Thanksgiving

I had an "ooo-my-heart-is-ugly" experience today.

I was frustrated. I only needed to go to Schnucks for 3 items. Just 3. I know it's the day before Thanksgiving, but I needed them today. Oh, and it's torrential rain. Seriously. Getting out the door should have taken 10 minutes because we were all dressed, just needed to use the bathroom and buckle in the van. Instead it took 35 minutes. Boy 1 & Girl 1 were bickering getting in the van, so they had to get out and back in again without arguing, which took 3 times. Baby wouldn't hold still to get her shoes on and then I realized I put them on the wrong foot. Boy 2 couldn't find his shoe that he was wearing 1 hour before. I was getting more and more agitated. I knew the entire trip, even with the crazy traffic should take 30 minutes and now it's taken us 35 to even pull out of our garage.

By the time we drove the 9/10 of a mile to get to the store, we had trouble finding a parking space. I wasn't really mad anymore, but just looking for any place, not just a close one. I was stuck at a parking lot "intersection" where someone was loading their SUV full of groceries by the front door. They were in a fine spot. The problem was the crazy guy behind them. He was yelling and honking. Completely obnoxious. I thought, "That pour woman is trying to go as fast as she can. She doesn't like getting wet either. Calm down." My heart melted for the woman loading groceries in the rain, doing the best she could.

And then God showed me my heart. I had been like the obnoxious man with my kids. I was getting frustrated and angry, which didn't help the situation; it really only slowed us down. My kids were doing the best they could (mostly!). I had prepared myself for the grocery to be crowded and full of people. I had prepared myself to be patient there with people and my kids. But at home, I just wanted it done. My expectations weren't met and I offered no room for compassion on my poor child who honestly couldn't remember where he put his shoes.  I forgot "...as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience."

I'm thankful God gave me this experience today. I'm sure the next few days will be full of opportunities to be impatient and frustrated. God fill my with You Spirit that I may have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

Have a Thankful Heart this Thanksgiving!

Weapon in the Clothing War

I have a four year old future fashion diva in my house.
We have avoided a lot of power struggles with a few strategies

1. The 2-3 choice option. "Would you like to wear this or this today?"
2. Choosing clothes the night before.

Choosing clothes at night has become more difficult now that Annalise is awake during nighttime routine. So now we choose clothes for the week over the weekend and hang them in the closet with these!



I made them in (gasp!) Microsoft Word—sadly the only program on my computer I can create anything in!




I cut them out, took them to FedEx Kinkos (my new favorite place!) and had them laminated them for $2!

We choose clothes, socks, shorts, whatever goes with the outfit. We hang the tags on the outfits in her closet.



She feels in control every morning when she puts on the outfit. This is what avoids the conflict!


As a teachery side note, she is sounding out the initial sounds of the words and remembering the order of the days of the week.

So until we go to school uniforms (please!) this is my secret weapon in the clothing war.

(This is not an original idea. I've seen this on a blog a few years ago, but I can't remember where. She was a mom blogger/graphic designer with a way better design than mine! Feel free to use my mediocre designs.)

Trick or Treat for Unicef

I've been thinking a lot recently about the abundance in my life. Jubilee Church has completed over 1200 hours 1382 hours! of community service in the last 3 weeks during our Share the Love campaign; I've been contemplating how to continue that sharing beyond this "event" and how to convey the abundance in our lives to our children.

A few years ago, our family did Trick or Treat for UNICEF. It was a wonderful conversation starter on blessing and generosity, at a time when they were still too young to physically help at a food pantry or something like that. The money from the program buys medicine, health care, nutrition, clean water, and education to children around the world. These are vital services that we take for granted when we turn on the tap or head to Wal-greens. Collecting coins for UNICEF helped our children see in a small way that they could help other children have some of the blessings they enjoy everyday.

Here are few statistics:

This year we're going to do it again. But I don't want it to be just our family.

Who would like to participate with us?

Here is what you can provide:

I'll order the materials and distribute them if you will take the little orange boxes around when you trick or treat at the end of this month. Or if your family doesn't trick or treat, would you consider having your kids do some extra jobs to earn money to donate?

Comment or email me if you would like to join with us!

Routines

I'm not naturally a routine person. I would rather just see what happens and play it by ear. But when I started teaching, the reality of children and routines smacked me in the face! Children function better with predictability and routine. And why wouldn't they? They don't have the life experience to help them anticipate what's next.

Routines also are a huge help to discipline. Why? Well, I'm glad you asked. As a parent, one of my goals is to raise self-controlled and self-disciplined children. I don't want to follow my children around, reminding them to brush their teeth and follow directions for the next 20 years; I want to teach them to do it themselves. Giving kids practice making their own decisions in small ways breeds a healthy self-respect. Children begin to realize they can accomplish tasks for themselves. Which is the kind of independence they'll need when they leave my house!

Routines also leave room for you to make important decisions. The mundane, yet necessary tasks have been decided when I established routines in advance. I can talk with one child about the day while the other is working on their next step of the routine. It's a lot easier to have an important conversation when you're not bickering in the morning over what clothes to wear.

Writing down and posting routines is huge part of using routines. When we write down routines, goals, lists, the space in our mind is freed to be creative and go on to the next step. Posting routines is the visual reminder of what we do everyday. Children need that cue: "This is what's normal for me today." 

I recently made up some new routines for the new school year. I am by no means artistic or a decorator, but I'm really happy these are finished and usable! I know they can be cuter, but these have the lovely quality of being completed.

For my preschooler, I made a flip chart routine that I put the routine into an inexpensive photo brag book from Target. Here a few pages from her routine.

Sabrina is awesome about grabbing her routine chart and going through it morning and night.


For my boys I've posted it in their room. I still need to put it in a frame behind glass to use it as a dry erase check list.




I also made a list of what goes into their bags for soccer and dance. When I was telling my first grader what to put in his dance bag, he politely said, "Mom, you don't have to tell me. I'll just follow my list." Mmm, smart kid!



Our family is so much more peaceful when we post our routines. There is so much less nagging and the responsibility falls to the child. I can just ask, "What's next on your routine?" rather than repeat directions.

Even though my natural bent is different, I've seen the great benefit of routines in our family!

Wordy Wednesday

These are phrases I say so much, I wish I could just press a device that plays my voice in surround sound when one of these sentences needs to be said. Better yet, some kind of automated system that recognizes the situation and then my voice plays. Oh, well, I guess that's job security as a parent!


"Stop annoying your brother/sister/me/the cat."
"Get in the van." (This one really blows my mind. They will often stand outside the van wondering what to do)
"Gently, please"
"Fingers out of noses"
"Close the closet door"
"Don't lick that; it's not food."
"Stop shouting"
"You are not in charge"
"Walk, please. Don't stop in the middle of the doorway."
"Stop slamming the doors"
"Chew and swallow before you talk"
"Stop running in the house"
"Wipe your bottom and get off the toilet."
"The toilet is for going pee and poop, not as a reading post."
"I love you" (there's always some good!"

Not me! Monday

Before the fun, 5 month old Stellan is very ill. He has been in the PICU for a week with SVT (super high heart rate) and he is not improving. Please pray for this baby and the family.


I DID not pout at all this week that some complications with my pregnancy grounded me in St. Louis for Spring Break, canceling a little jaunt to Memphis.

My daughter Sabrina did not decorate my entryway with lipstick. I was not whiny or pouting at all. I DID NOT sit on the floor and cry because of feeling overwhelmed. I DID NOT call my husband or friend in tears.


I DID NOT order pizza online so I didn't need to prepare food to feed my children. They had NOT watched 5 hours of videos. Of course they didn't b/c they have a limit of 30 minutes of screen time a day. Five hours would be ludicrous. During that 5 hours they DID NOT watch Monsters, Inc. twice in a row. I DID NOT completely throw all my parenting instincts out the window.

Have a great week and please pray for Stellan.

Patience & Forgiveness

It's been a very trying month. The kids have been chomping at the bit to get back to school and I have been missing the forced routine of it all. Michael has been in the process of getting a new job all while his current job is demanding more & more. We've traveled across the state & across the country for big family events; and I've been sick for 2 weeks. Lots of difficult scenery through which to negotiate the already difficult play of parenting.

These are some of my discoveries this month.

Laughing it off works sometimes
Michael was working late & I was bathing the kids; things were not going smoothly. No one had napped that day & everyone was on edge. I was standing next to the tub, holding Chase's towel, and I asked him to get out of the tub. He looked at me like I was speaking French. "Get out of the tub, Chase," a bit irritated this time. Again, dumb-founded look as if this request were strange & bizarre. "GET OUT OF THE TUB!" Yes, I'm yelling now. Now Chase is frozen with confusion. In a nanosecond, I'm thinking, "This is a brilliant child. How can he not understand this simple direction? He's not being defiant, he's looking literally confused. How is this possible?" Then I feel the absolute ridiculousness of the situation. My bright, naked, almost 6 year old, standing in the tub, confused about what to do when bath time is over. So I just had to laugh. I put his towel over his head, roughed up his hair & pushed him in the water as if we were at the pool. We just fell apart into giggles. I still don't know what the problem was, but I do know that the time bomb of anger was diffused by a bit of playfulness. I'm thinking that worked out much better than the road of frustration and hostility we were on. Chase thought it was so funny that I pushed him, with his towel, into the tub. We just laughed & laughed while we finished getting ready for bed.

Asking for forgiveness from your child opens hearts
Stuart, Lord love him, is a lot like me—easily distracted. You would think I would have so much patience for his eccentricities & tangents...not so much. This same evening (before the giggling bath incident) Stuart was preparing his backpack for the next day. He just couldn't find his backpack. It was hanging on the hook where he left it after school, right where it was supposed to be. All he needed to do was put his folder in the backpack. That's it; easy, right? No. He roamed the house looking for his backpack, which I had told him where it was, and couldn't find it. Now I'm thinking, "It would be so much easier if I just did it for him. No, he'll never learn if I do if for him. He can do this." So I hear the front door open & he's leaving the house to look for his backpack. Now, I'm livid! I grab his hand and pull him into the house & slam the door behind us and scream, "YOUR BACKPACK IS RIGHT THERE! PUT YOUR FOLDER IN IT!!!!!!!" I immediately realize I'm out-of-line and I've gone too far. Stuart is wide-eyed and about to cry. We get the folder in the backpack & I take his hand and we walk to his room. I get on his level & look at his eyes and say, "Stuart, I'm so sorry I yelled at you and slammed the door. I shouldn't have let me anger control me. Will you forgive me?" In my head I'm wanting to make all the excuses, "If you would have just done what I asked, or simply followed the directions earlier" but none of that mattered. The truth was, I let my emotions dictate how I related to my child and that needed an apology. He immediately softened and gave me a hug and said "Yes, I forgive you, mama." The surprise to me was how much better I felt. I needed to apologize for me just as much as for him. I really could have done some damage to his little heart had I not apologized. I'm not saying I get it right all the time, but I'm so thankful that's where God lead me that night, because Stuart & I are closer for it.

Teaching takes patience (even when they already know what to do, sometimes they forget)
If you've ever met Chase, you'll know he's a bright child. This can cause me a lot of problems because I will except things from him that his intelligence may be able to handle, but his emotional or physical maturity may not. We were cleaning up his art kit and he was trying to organize it so it wasn't just a trash pit of papers, tape, scraps, & scissors. We were working together & I was getting frustrated because he just wasn't getting how to do it. My frustration came from, "but we've done this before". That's when I had to stop myself and realize I needed to reteach and offer some immediate practice. Even when he knows what to do, sometimes he honestly can't make it all fit together. Parenting is so much about teaching and that simply takes patience. I would really like a 'one lesson and then we're done for the rest of your childhood,' but that's not reality! Repetition is a key to learning. Repetition is key to learning. Repetition is key to learning. (I'm just reminding myself!) One of my issues is that as an adult, repetition seems like such a waste of time. But then I remember, what is the point of my time with them—to teach them! And guess what, repetition is key to learning. So again, God builds my character as I train my kids.

Just my little discoveries about being a parent. I'm sure I'll forget and God, in His great patience, will laugh and allow me the opportunity to repeat the lesson.