her child’s second birthday, as he became more capable of doing basic things for himself, Grandma began to make the critical transition from the first of parenting’s seasons to its second. Under normal circumstances, this transition takes about a year. It is, without question, the most significant and precedent-setting of all times in the parent-child relationship, the future of which hangs in the balance.

To bring about this transformation, a mother must begin:

• Teaching and expecting her child to do for himself what she has previously done for him—use the toilet instead of diapers, get his own cup of water and basic snacks, dress himself, pick up his toys, and so on.
• Building a boundary between herself and her child, thus limiting his access to her—making him wait before she does something for him, refusing to pick him up (pointing out that she is involved with some¬thing else), instructing him to go elsewhere while she finishes a task.

• Backing slowly out of a state of high involvement with her child and re-establishing a state of high involvement with her husband, thus bringing his tenure as parenting aide to a close.

The Season of Leadership and Authority

As is so often the case when seasons change, this transitional year is marked by storms of protest from a child who wants season one to go on forever. Who can blame him? Who would not want a servant for life? But if the mother stays the course, then by the time her child has reached his third birthday, he will see her with new eyes: once a servant, now a formidable authority figure who is not to be trifled with.  Where once he was at the center of her attention, she is now at the center of his.  She insists that he do more and more things for himself, that he give her “space’ to do what she needs and wants to do (including putting her feet up and doing nothing), and makes it perfectly clear that her relationship with his father trumps her relationship with him.  And so begins the Season of Leadership and Authority, during which time the parents’ job is to govern the child in such a way that he (1) consents to their government (becomes their willing disciple), and (2) internalizes their discipline and gradually develops the self-restraint necessary to govern himself responsibly.