Date Time with your Kids

I probably tell my kids at least 10 times a day I love them. I know they know. But in this season of all-things-love, I want to make sure I remind my children often how much I like them and enjoy spending time with them.

 As with all kids, ours LOVE to go out for some one-on-one time with Mommy or Daddy. My husband and I try to get a couple of hours with one of them each month. It's sweet to see just how much they anticipate and enjoy this undivided attention. Even my 2-year-old gets giddy if he gets to go in Daddy's truck—just him and Daddy--for a simple errand to the hardware store.

Often our dates involve going out for a meal or dessert together. This provides great talk time. My daughter is 4, and she is happy just to get a cookie or visit the animals at the pet store.

We've done a few more creative things with our 7-year-old. He and I enjoyed a pottery-painting date one Saturday afternoon.

And my husband took him to a high school football game last fall. The stuff that bonds daddies and sons.
 Some other ideas we have for date times this year are:

• go for a bike ride
• take a walk together at a park
• go ice skating
• take a box of donuts to a neighbor
• go to a park and take funny/creative pictures
• make a project together
• plant something—flowers, seeds, a tree
• go on a long hike
• visit a hobby or pet store
• visit an art show
• make a fun video together
• do a random act of kindness together
• find a way to serve or minister to someone in need

Now that our kids are getting a little older, it's fun to find out what they think about the world. These are interesting conversation-starters for a date or even the family dinner table:

• If you could be famous, what would you want to be famous for?
• If you could invent one rule for the whole world to follow, what would it be?
• If you could change one family rule, what would you change?
• If you could keep your room any way you wanted, how would it look?
• What are the qualities that make a good friend?
• What do you think of my driving?
• If you could decorate our home, what would it look like?
• What do you think are the characteristics that make a good parent?
• What is the nicest thing a friend has ever done for you?
• What is the most enjoyable thing our family has done together in the last three years?
• If you could have any pet you wanted, what would you choose? What would you name it?

We are trying to use this special one-on-one time to be more than just activity time together...we want to use it to build strong communication foundations with our kids. If we're not open with them now, we know we can't expect them to want to talk to us when they're 15. I'm working daily on being a better Listener to my children!

A few years back, our friend passed along some really great questions to probe the heart a little when you have some uninterrupted time alone with one child. Some don't quite work yet for our young children, but I'm hanging onto them for a few years down the road.

• What conflicts are you and your brothers/sisters having when Mom and I aren’t around?
• How is your heart towards your brothers and sisters?
• Do you think your mom or I show favoritism towards one of your siblings? If so in what ways?
• How’s your relationship with Mom? How is she doing as a mom?
• What is God showing you about the way He made you?
• What can I do better in leading the family to love God and love each other?
• How are your devotions?
• What is God teaching you?
• In your own words, what is the gospel?
• Is there a specific sin you’re aware of that I can help you in defeating?
• Are you more aware of my encouragement or my criticism?
• What’s Dad and Mom most passionate about?
• Do I act the same at church as I do when I’m at home?
• Are you aware of my love for you?
• Is there any way I’ve sinned against you that I’ve not repented of?
• Do you have any observations for me?
• How am I doing as a dad/mom ?
• How have Sunday’s sermons/classes impacted you?
• Does my relationship with Mom make you excited to be married?
• On top of these things, with my older kids, I’m always inquiring about their relationship with their friends and making sure God and his gospel are the center of those relationships. And I look for every opportunity to praise their mother and increase their appreciation and love for her.                     
• Family Strategy questions by Rand Hummel/the Wilds

A little attention and time goes a long way...it's just hard to fit in sometimes. After the football game, my son came home with shining eyes, as well as a little hot chocolate still stuck to his upper lip. He told me it was his best night ever.  Later my husband recounted the evening to me and said he felt like even if he'd been the worst Dad in the world (and for the record, he's a fantastic Daddy!), that evening together would have redeemed him big time. It was a super special outing for both of them. And a reminder to make the effort to book these important times on the calendar before lesser things eat away our hours with our kids.

Ring Ring...Back to School! What is the RIGHT Schooling Choice for my Child?

“It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning.”
~ Claude Bernard

As a student, did you ever wake up in a cold sweat—worried that you had forgotten an important assignment or failed to study for, say, a geometry test? <shudder> Nothing compares to the feeling of being ill-prepared. I have never been a good procrastinator. But whether you thrive on procrastination or whether you like to get all your ducks in a row like me, if you have kids, sooner or later you will have to make an important decision about school. And it's daunting.

If you have never been overwhelmed by the parenting choices you face, if you have only just begun, (Huggies or Pampers, Similac or Enfamil, Gerber or Beech Nut...) then your day is coming. Some pivotal decisions we face as parents are: where to school, how to school, why to school, when to school? Some may think it is an obvious choice, but perhaps it isn't so cut and dry.

From a quick bit of google searchy-searching, I discovered that about 11% of kids (6.1 million) are enrolled in private, including parochial, schools as of 2006. I also found that approximately 1.5 million children are home schooled, and that number is growing. In the span of eight years, home schooling has grown nationally by almost 75%. This leaves about 49.4 million students who attended public elementary and secondary schools in the fall of 2010.

As far as I know, these are our 3 options, and I'm going to attempt to explore them with you this week—mostly to keep my thoughts occupied since my baby is heading off to the big school this year! And since Kylee and I are just getting started in the school biz, I have enlisted a few amazing experts who have several kids in a variety of school settings to share their knowledge with us.

Before we really delve into our mommy testimonials, today I'm going to throw out a quick overview of PRE-school thoughts. We would love to get feedback from you, too!

Have answers.

First of all, if you don't know why you are choosing (or leaning toward) your preferred method of schooling for your child, then you should probably think about it now. When someone asks you “Why did you choose to send your child to ___ school?” it should not be followed by an awkward silence with crickets chirping. I understand that you may never be wholly confident that what you are choosing is the absolute best, you may even have doubts, but year by year and child by child you should have a reflective, intelligent answer for your choice.

In my opinion, it is never OK to send your child to any school, or homeschool, simply by default. For example, choosing to do something because your parents did it and because “I turned out OK!” is probably not a valid reason. My mom-expert-friends were all able to give me wonderfully thoughtful and valid reasons for each of their school choices even though they had placed their kids in 3 different school settings! If you have never really thought about it, or if your kids are still too young for school, it's time to think about it because trust me, it will be here before you know it.

Assume Nothing. Get Educated!

Do you think it is valid to send your child to a certain school or home school out of fear or lethargy? Is it wise to homeschool simply because I am frightened of what they might encounter in a large school setting? The answer from my expert panel revealed that this was not their answer. In another way is it fine to send my child off to school so that I can do what I want without having to create lesson plans at home or worry about grading my own child's schoolwork? None of my mom friends made the decision to send their children to school simply because they didn't want to be stuck with their kids all day or because they worried about scarring them for life.

Don't assume that your friends are homeschooling because they are scared, and don't assume your friends are sending their kids off to school because they are lazy. If you get down to it, that is most likely not the case!

I love what my friend Sue (mommy of 5!) told me here: “We decided to home school a few years ago for some of the earlier years of our kids' schooling. But I just want to make it clear that I don't put God in a box and we don't think He calls all Christian families to home school. Just so that my reasoning doesn't come across as judgmental towards those who have chosen a different path I want to make that absolutely clear!”

Listening to my friends passionately express their reasons behind their schooling decisions has been wonderfully eye-opening, but it also makes our decision to choose that much harder!

Rising above stereotypes.

I want to devote this week to appreciating, respecting and learning from each other.

Kylee and her husband have chosen to homeschool her oldest son. My husband and I have chosen to send our oldest son to our local public school. I respect Kylee's decision, I know that it was made purposely, and I know that her son is receiving a great education and amazing experiences through having Kylee as his primary teacher in their home. In the same way, Kylee respects our decision to send our son to public school. We prayerfully and purposely made our decision as well, after many discussions with family members and mentors.  We will dig deeper into our own decision-making process later this week!

In the end, our response should be that each family is making a decision based on prayer and research, and we should respect their decision. We don't know what next week holds, let alone five to ten years from now. Hopefully none of us says, “I'll never choose THAT route for schooling!” because kids change, circumstances change, and I certainly don't hold a crystal ball to predict what the future holds; I'm assuming you don't either.

As Joe Fox said, "The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self." Hopefully in the next few days we will be able to talk through many of the options: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino--to present the 3 choices, perhaps to clarify your decision, or perhaps to open your perspective to the other moms like you!




**Follow up links to posts:
To Skip Straight to our post on Homeschooling, go HERE. 
To learn more about Public Schooling, go HERE.
For our discussion on Private (Christian) Schooling, go HERE.
And for some final conclusions, go HERE.

The Worrywart: Kryptonite for Supermoms?

Last week was full of many what ifs for me. While I may not look like your mainstream worrywart, trust me--the warts are there, buried under anxious mommy shoulders and buckling mommy knees.

In general, I don't lie awake at night biting my nails over my health, or gas prices or paying bills, or even death. I wouldn't say I spend a ton of time agonizing over what people think about me. You know, the average worries. I've realized lately that just because I don't brood about the popular worrisome issues, it doesn't mean I'm not a worrywart.

For me, as a mom, worrying and control seem to go hand in hand. I don't worry much about the things I know I can't control. But if there is something I think I can control, then my mind goes wild. For some reason, I usually end up worrying for my kids. I think it's natural to worry for our kids; we want them to be happy and healthy, we want them to have a million friends and never skin their knees. But I'm already realizing that even when I have the best intentions and try to do everything right, I will never control their fate.  My worrying causes needless anxiety for me, and in turn my anxiety is often reflected in my kids as well. 

In the past week, two prime examples jumped out and revealed that my furtive fears for my kids are often unwarranted and make me feel silly in retrospect. I am not proud to admit that I waste time thinking about things I can't control, but as a mother it is a battle I fight constantly.

Last week our family spent four days at camp with around 280 other friends from our church. I was very excited to go spend time away from routine with our family, to not worry about meals to plan, laundry to fold and I was especially excited about the luxury of having Daddy away from work and all to ourselves.

I must admit though, I was more than apprehensive about the schedule, which called for several hours of nursery time during each day. I have never been a fan of putting my little ones in the nursery, and no it isn't just because of the germs they might acquire there (although the germs are usually invited to the party!)

Call it a fault, but there is something gut-wrenching about dropping off a young one in the nursery while he is screaming your name and digging his nails into your arm. I don't enjoy it. The thought of my baby crying for hours on end while I am listening to a speaker or enjoying coffee with my husband is initially not my first choice; I have to step back and convince myself to do it after some anxiety and prayer.

The short end to this scenario is that my little guy was fine at camp. Did he love being dropped off for little bits at a time? No. Did he survive? Yes. (Thanks to great nursery workers!) Will he remember being left in the nursery for a few hours while I enjoyed some much needed adult interaction and lovely conversation with my husband? No. Once again I am learning perspective; in the big picture, the time I wasted worrying about the well-being of my little one would have been better spent elsewhere. We had a great week and spent scads of time together as a family of 5—little guy included. He may have even learned in a small way that our family dynamic doesn't entirely revolve around his little world; an important lesson that he might as well start learning now.

~ ~

While coming down from the fun of family camp, we returned to church classes that were promoting everyone up to their new fall grade level. Anxiety once again reared for me as mommy since we recently decided to keep our big guy back in Kindergarten, although many of his friends are promoting to first grade. I know he will be fine in his new class in his big school, but I thought the church transition might be tough. I tossed and turned about how this traumatic event might cause him pain and suffering and wondered if I needed to brace him for the change or pain that might ensue on Sunday morning. He is a pensive thinker and I wondered how it would all go down.

Sunday morning came and went. I carefully asked a few probing questions after his morning class; he shrugged his shoulders and ate his lunch. Later in the evening when I picked him up from his evening class, I was amazed to find him running around and actually leading a game in the gym. He can't wait to go back next Sunday and even enjoyed having his younger sister join him in class. Imagine that.

The thing is, “If anything bad can happen, it probably will.” Even if I am constantly afraid of running out of diapers or lacking a spare kid outfit or having a flat tire on the highway or running out of my morning coffee or milk going bad, those things are still going to happen. Because they can. I can keep my kids carefully buried deep under my wings, protecting them from every potential outside danger, but they will still fall down and get hurt when I'm not looking.


I can do my best to prepare and be organized and have a back-up plan, but I can't control it all, and I shouldn't control it all! If I never leave my house for fear of all the scary things I anticipate happening, then what am I teaching my kids? Isn't it better to teach them that bad things will happen and show them we can respond in a calm manner? Mark Twain said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

I'm not saying we'll never have another nursery meltdown or that I won't pick up the phone to call when I leave my kids for the night. I'm a mom. There are plenty of things to worry about as moms and dads because we are entrusted with a huge responsibility as parents; I'm hoping I can learn from moments like these and perhaps someday become as adaptable and flexible as my 5-year-old.

"So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34

How I Let My Preschooler TP the Bathroom.

My 3-year-old always wants to help. We all know Preschooler Help usually means extra work for Mommy...hello, water on the floor. again.

Yet, the trade-off (I keep reminding myself!) is that these opportunities teach her initiative, how to work hard, and to have a servant's heart.

It can be challenging to find manageable tasks for a 2- or 3-year old, especially when they want to do big jobs they see an older sibling trusted with. But it's sweet to see that the simplest little things are very satisfying accomplishments for her! Her Important Job...that she takes Very Seriously...is stacking the toilet paper in the bathroom cabinet.

The average adult could do this in 42 seconds. For a preschooler with limited efficiency skills, this is a good 15-minutes of work. She typically opens the new TP package in the next room and then brings one roll at a time to the bathroom and stacks them meticulously. It's exhausting to watch, and yes, another opportunity for teaching...the subject of Time-Saving Tips!

Some other jobs that she helps with include: emptying the silverware rack from the dishwasher, wiping down baseboards with a damp rag, collecting the trash bags from bathrooms, folding clean washcloths and towels, bringing her laundry hamper to the laundry room, putting away some groceries/toiletries after shopping trip, folding the dinner napkins and setting the table.

As I try to welcome my kids' offers of help and allow them to share in the work, I am sometimes tempted to fix things after they finish and run off to play. A mentor once challenged me to NOT redo a job after my child's not-exactly-perfect-attempt. They will notice! If I re-make their bed or re-fold the towels, I send them the message that their best isn't good enough. I thought that was such great advice.

Someday my linen closet will have flat, neatly stacked towels again. Right now, a little lumpy is just fine!

How about your home...what chores do your little ones like to help with? Any creative jobs that you have given to them??

Finding Lessons Hidden in Cologne Clouds

As I said earlier, I have found myself hurrying a lot lately. I hurry to get my son to school in the morning. We hurry to get through the store so we can hurry and get home before we hurry and eat lunch so that we can hurry and get back to the school car line to pick up my son; then we hurry back home for the baby's nap.

It's exhausting.

For the past few weeks I have been trying to train myself to see and think differently. I like to go fast—it doesn't come naturally for me to slow down and be aware of the truly important things going on around me, so I am learning to stop in the moment and really evaluate what's going on.

Last week I dropped my son off at school, then I took the little ones into our lovely local Wal-mart with a long list of necessities to buy. As we rounded the corner of the bubble bath aisle we almost crashed into a man who was covering himself with a strong-smelling “men's body spray.” While we started choking in a cloud of cheap cologne, the man nervously kept spraying himself. He gave us a huge grin and asked me how old my kids were. He began telling a story about when his kids were young.

He continued spraying.

He also continued talking to us—he barely stopped to let me respond and he barely stopped talking to breathe. He would talk, then squirt himself several times with cologne. I purposely stopped myself in the rush of it all; I reminded myself that there was no need for me to walk away from this man other than the crazy body-spray smell that would inevitably permeate us for the rest of the day.

Then he began sharing with me about how much his woman loved the perfume and couldn't get enough of it. I was thinking about telling him it might be too much of a good thing when he suddenly pulled up his sleeve to show me where he'd had dialysis earlier that morning. As he continued spraying cologne everywhere he went on to tell me about previous treatments and how he was recovering and things were looking up. He was upbeat and positive, he quickly talked about the important things in life as though he'd had plenty of time to really think about it; he wished his kids were still young and living at home. He would do things differently.

I looked over at my kids in the cart, who were staring at the stranger and his cologne-spraying trigger finger, and in the moment I realized I had found a practical teacher in the Wal-mart bubble-bath aisle. So, these are the big times in my life, not the times I should be wishing away? We hear this all the time, but do we do anything to change our thinking or our actions?

I hurry my hours and errands and outings and days and months, and soon there will be nobody left to sit in my lap or push in a cart or sing silly songs or ask me for a snack. How do we discipline ourselves to make moments? How can I stop to focus on the truly important stuff?

The stinky stranger returned the nearly empty bottle of cologne to the shelf—I'd like to think he eventually went back and bought it; we continued filling the squeaky cart with boxes and bags—precious little necessities.

Smelly with cheap body spray and a head full of morning thoughts, we pushed through aisles of crackers and cereal and cheese. Life with kids is loud and it's fast; it's squeaky and stinky. Can we all push our carts a little slower, can we listen to the little questions and the not-so-little questions with open ears?  I can think of many worthwhile things I can do while calmly and patiently strolling the aisles instead of rushing around with blinders on.  Sometimes our to-do list and our true priority list need to be shuffled around a little, and sometimes the most important thing we can do at Wal-mart is listen.

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. (Eph. 5:15-17)

Exploding Cans, Chasing dreams.

Today I came home from church and as I was setting the table for lunch, 3 full cans of cherry Dr. Pepper rolled off the top of my refrigerator, exploded against the tile floor and splattered everything in the room with tiny, sticky-fizzy drops. 

As I scrubbed the walls, cabinets, kids, floor, and furniture in my Dr. Pepper-splattered church clothes, it struck me again that these unpredictable moments continue to splash me in the face on a daily basis. They are going to keep happening. How will I respond?

After lunch I was cleaning up the rest of the mess—it was a big mess, and decided to reward my clean-up efforts with a little blue DOVE chocolate square that I found in the bottom of the Easter candy basket—yes we still have lots of Easter candy left (and Halloween candy for that matter.) My metallic blue wrapper, as always, imparted me with an amazing tidbit of inspiration: “get out there and make your dreams happen.” It was exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you, DOVE. You are right, time to make some dreams happen!

Just then I smelled it. A dirty diaper--yet another dirty diaper. As I set aside my scrubbing sponge and switched gears back to mommy mode, I tried to figure out how a dirty diaper could possibly fit into making my dreams happen. It often feels like a cruel contradiction—I want nothing more than to live my dream of staying at home with my kids, but the daily demands and details that require my patience and the dirty work starts to wear away at the glamour of this dream. And I wonder if the messes will ever stop. Will they ever stop?

Yesterday I was scouring the bathroom sink late in the afternoon, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror; I saw that crazy-haired lady with bloodshot eyes and a dirty shirt. It certainly wasn't June Cleaver or Donna Reed. This lady was bedraggled and needed a hairbrush and make-up and lots more coffee.

The “How To” books I've read on child-rearing and home-making rarely speak about the moments we see ourselves in the bathroom mirror, holding a toilet brush and pretending we don't hear the baby who is already awake again after the world's shortest nap. The books don't talk about kids who won't eat anything but Cheez-its or the sharp toys you will step on while walking through the house barefoot in the middle of the night. Parenting books fail to mention that often when you hold the baby above your head to play he will drop drool directly into your mouth. It will happen, so be ready.

These days are spent knee-deep in diapers and spilled soda and pyramids of toppling toys—and when I read a phrase on a metallic DOVE wrapper telling me to get out there and make my dreams happen it is hard to see past the messes and keep my true priorities in check. The poster children for this dream have dirty faces and ketchup stains on their clothes. For me, it requires great effort to consistently respond to the exploding cans correctly.

When the kids are well-rested with full bellies and we are driving to Sunday morning church wearing ironed clothes, it is easier to put the images inside a picture frame on the mantel. But when everyone is screaming for food and needing a nap and the clothes are covered in cherry Dr. Pepper, I have to remind myself that the dreams are messy after all. And the mess is what keeps this our home—a place where we don't feel guilty when our clothes don't match and when we eat out of a Kraft macaroni box because we didn't quite make it to the store.

We don't always put the chaos in a frame for world to see, but the cluttery disarray and how we respond to it is generally what defines our home and our dreams in the end. All we can do is roll with the messes and latch onto things that really matter, because there will always be exploding cans and babies who discover 6-month-old teddy grahams under the kitchen rug. 

This is one of my favorite Phyllis Diller quotes, “Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.”