The Biggest Gap in My Parenting (And How I’m Closing It)
“You need to be consistent.”
I've heard and read that phrase and similar ones many times regarding parenting.
And it's true, but perhaps parents need a little more elaboration on that phrase.
Maybe you understood completely what that advice meant, but I was missing a little piece of the puzzle myself.
Thankfully as I have sought the Lord's wisdom in my parenting, He has opened up my eyes more and more to an element that is so very crucial to my children's success.
See, when I would hear the phrase “Be consistent”, the idea that came to my mind was “When they disobey, make sure there are consequences every time. Never turn your head and forego correction because it's not convenient at the moment.”
And that is true. If you turn your head and allow your children to do whatever they want rather than putting in the work to deal with things when they arise, you are not doing yourself or your children any favors.
However, if that is the only connotation to the phrase “Be consistent” there is a massive gap in what our children really need!
If that is the only connotation, the focus is 100% on discipline and correction. Parents end up spending all their efforts correcting misbehavior. Instead, it's better to pour most of our efforts into proactively teaching our children.
I admit that I made this mistake when I first had children. I wanted so badly to “get it right” so I was very careful to “be consistent” about correcting bad behavior.
But what I didn't understand was that I was putting the cart before the horse. I was expecting to teach my children through correction. But if I would have put more time and effort into the teaching part there wouldn't have been nearly as much need for the correcting part.
So now when I think of the phrase “Be consistent”, I tell myself that I need to be consistent in focused teaching. I need to put intentional time into helping my children understand exactly how to do the many things I hope for them to learn.
For example:
- We can role play how to do things like share or how to use kind words.
- I can work alongside them as they clean their room until their brains have developed enough to understand how to get from point “messy” to point “clean.”
- I can redirect them when they kick their shoes off in the middle of the floor and teach them how to be a tidy person instead of waiting till I get irritated by the messy floor.
There are so many more examples I could give, but do you see how so much of our child training ends up being done through correction because we don't put the work on the front end of teaching them to begin with?
The more our interactions with our children are based on correction, the more they will hear the message, “You failed again.” So many zealous parents end up having strained relationships with their grown children because they unintentionally taught them that they are a disappointment and a failure.
But if we as parents could more intentionally focus on upfront connection, there would be far less correcting to do. AND, when there is correcting to be done, it can be given in the form of gentle reminders (remember when we learned how to do xyz? Now's a good chance for you to put in practice what we learned!) rather than lectures and reprimands.
I am sure if you start brainstorming, you can think of areas where you are constantly having to correct and discipline your child.
Think of ways you can teach and practice the things you want your children to learn before the need for correction arises!
Here are some fantastic resources that explore this topic more:
(affiliate links included)
2. Discipline that Connects With Your Child's Heart
Win Over $3000 Worth of Homeschool Curriculum!
The annual Build Your Bundle curriculum sale begins next week (I'm just a tad excited!), but the organizers thought they'd kick it off with a huge giveaway.
They're giving away ALL the curriculum that's in the sale (over $3,000 worth of digital curriculum!)
If you're already familiar with the Build Your Bundle sale, and you're looking forward to it as much as I am, use the green button to speed along straight to the entry form.
The Build Your Bundle curriculum sale will be offering bundles of digital curriculum at 86% to 96% off.
This is not a joke! I have purchased hundreds of dollars worth of curriculum the past couple years for pennies on the dollar, and am so excited for this year's sale!
There will be a number of different bundles available, including:
- Character training resources
- Elementary curriculum
- Charlotte Mason curriculum
- Upper level curriculum
- And More!
And if you'd rather pick and choose your own sets, you can Build Your Own Bundle and still get everything at about 90% off!
Plus, everyone who enters the big giveaway gets a coupon. Seriously…a coupon for stuff that's already 90% off – that's my kind of sale!
Can't wait to see who wins this one!
5 Things My Mom Never Stopped Doing for Me
As a mom of small children, it is sometimes tempting to look forward to the days when my life is not so exhausting. Taking care of the needs of children is a 24/7 job, and I'll admit that while I don't want to “wish the years away”, I do sometimes look forward to the day when things will get a little easier.
But even though the days of diaper changes, constant snack-making, chauffeuring, and refereeing arguments may come to an end, a mother's work never ends until she leaves this earth.
Now that I'm grown, I think sometimes my mom works harder than ever in her role as mother.
Here are 5 things she has never stopped doing for me, and possibly does even more so now that I'm a grown woman with a family of my own:
1. Pray for me
I know my mom prayed for her children all throughout our growing up years. She prayed that our hearts would be tender toward God's working in our lives, that we would choose good friends, and make wise decisions. She prayed for our physical safety. She prayed for our futures.
And now that the future is here, the things she needs to pray for are possibly more important than ever.
Her children now have families of their own, and the number of people and needs on her prayer list have multiplied.
So while she no longer has any children in the nest, my mother's job of prayer has never ended; it has only increased.
2. Encourage me
When I was little, it was mama who would tell me not to worry about the girls at school who were being mean to me. It was mama who told me what I great job I did at my piano recital. It was mama who smiled and told me to go for it when I wanted to write a song or write a book or start a lemonade stand.
Now that I'm grown, it's still mama who lifts me up when I'm discouraged and points me to the truth of God's Word that I need to meditate upon. It's still mama who praises me when I'm excited about an accomplishment. It's still mama who doesn't try to stop me when I decide to pursue some crazy idea, but believes in me instead.
Yes, my mother is still my encourager.
3. Care for me
Whether it's fighting my way through morning sickness during pregnancy, or dealing with a chronic illness, my mom is the first one to see how she can take care of me.
She'll make food for my family or watch my kids so I can rest or help me clean my house.
Just like a little child wants their mama when they are sick, a grown woman still finds much comfort when being cared for by her mother.
I'm thankful my mom has never stopped taking care of me when I need it.
4. Inconvenience herself
Moms of little children are inconvenienced every day in many ways – foregoing sleep, spending time cleaning up messes rather than relaxing with a good book, or making an emergency search of the house to find the library book their child lost.
Now that I'm grown, my mom still inconveniences herself in many ways.
She picks up the phone even when she suspects it's a last minute request for babysitting, and she says yes even though she really is too tired.
She sits at home by herself late at night while my dad comes to bail us out of a broken-down car situation.
She welcomes me into her home any time of the day or night, even if it means foregoing her plans to accomplish some much-needed things on her to-do list.
Mothering a grown child is not convenient, but my mom keeps plugging along at this motherhood gig anyway.
5. Listen to me
A good mom listens to her child's disappointments and excitements, even when they seem ridiculous.
Whether I was crying about a popped balloon as a child or a burnt supper as an adult, my mom would still listen without dismissing my distress as unimportant.
If I call my mom with something trivial, even if the phone call is interrupting her day, she listens to me ramble on without showing any impatience or disinterest.
What an awesome mom!
I hope I can be like her some day when my own children are grown.
I Finally Figured Out How to Schedule a More Fulfilling Life
My life is flying past, and I feel like all I am doing is just trying to keep up with living!
Why is everything I do just a pointless cycle of taking care of the urgent? “Oh, sorry kids. No park today. Gotta get this taken care of. I know we'll have time another day.”
But we never do. There is always something else that has to be “taken care of.”
I was tired of it.
I grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper and started feverishly writing all the things that were swirling in my mind.
I want:
TIME
-time to spend with God in Bible reading and prayer
-time to spend with my kids, undistracted
-time to spend with my husband nurturing our marriage
-time to be a real face-to-face friend
-time to minister to others
-time to stop and smell the roses
-time to quit feeling frantic, rushed, and always behind
-time to stop feeling grouchy due to that frantic and rushed feeling
HEALTH
-so I can have the energy to take good care of my family
-so I can be the one ministering rather than always needing to be ministered to
-so I can enjoy life more fully
And that was it!
All I really wanted was two things.
Nowhere on the list was earning money, because that's not what is going to bring fulfillment in life.
Nowhere on the list was watching a great movie or laughing at the latest meme going around on Facebook or browsing Pinterest.
I just want time and health for the important things in life – PEOPLE. MY PEOPLE.
I determined that if an activity didn't help me meet those two goals, it was out. Gone. Removed from my life.
At the same time, I knew that there are “necessary evils” in life – the bills have to be paid, we all have to eat (even though I hate cooking), and we need to clean up the house because we can't really enjoy one another's company very well in a filthy house. But I figured that even though those had to stay, I would still be able to enjoy doing them together with my family as long as the other unnecessary things were no longer allowed to steal my time.
As I began to try to place these two goals into a nice, neat, scheduled box, though, I realized that they just didn't fit.
I wanted to have some sort of schedule detailing exactly how I was going to find time for the things that really matter.
But life doesn't fit into a box.
I scribbled and scratched, crossed off and re-wrote, and it just seemed pointless.
“Even if I get this all laid out, it's still going to be different every day,” I thought to myself.
I knew some days I would need to spend more time cleaning. Some days the right thing to do would be to drop everything and go play outside with the kids.
So I did away with the schedule and adopted a new rule for living.
Each activity I do during a day must be preceded by this question:”Is this helping me reach my life goals?”
If I'm debating between two things, that question provides much-needed clarity.
For example, when I pass by my husband's workplace on the way home from the store, I debate to myself, “Go home and clean the bathroom or stop and say hello to my husband?” I must confess that often the urge to spend time with the dirty bathroom is stronger than the urge to spend time with my husband. I feel like I need to “accomplish” something, so I opt for a tangible thing that I can cross off my list.
But is that really what I want?
When I think about “the list” – I realize that no! It's not! I want more time with my people!
I've been living with this mindset for about a month now, and oh! I can't tell you how much more fulfilling it is!
Update: Over time, I've developed a planner that keeps me on track doing the things that really matter. Not only do I have plenty of time to spend nurturing relationships with the people I love, but there is almost always time left over for me to cross a project or two off my list to give me that sense of accomplishment that I did something. Never in my life have I spent so much time with family and friends, kept my house so clean, and accomplished extra side projects to boot. This is the planner that makes it all happen!
What is it that will give you a fulfilling life? When you focus on the things that really matter, you may just find there will be time for some of the extras too!
Help Your Child Develop Thinking Skills with Laser Maze Jr.
One thing I have been wanting to spend more time on in our homeschool is helping the kids to work on thinking skills.
I have one child in particular who will give up as soon as they have to think too hard about something.
I needed to figure out how to stretch this child's “thinking muscles” in a way that would not be a battle of the wills between us. I needed to help this child want to exercise those muscles.
I have moved all of my homeschooling posts to christianhomeschoolfamily.com. You can go here to read this post at the new site.”
Because You are The Mom
Attachment parenting. Co-sleeping. Bottle feeding. Pacifiers. Cloth diapering. Feeding routines.
If we were to make a comparison chart of every mom reading this, the check marks would fall in completely different places for every single one of us.
One mom would have check marks beside bottle feeding, disposable diapers, and pacifiers. Another would have breastfeeding, babywearing, and cosleeping marked off. And others would have a seemingly contradictory mixture of it all. (Yeah, that would be me. I'm a breastfeeding, naturally minded mom, but carrying my baby all day and feeding on demand is just not what works for me.)
I think moms often feel guilty and condemned when their parenting style doesn't look like someone else's.
We feel like other people think they're a perfect mom and that we are some poor ignoramus who really doesn't have a clue.
And maybe some moms really think that.
But I've always been quick to give people the benefit of the doubt. It's just part of my personality to do that.
I think (and sincerely hope this is true) that a lot of moms come across as thinking they have all the answers not because they're trying to be a know it all, but because they care very much about helping other moms.
They've found something that works beautifully for their family and they want to share!
The tricky part is that it's sometimes hard to share in such a way that doesn't sound like you're telling other people what to do. Another mom REALLY wants people to just try this or that because she's SURE it will help them, but communicating strong emotions, especially through the internet can often backfire and turn into a perceived battleground.
In an age when we all do so much research online, trying to make an informed decision often feels like you've placed yourself into a mommy tug-of-war — and you are the rope!
“Cosleeping is best -and here's why.”
Oh no! My children might be damaged emotionally because they've been sleeping by themselves all this time!
“Why my children sleep in their own beds.”
Who does this author think she is? My kids can sleep in my bed if I want them to!
The more you read, the more negative emotions surface:
Guilt – because you're not doing it ” right “.
Anger – because how dare someone try to tell you how to parent your child.
Frustration – because you are looking for a solution to your parenting needs but all you can find are conflicting opinions.
Here's my encouragement to you:
You are not doing it wrong.
There is only one you – only one perfect mom for your children. There is no one in the world who knows them more intimately or loves them more strongly.
So keep on keeping on. And when strong opinions – well-intentioned or not – make you feel angry or guilty or frustrated, consider this:
Is what I'm doing working well for my family?
If it is, there's no harm in saying “Thanks for the info!” and then proceeding as usual. No need to stew and be angry at someone who was (hopefully) just trying to be helpful.
If what you're doing is NOT working, it's okay to say so. Just because someone who felt very strongly about baby feeding routines convinced you that is was the “right” way doesn't mean it is for YOU.
Or just because someone who felt strongly about cosleeping somehow made you feel guilty if you didn't do it too,that doesn't mean you have to persevere if you're getting zero sleep and resenting your child because of it.
You have the freedom to keep doing what works and the freedom to try something else if it doesn't.
Because YOU are the mom.
And you're the very best one in the world.
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