Mother's Day!

Let me start off by saying happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there! It is truly a privilege to be one myself and know what all my mom and "adopted" mom's did for me. In honor of this holiday I'm posting about the message we received in church today. We started a four week long series about parenting. What a perfect way to start it on Mother's day! :)

Today our pastor spoke on eight tips or guidelines on parenting. No he did not come up with these on his own, our pastor is a big stats guy and does major research before speaking or making a decision about anything. These eight guidelines I really had to agree with him on, my husband and I try to do a lot of these already and some our kids are still too young to really accomplish , but we are trying to start a foundation for them, this is why I thought I might share. Some of you might not agree and some of you may agree whole heartedly, but no matter what your opinion I encourage you to keep reading!

8 guidelines to parenting:

1. Build a strong marriage

        I our house my husband and I think this is probably one of the most important thing you could do for your child to show them stability, love and how relationships work. My husband and I are not perfect and there is no such things are the prefect marriage. The will be disagreements and annoyances. In our house we have a few simple rules, we will never yell at each other in front of the children (we try not to yell period), We would rather sit in silence rather than yell and scream. There is no sleeping in separate rooms or telling the other not to come home, our bedroom is just that OURS.

2. Spend quality time with the kids

       I have been struggling with this lately because I just went back to work and am working from the time my children wake-up in the morning until it is almost time for bed at night. We do however eat dinner together as a family every night. My 4 year old son has recently gotten into playing board games so we try to play games as much as possible during our free time.

3. Discipline our kids

    I do not believe in being mean and hateful to children, I believe in teaching them your expectations (reasonable ones) and setting up consistent and logical consequences. Children need and as much as they will never admit it love boundaries, so we need to give them some. My husband and I have been known to make our son give up some of his toys because he didn't want to pick them up. If he has so many toys that it is difficult for him to clean up then it's time to get rid of a few of them. We teach our children to respect adults and authority figures, if the child has no innate respect for adults then they can never learn from a teacher.

4. Stay engaged

      Be involved in your child's life. Be there and know what is going on. Stay proactive in intentionally teaching them new things every day. This is something we in this household also struggle with. We currently live with my parents and our son is with my mother a whole lot, so we miss out a little bit on being the ones who are teaching him and being the one who are involved. It is however something we are working on.

5. Monitor Entertainment

    TV is not the devil, but sitting your child in front of a television or video game all day is not good for them. You want your child to get his/her energy out and to be spending time with you. Also, when it comes to signing children up for sports and other extra curricular activities, let's try not to spread them too thin. The majority of their time spent away from school should be at home, not shuttled between activities. Right now our son is at home all the time, soon he will be starting Pre-K, this is going to be a big change for everyone. Will keep you posted on how he does, although I'm sure we will do great!

6. Teach children responsibility

      Allow children to experience the consequences to their actions. By not allowing our children to experience consequence we are enabling them to repeat the offence and saying that the action is okay. We need to force our children to except the consequences of their actions and learn from it. With young children their are a lot of natural and logical consequences that go along with mistakes/ misbehavior. In our home we talk about them  and decide what we can do to keep it from happening again. Parents also need to allow their children to have responsibility at home, aka chores! I never realized how wonderful chores where until this past year. I growing up had very few and rarely did them. Our son cleans his own room, helps feed the dogs, waters the flowers and grass outside and even sometimes helps cook dinner. Since our daughter was born he has realized that he has to set a good example for her, so this keeps him motivated to do his chores.

7. Use your words carefully

    I think some people are under the impression that kids are stupid, well they aren't. It is important for use to speak respectfully to our children. The thing we say can and will affect them deeply, we are their world. It is important to correct our children, but by doing so we must never bully them into submission. That is immature and abusive. I know as stressed out parents we've all had time when we have snapped and said somethings we shouldn't have said, we must actively try to keep these moments at bay.

8. Teach your children to have a relationship with God

      Some of you do not believe this is very important and t each their own, I however owe everything I have to God, so this is extremely important to me. We try very hard to model a mother and father who have a servants heart, filled with compassion and forgiveness, in hopes that our children will see us in our relationship with God and want to pursue their own.

I hope this made sense and I did not ramble too much, I tried not to be preachy and keep it from my perspective. This was not meant to offend anyone, everyones life situation is different. Hearing this in church today was really a blessing and a reassurance to me because I agree with it 100%, which is why I decided to share it with my friends.