Another great homeschooling website is Christian Homeschool Fellowship on the Web.  As I was reading and seeking some hope to help me with my demanding, difficult 2 year old, I read a post mentioning Tomato stake parenting.  I hadn't ever heard that phrase before and it peeked my interest.

Basically this mom compared keeping her young ones close to her under strict supervision to staking tomato plants.  Staking the tomato plants keeps them from drooping and spoiling the fruit.  I realized that in the busyness of our house with two older boys and plenty of other responsibilities, I wasn't keeping my little one close enough to me. 

In fact, it was a little hard getting used to keeping him closer to me most of the time.  My children are spread apart in age so I had gotten spoiled to having more freedom as a mommy.  While I was busy trying to get school done or doing other things around the house, my little guy could just about destroy the house or wander into the yard.  He was fast and was not content to be held very often.  He just wanted to be on the go.  So, unfortunately too often I gave in and then had to pay the price later becasue I had given him too much freedom.

After reading her post, I decided to give it a try.  I began requiring that he sit with me peacefully sometimes, even if it forced me to put aside what I was doing to train him how we expected him to behave.  Other times it required me to sacrifice what I was doing to play with and monitor him.  Many times I couldn't stand and talk to the other moms at gatherings because I needed to stay close to his side while he played with the other kids so I could make sure that he was behaving correctly.

Slowly the behavior began to improve though, as well as his patience for dealing with times when things weren't going his way.  Of course, my behavior was also improving.  I was learning to pay more attention to him and to focus on teaching him how to deal with the world around him.  This little guy is more demanding at times than his two brothers were put together, but he also has to deal with alot more not age appropriate activity because of his older brothers.  Now I try to remember that visual of the tomato plants growing straighter and stronger with the proper staking and remind myself that I need to that stake for my children so that they can grow straighter and stronger.

I couldn't find that particular link about tomato stake parenting at CHF Web tonight, but when I did a search on it, I found that topic at another Christian Forum.  If you scroll down to the last post, you'll see Radical Rabbit's explanation about Tomato Stake Parenting.

Have you ever heard of tomato stake parenting before?  What do you think?