Understanding and Asking Forgiveness

As children, we're never fully aware of the pressures the adults in our lives are facing. This is as it should be - our homes should be a safe haven, a place of trust, love and communion. The adults may not always act or react "just so", but often work to shield their kids and do their best to improve on what their parents did.

As a child, it is rare to consider who your parents were "before."

A Good Father

Our oldest - Maestro - turned twelve this past November. He is rapidly hitting adolescence and what a time it is! So far I have been more than impressed with his concern for how he "should" act, why people (especially teens!) act the ways they do, and for where he should look to improve himself next. His progress has been impressive and inspiring. But even as he mentally moves forward in his journey to becoming a man, he is also moving on his way physically. That really moves him out of the realm of "Momma's Boy"

A Letter to Our Oldest Son

Yesterday our son came home from his friend's house across the street and was clearly upset about something. The short version of the story is that he had used his Nintendo DS "for 30 seconds" while waiting for another friend to come out. His friend said that he was "obsessed" and ultimately decided to go inside. There are, of course, other details that he wanted me to consider, but in my mind that is what it boiled down to. I told him that she was right and he had been rude.

In a bit of a pre-teen huff (meaning, as he tried to leave the room and escape downstairs), he said, "(You were)... the one person I thought would back me up!"

~ ~ ~ ~

Dear Oldest,

I want to tell you thank you for being part of my life; you and your siblings are what make me mom. It is with a mother's love that I write this note to you.

Giving "Permission" to My Mom

This is a post of a story told backwards. It begins at the end... and ends at the beginning of the story. It is the story of Mini-Haha and my attempt to give the story back to my Mom.

Now on our fifth child, and having had a chance to reflect on my own childhood, I see now that children are God's way of giving us a chance for redemption. And of teaching us to laugh at ourselves. As children, we did things that hurt our parents, whether intentionally or not. Now as parents, we are no more perfect than our parents were.

The youngest photo I have access to that is digitized. About 11 or 12 here. 

One of the things I used to get so angry with my mother for was her delight in telling a story of my earliest years. We parents love to catalog the foibles and amusing events of our children's lives, don't we? Already I watch my own children and find myself telling others of this or that amusing thing that they've done. God bless them  - but I can't help it, they're so often just so funny! And in another five or ten years, we won't be laughing together over the events in question. Instead, I'll be wondering what happened while my child gets angry at me for sharing stories we'd always laughed at together in the past.

Book Review: Wild Things

I am not usually impressed by parenting books - not any more. I've had too many children and seen too much in life to put any real stock in their advice. But every now and again I come across one that is easy to read in my very limited free time, that seems worth completing and that has some useful words of wisdom. Not only that, but in a house with several hundred books already on the shelves, space is at a premium for books I intend to keep around!

The book Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys by Stephen James and David Thomas is a book I am only about 1/4 of the way finished with and am willing already to recommend it to every parent of boys that I know.

Whether your boy is a toddler or a teen, you are likely to find something of value in this book.

Who's Your Mama?

An early effort at writing - this one was on his own

I am a huge fan of the opinion pages and blogs on the Wall Street Journal site. I haven't visited them much, but I tend to enjoy the articles I read there. A recent "Saturday Essay" in the Journal was entitled Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. In the article, Amy Chua, a 2nd-generation Chinese-American, describes her parenting methods, and more briefly those of her own parents. She makes a distinction between "Chinese Mothers" and "Western Parents," the difference being not so much race-related as parenting-style related. I've put links to a few other thought-provoking articles at the end of this post.

"Joyful Busywork"

"Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile." Pierre Coneille

My boys were supposed to be working on a new schedule today. Math, reading, writing, chores, music - you know the drill. They knew the drill but didn't like it. So they hemmed and hawed, they procrastinated, Bruiser (the 5 yo) took out his new 1/8 size violin a hundred times - and Maestro took the full size out (no he does not play, yet!) to "help."

After a morning in which I worked harder than the boys - I was exhausted and ready for a nap. Buttercup, the 20 month old, was finally ready for a nap at around 11. The boys got to have some quiet play time while I put her down and took a 20 minute power nap of my own. Fast forward to the afternoon - time for laundry, four full loads of laundry to be brought upstairs, folded and put away. The laundry was brought up and Maestro mentioned wanting to get a good workout in, so he had brought up two laundry baskets up at the same time by himself.

Lightbulb!

I put one boy onto doing "side straddle hops" (jumping jacks), one to running stairs, one to push ups. They were working so hard that it was relatively peaceful for me to get the laundry folded before the commencement of "Operation Stuff Drawer," followed by "Operation Stuff Shirt" and "Operation Stuff Wardrobe." They enjoyed that all so much that they asked for more exercise to do afterward and were huffing and puffing from the exertion of it all.

So it begs the question. Why can't I find an equally engaging way to get school work done? I suppose my biggest hurdle is the knowledge that I could do all sorts of quizzes, games, puzzles and such to get the messages across and the lessons learned, but doing so takes huge amounts of effort and free time while I put such a plan and schedule together. (Time for a solo trip to Panera, I think!) Perhaps I'll make that happen on specific days, but on the "off" days, the boys are going to have to learn to make their own fun and find the joy in the process and love of the labor itself.

It took years for me to learn to enjoy the process of mowing the lawn, washing the dishes or picking up the living room; that lesson was hard one - and my turning moment came in having a friend profess to "love doing dishes." This friend is so joyful in her outlook and in the many, many activities she is involved with that I really admire her.

Her husband is away frequently for work, she has three boys and a young dog. She home schools, like we do, and is also involved with boy scouts and active in church and yet, she rarely looks tired or worn out and has often been ready to take my own children into her home for play time and fellowship. Perhaps I make others tired with my activity level, but she has been an inspiration to me and a great help. Most of all, she helped me change my attitude about work and what it means to be joyful in all that we do.

Ecclesiastes 2:24: There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment [1] in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God...

I believe in joyful work; and I believe that work is helpful for changing a bad attitude. In our house, it's called "working out the grumpus" and after about 30 minutes (sometimes involving my children wailing over their bad fortune or poor choices) they begin to ask for the next job to do, and with a joyful countenance. That is one of my primary goals for this home school year: work done in a joyful attitude coupled with happiness and peace with one another.