consistent "child training" with a new baby???

Lax and frustrated are two words that could be used to describe how I feel regarding this very serious charge! I'm confronting lapses in all kinds of areas...guess I'm being tested at all boundaries to see if the rules still hold in the distraction of tending a newborn! Whew. I feel like I'm woefully failing at holding those lines! The past two days my "frustration" has escalated to out and out anger with the SLOWWWW obedience, the inattention to what I say, the failure to complete tasks unless I'm standing over their shoulder monitoring or prompting, the WHINING.

I'm completely aware that my anger is not helpful and that my response to their testing is crucial. This is a HEART issue in all three of them and a battle with their wills to varying degrees as well. Still I'm floundering for a good practical answer. I re-read some super convicting chapters in Shepherding a Child's Heart this morning. It gave me good perspective and re-focused my heart for mothering these children in a gospel centered, Christ exalting way. My heart desires this, but how do I act this out consistently on a moment by moment basis??? Its overwhelming! I see my own sinfulness and I'm confronted by the depravity of my own heart at the same time I'm being tested by these things in my little ones.

I don't want to be "feared" wrongly, getting obedience because I manipulated them with my frowns and exasperated words or threatened to take away toys, etc. Ted Trip does a great job in Shepherding showing how unhelpful that is for the HEART and how it trains them to fear my displeasure rather than training them to pursue God's heart and His precepts as given to us through His word. Still I'm seeing how scarily easy it is for me to default to manipulation! Guilt tripping with my martyred looks or coercing with threat of punishment (but not following through biblically and consistently).

I feel helpless and hopeless within myself for the enormous responsibility of training these little ones rightly!!! Lord, I fall before you in great need of help and hope! As the perfect, unchanging, ever-faithful Father, teach me to parent these children you've given us. Reach into their hearts Holy Spirit and bring them to Jesus. May we as a family learn forgiveness and growth and change at the foot of the Cross. Show me how to get to the HEART of their struggles with rules and obedience and listening and whining and complaining and arguing! And help me get to the heart of my own struggles with these things. Change ME and my heart, Good Shepherd! And then help me to shepherd and mother them rightly according to your Word.