Luuuuuv

My husband and I were talking the other day. Nothing important, really. Just making plans to do this or do that "when we are rich." We've been married over fifteen years and we've never been rich. And we will probably never be rich. Financially, anyway.

What we ARE rich in is love. I know people scoff at "all we need is luuuuv" kind of statements, but it is true. I can not imagine being this happy with anyone else. He is so much fun to be around. I tend to be more serious in nature, but he brings out my lighter side. I am not funny to anyone but him. And that is all that matters.

We have these little conversations that would not make sense to anyone else, but they go a long way in keeping our relationship thriving. We have a give-and-take without ever needing to keep score.

When we were dating, people would groan at our infatuation and say, "Just wait until you've been together _____." Well, we passed that mark. And the next one. And the next one. People told us that it'd be different after having children. They were right. But not the way they intended. We grew stronger. Through labor and recovery, I learned that he is someone I can count on. Although he was completely out of his comfort zone, he jumped into parenting with both feet and never looked back. He has gone from "What am I going to do?" with the first child to "Sure, leave all four with me for the weekend. We'll have fun." And he meant it :)

Sure, we have times where I don't understand him. And he doesn't understand me. We have times where he or I forget something that mattered to the other. But early on, we made a promise to always - ALWAYS - try to think before we speak. And what we agreed to consider first is "Will what I want to say make things better?"

I can't think of anyone else who could - would - live with me for this long. I am so grateful for the husband with whom I have been blessed.

Each day truly does get better and better!

Is my bed made?

So, I've used checklists in the past. Some work, some don't. But after getting a sample from someone else, I realized that mine are all written in "instruction mode" such as "Make your bed" or "Empty dishwasher." When a fellow homeschooler distributed a copy of HER checklist, I realized that it was awesomely awesome. It was worded "Is my bed made?" "Are my clean clothes folded and put away?" WHY is it awesomely awesome? Because it internalizes what they need to do - puts the responsibility on themselves. Didn't my other checklist do that? Well...sort of. But it was still written in the "Do this to please Mommy" tone. This new one ends with "Great Job! Aren't you proud of yourself?" LOVE the positive spin on things!

So, I get home, eager to implement this new way of doing things. I make the charts for each of the rooms - one goes on the boys' door and one goes on the girls' door. When they wake up, I show them the charts. They set in without a complaint. The older helps the younger. The boys are busy, but I see Olivia looking confused, but staying busy.

The boys exclaim their success and I check in. Great! Just missed a car here and there. I check Olivia's room - still messy. Now I am the one confused! After questioning her, it finally becomes clear - she had made MY bed, put away MY clothes, folded MY blankets, etc. In fact, my room was looking pretty spiffy! She said that she was really confused about why I would have cars, dollies, blocks, and books in my room to put away, but she DID find two books.

Ahh...I love opportunities like this where I catch a glimpse of the way my children think! No to mention the gift of a clean bedroom in the process :)

Two's

My youngest is the one who's going to do me in. I remember when she was born, people asked what it was like having four and I said that four wasn't so difficult - it was just #3 that took energy. And I remember thinking the same about #2. But truly, truly, it is #4.

She is so so so so sweet. She has a smile that can light up any room. Her cheeks are so big they get in the way of her talking, so she just grins. She has a way of capturing everyone's attention, no matter what she is doing. Her eyes light up and you know that she is THERE, in the moment, with her whole being. She loves to imitate her siblings, even the dog :). Whatever they are doing, she is tagging right along behind them. Absolutely could not begin to describe how captivating her personality is.

Then there are the moments when she is not. So sweet, that is. Those moments where you turn and look behind you, because surely, SURELY, someone took her away and replaced her with this writhing, screaming, shell of someone in front of you. You think over what you just said, what you just did that could cause such a reaction in a child so little...nope, nope, nope, nothing should have resulted in this...THIS. Since she was a baby (crawling stage), she has been...demonstrative...with her anger. She stiffens her body, screams/growls at the top of her lungs, and nothing - I repeat, NOTHING you do/say/give/take - can make it better again. She used to back herself into a corner and stay there until calm. Now she tends to just stand stiffly and shake or lie on the floor and writhe. Even with all of my behavioral training, I would be tempted to just give her what she wants - but once it is at this stage, that is impossible because SHE doesn't even know what she wants. Example:

E: I need you wipe me
Me: i wipe her
E: NO! NO WIPE ME! as she screams and falls to the floor, throwing anything she can get her hands on, kicking things over, etc. as she screams "NO WIPE ME" repeatedly.

E: "May I have my nilk, please?"
Me: Sure - here it is
E: "That not chotik nilk" (as she starts to cry)
Me: yep - it is. Just made it. Taste it and see
E: "NO!!!! THAT NOT CHOTIK NILK!" and stiffens and turns red in the face and falls to the floor. She'll get up when I tell her to, but still mumbling, "that not chotik nilk" over and over and over and over and "I not want it"
Me: "Well, then you don't have to drink it." I move to put it away
E: "I want chotik nilk"
Me: "That's not how you ask"
E: "May I have chotik nilk please?"
and repeat the first eight lines...again and again.

She sits on my lap as I eat, still complaining. Eventually, she takes a sip and drinks the whole thing, smiling by the time she is finished.

What I have learned:
Calmness works. Understated calmness. As if you haven't a care in the world calmness. The slightest edge to the voice, the slightest irritability in your voice, just keeps it going. The calmness is what makes it short lived instead of the lengthy 20-minute sessions we used to have.

Offering 2 choices throughout the day. Do you want to put your panties on by yourself or with help? Do you want the pink shirt or the green one? Do you want milk or water? Do you want to sit in my lap or hold my hand?

If in the beginning stages, a calm, "No fits. Stand up" followed by instructions to use her "nice words" can help tremendously in nipping it before it turns into a doozie.

Reinforcement of said "nice words" throughout the day. Catching her being good is helping her remember what she needs to do when in distress. At this point, she gets a smarties candy or butterscotch chip for being calm and polite rather than screaming. We'll fade those as she's able, but honestly, the idea of her being 30 and needing chocolate to get through the day doesn't sound so far-fetched :).

For now, I am rejoicing in hope. For a spell, it was truly difficult. But now I see hope. We may just survive the two's and live to smile about it :)

Jesus Has Super Powers!?!?!

The other night, I found myself unable to see clearly because my eyes were filled with the tears that come with realizing that God is at work.

The boys were finishing dinner while I cleaned the kitchen. I was talking with them about the behavior expected when visiting with friends later that evening. Nate was talking with Lincoln about keeping promises, "We always are to keep our promises, Lincoln. But everyone makes mistakes. Everyone lies sometimes."

I explained, "That's true - but God and Jesus NEVER lie. They NEVER make mistakes. They are the only perfect ones."

At this point, Nate took over. I was finished with the kitchen, but I found ways to stay so I could listen in. Nate said, "Lincoln, did you know that Jesus is God's SON??? I know a Bible verse about that, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. He sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.' And did you know that Jesus was God's ONLY son? He didn't have any others...because it says, 'only begotten son.'"

Lincoln, eyes wide, said, "WOW!"

Nate continued, "And Did. You. Know that Jesus has SUPER POWERS?!?"

Lincoln is so excited that he can barely contain himself, "REALLY?!?!?"

"Yes!" Nate explained, "He can forgive ALL your sins! Do you know how he does that?"

"How?" Lincoln whispers.

"All you have to do is pray."

"I can pray!!!" Lincoln exclaims.

"Yes. You pray just by talking to God like he is your friend. You tell him that you are sorry and ask him to forgive you. If you do that, you'll get to go to heaven one day. Our WHOLE FAMILY might get to go to heaven one day!"

"Wow! That would be TOTALLY AWESOME!" Lincoln is truly excited.

Then Nate breaks the bad news, "Well, not our bodies - our bodies will be dead in the ground. But our spirits will go to heaven."

"Waaaaaaah!!!!" Lincoln begins his trademark wail.

So at this point, I composed myself, stopped scrubbing cabinets, and started talking about the merits of heaven and how we'll get new bodies :).

It was such a wonderful conversation between my two boys, ages 5 and 3. I still tear up thinking about it. Sometimes it is so easy to get lost in the details of life, in the dishes and laundry and who did what to whom. But then God allows these moments of clarity to remind us to keep going, to stay the course, that He is at work and has been. Don't give up. Stay focused.

Scheduling

Some days go more smoothly than others. What I've found is that those days are the ones that have a plan and/or scripture. Without scripture or at least a plan (which is scriptural anyway, as God was a God of order), you can just hang it up on having a smooth day.

We are still tweaking the scheduling. I have tried doing the timed schedule. The problem with that is it requires me to get up at a set time to get the day started. While I would love to say that I can do that, that I am a woman of discipline who can rise before the sun and have a fully cooked meal on the table for her family every day, I just can't. Or I guess I should say, "Won't." Because I know that if I went to bed earlier, had less on my to-do list, etc., I could do it.

So, right now our schedule is more of a routine than a time...so I'll get up somewhere between 6:15 and 7 and head to the kitchen. Most of the time I can go ahead and cook breakfast. But sometimes the day before was "one of those" and I left dishes...so I then have to do the dishes from the night before and THEN do breakfast. This invariably gets me in a grumpy mood. So I try not to do it very often. Breakfast is usually one of the following: homemade biscuits, homemade Amish griddle cakes, homemade chocolate chip muffins, oatmeal, homemade cinnamon rolls, French toast from...you guessed it...homemade sourdough bread. Sometimes I'll do scrambled eggs with the biscuits. And if finances allow, we may have a slice of bacon or a sausage patty to go with our carbs. I used to could get a package of biscuits for those days that I didn't want to cook...not anymore. They are spoiled and just do not eat them well. The only packaged breakfast I can get away with now is packaged ch. chip muffins...but even then I hear, "these are small," "these taste different," "These have little chocolate chips," "I like yours better," etc. So, if I'm cooking breakfast, what's the problem? I'm not always able to get it finished in time for my hard-working husband to eat before he leaves the house. Yep. He sometimes gets tortured with the smell of it cooking - and then leaves with a bagel spread with peanut butter. Yikes! How cruel!

Sooooo...My goal is to work my way up to waking up no later than 6, preferably by 5:30 so I can have time to tidy, read some Bible, catch up on the email/texts that came in over night, etc. Maybe even have time to iron my husband's clothes for him so he doesn't have to. Gasp! I'd also like to have the children on a schedule that just functions so smoothly that they can do their stuff without needing my guidance. I've seen the book Managers of Their Homes by the Maxwells (Titus 2 Ministry) and it looks helpful. But before I allow myself to purchase it, I am requiring myself to learn to awaken at a set time every day. If I can't do that, then all the scheduling tips in the world won't help me.

Also, getting the children involved in the Bible early in the school day makes a WORLD of difference. So making sure that is in the daily list of things to do. The problem is that there are so many "good" things to do, that they are crowding out the "great" stuff...so I need to pair it down and prioritize. Yippee!! A list! I'm sooo good at making lists...now keeping up with where I put them? That's another issue, ha!

So, I'll be working on that in the next few weeks. Hope to have something up and running WELL by January. We'll see!

Review of Parenting Conference with John Rosemond

I went to a conference the other day with John Rosemond presenting. After reading some of his columns from papers, I thought he had a good take on this parenting thing. I always enjoy hearing other viewpoints, especially when they turn out to be MY viewpoints, just packaged a little differently, ha! So I packed up and went, expecting to hear a little humor, a little parenting advice. Right on both counts.

He had some good points. He had some very questionable points. He had some flat out inaccurate points. But I could see why he said what he said...I just do not agree with his means to the end. Let's see if I can clarify...

He has a very good point that children "way back when" (he's 61 yrs at this time of writing) had a better respect for authority, that if the smallest teacher told the biggest thug to sit down and be quiet, he did. We are seriously lacking in that respect these days. I agree with this. It's his solution that has caused me to seriously reflect on my own beliefs and the truths I have found in my own parenting journey. He feels that a child needs to fear his mother, that there should not be a friendship relationship at all – that once we are friends with our child, our leadership is devalued. I understand that to a point. But I think there is a middle ground. I feel that we can be a true leader while at the same time enjoy being with our children – and they with us. Yes, there are times they do not enjoy us and us them. But for a child to “rise up and call her blessed”, a mother needs to do more than bark orders and teach independence. His assertion that a relationship not exist between a mother and her child is simply not acceptable unless your only goal is to rear children so that they leave home one day.

A teacher 'back then" was able to teach fifty first-graders in one classroom their ABC's and how to read and write more effectively than a teacher can do with twenty in today's classroom...because mothers "taught the ADD out of children BEFORE they got to school." Again...good point. ADD is over-diagnosed and over-medicated. Many times children have watched too much television or played too many video games with constantly changing screens to pay attention to a "boring" teacher. But that does not mean that ADD does not exist for some people. Also, while behavior changes can be made for many said students, if parental support is not there, then medication may be the only way for them to succeed even a little in school. Not ideal by any means, but true.

Rosemond said that mothers spend too much time with their children - that there is no need to constantly "orbit" around a child past the age of two years. That by constantly orbiting, meeting every need, micromanaging his entire day, the mother is in fact doing a disservice to her child. That instead, a mother should tell her child to leave her alone, that he is bothering her. Send him outside to figure things out for himself. Because the media has blown child abductions out of proportion – that we are actually safer now than years ago. Hmmmm….food for thought. After mulling it over for a few days, I think I see where he is coming from…many moms do FOR their children instead of teaching their children how to do for themselves. Many moms tell their children what to do instead of giving them the opportunity to learn from their mistakes. However, rather than a blanket statement that we need to spend LESS time with our children, I believe that a more accurate statement would be to challenge mothers to spend MORE time TEACHING their children. Demonstrate kindness – rather than brushing them away because they are bothering you, find a way that they can assist –so that later they can do it independently. Free play is important, but so is training them ahead of time so that that free time is constructive rather than destructive, that they will model the fruits of the spirit that they have witnessed in you rather than pushing away those they do not want around.

He later explained how a mother’s constant chattering to the child leads the child to believe that the world revolves around him and is there to serve him, not the other way around. That this constant chattering prevents him from learning to think for himself and doing for himself. That the world’s attempts to increase a child’s self-esteem has the destructive effect of lowering his esteem for others. Hmmm…I can see his point. It is very important that our children believe that while they are special to God, they are really just one other person on this earth. While idle chatter is not warranted, I feel it IS important to provide some think-alouds for our children. Instead of just wrapping Christmas presents for the Salvation Army Angels, we can talk about how excited the children will be when they open the present. While we clean the house for Daddy, we can discuss how good it makes him feel when he comes home to a clean house after working hard all day. We can brainstorm with the children over ways we can help others. Chatter need not be idle noise to raise their awareness of themselves. But we can use the time to help children realize that their purpose in life is to bring others to a realization of their need for Christ Jesus. And we can do that through both our actions and our speech.

Then it takes an interesting turn…he declares that behavior modification does not work with children. That Skinner set out to prove that we are really no different than animals and he was going to prove Darwin correct. That Skinner was just a raging megalomaniac intent on having his name in the books forever with Marx, Darwin, Freud, etc. Now, that may or may not be true…but it does not change the fact that behavior modification DOES work…and Rosemond actually proved it to be correct through the use of his own examples. To discredit behavior modification, he gave the example of a 22-month old toddler who had recently begun to climb onto the coffee table. He was told not to do it, he was removed gently from the coffee table, he was reasoned with loudly that mommy and daddy don’t climb on the table, and neither will he, he was spanked lightly, he was spanked more forcibly, with yelling and quite upset tones, and still he was climbing onto the coffee table with a gleam in his eye that dared anyone to cross him. Rosemond at this point says that behavior modification obviously does not work – because punishment is having no effect. However, he is neglecting to notice the power of reinforcement – no, a promise of ice cream does not sway this toddler. But the attention he is earning from his climbing of the coffee table is more powerful than the effect of the punishment he receives. The principles of behavior analysis still exist – behavior that is reinforced is more likely to be repeated. This toddler’s behavior is being reinforced by the attention of the adults. Later, Rosemond describes how a teenager is punished by the removal of privileges when she has an infraction of the rules…he is using behavior modification to modify behavior. No, he may not be using an elaborate rewards/punishment system. But he is rewarding the positive behavior with curfew choices, with allowances, etc. and is punishing the challenging behavior with loss of privileges. This is behavior modification in its simplest form. Just because a child does not respond how you expect him to does not negate the effect of rewards/punishments. You just have to find what motivates them and deters them…and use that to modify behavior. And I do believe that John Rosemond did just that while at the same time decrying the behavior modification movement to be bunk. Of course, behavior modification is not the end all for some people, but it certainly has its merits.

Rosemond had some very good points about the role of the wife being often forgotten when she takes on the role of the mother. That “till death do us part” often becomes “till children do us part.” He challenged us to fill in the blanks: “Last week, I spent _____ (amount of time) in the role of a mother. Last week, I spent ____ (amount of time) in the role of a wife.” Ouch! That is a very good point, one that should cause us wives to step back and see if we are failing our husbands.

Rosemond stated that he doesn’t give tips and strategies…but he did give some good suggestions for non-arguing with teenagers. However, when giving the examples of his conversations with his teenagers, I’m not sure that it is quite the standard I’m aiming for. Sure, we all want to think of being THE ONE parent who can breeze through the young adult years without the heated arguments and slammed doors. But it is good to have a goal, right? And if my goal is to “make it through” or “teens will be teens” then it’s really not much of a goal, if you ask me.

Something else that he said that I had never considered...even God has children who misbehave. He is trying to allieve some of our guilt for parenting mistakes. I understand it with my head. But my heart still knows the truth...that I have NOT modeled meekness, gentleness, temperance, etc. as well as I should. Therefore, when our children exhibit difficulties in these areas, I CAN point my finger back to myself and see that I am at fault. Certainly not 100%...but until I allow God to work in my life more effectively, I can not expect our children to behave differently.

So, after a few days of mulling over some things he shared, some suggestions he made, I have come to the conclusion that he had some good points. He had some very questionable points. He had some flat out inaccurate points. But I could see why he said what he said...

I'm Going to be a Grandma to Dolphins!

Our 3yo continues to live in his own world of "L Land" - but that's okay, because he is happy there. While his older siblings discuss what they want to be when they grow up (N wants to be an astronaut or a rescue diver and O either a babysitter or ...not sure), L is fairly certain he wants to be a Triceratops. Sometimes he will switch over to wanting to be a dolphin. Today at lunch N said that he is going to have four boys and two girls when he is a dad. O plans to have two children. L plans to have five dolphins when he is a dad :). He is just too precious for words. One day I know he will grow out of this phase and get a good chuckle. But for now, we let him live in this world of wonder, where anything can happen just because you want it to.