My little boy

For those of you who know my family, know of my sweet little Corbin. He is my third child and out of all of my kids has been my biggest struggle to date. I love him. He brings so much to the table everyday and can be the sweetest guy when he wants to be, but can also be the meanest guy when he wants to be. Two night and day differences in the same body, same personality. It's kind of like a Jekyll and Hyde thing that he has going on. I have never been embarrassed by my sweet boy when he is throwing a fit in the middle of the grocery store because I am not alone. Many mothers who go to the store have children that behave like my little guy sometimes. The other day I experienced a little embarrassment. We were at Maverik getting drinks for the boys. Caitlin was at a birthday party and we decided to go to Cabela's to do a little man shopping for Michael. The boys were thirsty, so on our way home we stopped to get drinks. Corbin has an issue that whatever he is thinking of in his mind that he wants and it is not available to him at that very instant, he throws a monster size tantrum. We usually ignore it but this time I watched a man getting a his own beverage stop and stare at Corbin's behavior. He had this look of disgust on his face and I wanted so much to go a smack that guy and tell him to mind his own business. I wanted to crawl in a hole because of the look that was on this guys face. Apparently if he has children they are "little angels" all the time.
Since then, we have been searching for a solution to this problem. My heart breaks because when he behaves this way he is truly unhappy and I don't want him to be unhappy. For years I have just chalked it up to him being "spoiled" because that is usually the case with my kids when the behave this way. We have tried several disciplinary tactics, but they have not been working. Michael and I have had several conversations on this subject and many nights in our couples prayer that we have prayed about what to do. Then on this past Saturday night after Collin's baptism day about 11:30 at night, Michael and I went to Wal Mart because we had forgotten some things we needed for Sunday and had a 1/2 hour to get it before the Sabbath. We decided on our drive that what we have been doing is not working and that we needed to do a complete 180* on how we treated our Corbin. We decided to shower him with love and affection and when he did outburst in anger that we would be very calm and talk to him in a manner that I struggle with because I am used to yelling or getting upset. This process is teaching me patience as well. The result for the week has been amazing. Corbin has been so happy. I mean beyond happy. He comes home from school just beaming and I can really see a change in his personality. He FEELS loved and I guess that he hasn't really felt that in a long time. Now I am not saying that I didn't show him love before our experiment this week. We have always shown him love, but we have mulitplied that by 100 now.
I was a little difficult for my mother as well. Shocking, I know. : ) The best advice she said that she ever got was to just love me and I will eventually feel that love and come out of it. I did. Corbin will too. Until that day when he can truly feel our love for him I will have to be patient and deal with the behavior til then. But like I said, it is getting better. I'm going to cross my fingers until then and keep praying for him because I know that I can never go wrong when I have Heavenly Father on my side. I am also very grateful for Michael for spearheading all of this. He was the first to put our plan into action and showed me that we can have the patience we need to do this. It is so true that each child has a different personality and we cannot treat them as if they are all the same. Corbin has special needs as well as Caitlin, Collin, and Conner and someday we will figure everything out....I hope.....Long post, but sometimes I need to vent. I will post about Collin's baptism soon.....we actually took pictures of this event.