Child Training
-
God's Wisdom Versus Man's Wisdom
-
Teaching Kids to Encourage Each Other
-
Kids and Fairness
-
Crazy Kid Calm-Down Technique
-
Family Worship
-
Obedience Tip
-
Discipline Opportunities
-
Using Singing Through The Day
-
Good Morning Hugs
-
Links
Large Families
Organizational Tips
Child Training
God's Wisdom Versus Man's Wisdom
This week I had a very real experience of God's wisdom and the Holy Spirit speaking directly through the scriptures to me. It started by reading an e-mail from an e-mail group I'm on about training children throughout the day. It was a very good reminder of how to be proactive in our child-training. In it she talked about her daughter wondering why kids fight with their siblings. Her family of 6 kids rarely fight. She says it's a result of her training along with a lot of time on her knees praying for them.
At first I felt like I'm failing as a mom with my kids. My kids do have major sibling rivalry and fighting issues that I'm trying to get a handle on. It's hard when I hear about famlies that don't. In this mom's message she talked about not just following a system of discipline but really seeking the Lord and his wisdom with parenting. I decided to take my frustration and seek the Lord and read my Bible some that night.
I decided to look up passages on kindness. Of course in the concordance, Ephesians 4:32 was one of the main verses on kindness. Even though it was a common verse that I had read many times and memorized, I decided to look it up and see if there might be some insight that I had missed. The verse reads, "And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you." I also decided to read the previous verse for the context. Verse 31 reads, "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice."
Through this previous verse I began to realize that there was probably a lot of bitterness that the children have with each other and some bitterness that we probably have towards them and that one of the keys to vs 32 of being kind is to get rid of all bitterness, anger and evil speaking. I am now praying this for my children.
The next thing I noticed in vs 32 was that after telling us to be kind, it includes being tenderhearted, and forgiving one another just as we've been forgiven. I think it's key that we realize what a debt we've been forgiven so that we are able to forgive others and show them the same mercy we've been shown. Through seeing how much we've been forgiven, we can have a tender heart towards others and are able to be kind to them.
So I'm seeking to pray more and more for my family. To seek the Lord's wisdom and not just run to others for how to raise my family. It's so neat when a common passage that I've read many times, is made so meaningful for myself and my family. Let's be sure to seek the Lord first for all things. He knows our needs and what is best for us. He has power to change us and impact our families for him.
Teaching Kids to Encourage Each Other
Today we were having a bad start to our morning and there seemed to be a lot of negative attitudes in the house (including my own). I knew I needed to do something to change the attitudes. I've been working on getting the kids to think about serving one another and making others happy. I don't feel like I've had great success on the whole but I do occasionally see some fruit.
Anyways, today I decided to tell the kids to be saying as often as they could, "Great Job" to their siblings whenever they saw them doing something well. So when one of the little boys brought the dishes in, the others were to encourage them by saying "Great Job, Devin". This did help as they started encouraging each other with little things they were doing, they gradually got into a more positive attitude in general. This really helped their relationship with each other as well. I pray lasting changes will eventually come about in their lives.
Kids and Fairness
"That's Not Fair!" How many times do we hear this from our kids? How many times are there arguments about who got the most of something or about the unfairness of a sibling getting to do something another child wants to do? How can we parent fairly? Should we parent fairly?
Lately I've gotten tired of these fights and complaints and have desired to teach my kids to honor each other above one another. One aspect of this I believe is for them to learn to be happy for another child. One day last week 2 of my kids were getting paid for some work they had done. One child wasn't serving and giving a dime to the other who didn't have change to get her dime. He could have made change for himself but he didn't want to go to the extra work of it. I decided to just pay the other child a little more money (a quarter) since there wasn't a dime left in my billfold to give her. My son got very upset about this and said it wasn't fair for her to get her more money than she was supposed to. I sat down and read the parable of the workers in the vineyard where the owner paid the workers who only worked an hour the same money as the workers who had worked all day. I then explained that I can do what I want with my money and it's not his job to complain.
From that time I decided to change some things in our house. I decided that instead of trying to be fair and just trying to get them to not mind a little unfairness, I would instead try to be a little unfair regularly and try to train the kids to be happy for the one who was getting what was better. If they kept complaining about something not being fair, the other person would get more good (unfair things). For example, if a child is complaining about a sibling getting more grapes, I would encourage them to be happy for the child getting more and if they still complain, then I'd give the child with more grapes, even more grapes. Sometimes I'd even take grapes from the complainer to give them to the other child.
When done consistently enough, the kids start to realize that it's better to be happy for the other sibling as all they get for complaining is more unfairness. They also realize that usually there are times when things are unfair in their favor. Of course if you talk about this, that could lead to keeping track of who get more advantages in unfairnesses which defeats the original purpose of training unfairness so it's best to stay away from talking about them receiving unfairnesses in their favor, but to instead emphasize being happy for others when they have good things.
Hope that makes sense and is helpful! Life will never be fair and by trying to make it fair, we set ourselves for arguments and fights. Better to train our children to serve and be happy for others in their happinesses.
Crazy Kid Calm-Down Technique
With 6 children 8 and under, things can get a bit wild at times. Sometimes wild is ok, but sometimes order and sanity needs to be restored, especially if there's something that needs to be done. It seems these situations frequently happen before meals when the kids are supposed to be getting things ready, or before chore times! Sometimes I use this technique also when many kids are pestering each other at the same time.
The best way I've found to get things back in order is to immediately get everyones attention (loud clapping or speaking hopefully without yelling!) and have them all stand next to each other along a wall quietly. Getting them all in one place at the same time is key! Then once they're standing there quality (even if I'm frustrated and upset), the best thing for the situation is for me to go down the row and give them each a hug! That tells them that I love them despite the craziness and helps them refocus themselves and their attitudes. Then I can give them a little pep talk about what they should be doing or whatever they need to hear.
Sometimes I forget the hug bit or don't take the time to do it, but they really appreciate it and the process is much more affective if I take the time to give them a hug at this time! Hope this helps someone! But then, maybe none of you have crazy houses like mine!
Family Worship Time
Over the past couple of years, we've made family worship time a habit and part of our evenings together. It has had many benefits from teaching our children to sit still and listen, to the more important benefit of bringing them closer to the Lord. I do sometimes wonder if in the routine, they are not getting the real meaning out of it, but I know the Lord can bless the time whether they seem to be changing through it or not. I truly pray they learn to fear the Lord and reverence him. That is one area we seem to struggle with.
Anyways, when our children were all a bit younger, the easiest thing we found to do was to read a Bible passage and have the children listen for words in the passage that were also in hymns or choruses that they know. It would help them to pay attention to the passage better. We would then sing those songs that had words from the Bible passage. Then everyone would take turns saying something they were thankful for and then we would pray.
Right now we're going through the Character First character curriculum with our children (www.characterfirst.com), so our family worship time is a little different. We start with the character time and do some reading that relates to the character quality, or other related activity. Then we do singing and share what we're thankful for and pray. One negative on this is that we don't always read the Bible during this time, but we do read the Bible most mornings at breakfast during our morning Bible time then.
I'm sure down the road, we'll do something different, but so far that is what has worked for us. I would like to do more sharing about how God has been at work that day, in the future, but our kids seem a little young for that yet. Anyways, I hope each of you is able to incorporate time with our Lord as a family! God bless!
Obedience Tip
Here's a quick child-training tip that has helped me immensely if only I could train MYSELF to use it all the time! (I seem to be just as hard to train as my children unfortunately!)
If I want to ask one of my children to do something - i.e. pick up a toy, bring me something..., I get my best results if I do the following things:
1. Speak the child's name to get their attention and wait for them to say, "what mommy" and look at me. Then we make eye contact. This takes a little bit of regular training, but by starting by getting the child's full attention, I have an amazing increase in the likelihood that the request will be carried out as requested. If they don't respond, say their name again and again wait.
2. With a smile and cheerful tone of voice speak the request to the child - i.e. "Could you bring me a diaper please?"
3. Require the child to say, "OK mommy" or even "OK mommy I'd be happy to".
4. Thank the child and praise the child for his/her obedience.
When I don't do this, it's so easy for the child to ignore me or I move on to something else and don't notice that the child didn't respond and start doing what I asked them to do. I'm amazed by how much starting with an attentive child and eye contact helps with obedience!
Discipline Opportunities
Training our children can be such a difficult thing and seem to be such a drain on our emotions each day. I am so often tempted to become weary and discouraged by my children's behaviour, or the lack of good behavior. This frustration can cause me to lash out at them when discipline situations come up. I may not yell at them, but often my voice conveys my frustration with them.
Instead of reacting this way, I desire to respond to discipline situations as opportunities. We have been blessed with young children who unfortunately are born completely selfish. Our job is to raise them to learn behavior that goes against their natural tendencies. Each time a situation comes up where a child's behavior needs correcting, it's an opportunity to choose to embrace my call by God to "train up my child". I can embrace this with joy knowing that even if I've corrected this behavior 10 times already that day, that some day in the future if I train in love, my training will bear fruit. I certainly can't expect these imperfect young children to instantly become wonderful, sweet servants overnight! (I certainly am not always a sweet servant!)
The more I embrace this calling of training my children, the more I'm free of the anger and frustration that can accompany my words in disciplining. Lately I've become more aware of how my tone of voice often conveys my frustrations, and how that can greatly hinder the affectiveness of the training I do with my children. In church today, they were talking about dealing with conflict with a child with love vs anger and that kids will respond to love. Anger can cause more rebellion.
How about you - do you want your spouse to correct you on something in a loving way or a frustrated way. I was listening to how I talk to my childen today and then picturing my husband using that same tone of voice with me - i.e. "WHEN are you going to stop doing that!?". I certainly would not be feeling good feelings towards him if he spoke that way to me.
I pray that each day I can learn to show to my children the same patient love that the Lord has for me! I pray for joy in each discipline opportunity. It is an opportunity to display loving patience and to train my children for the Lord's glory.
Using Singing Through The Day
One thing we use at mealtimes is singing to help transition from being away from the table to prayer time. Lately we haven't used singing to get to the table because usually the kids get to the table pretty well, but when the children were younger we were having a hard time getting them all seated at the table. I decided to give the kids a warning when it was almost time to eat. Then when it was time to eat, I'd sing a song and by the time we were done, everyone was supposed to be seated at the table or else there would be a consequence. One consequence was folding hands and not eating at the table after prayer, while everyone else started eating.
The song we sang to have everyone come to the table was "Be present at our table Lord" sung to the tune of the doxology. These are the words:
Be present at our table, Lord;
Be here and everywhere adored;
Thy creatures bless, and grant that we
May feast in paradise with Thee.
We thank Thee, Lord, for this our food,
For life and health and every good;
By Thine own hand may we be fed;
Give us each day our daily bread. AMEN
We currently don't use that song to get to the table. We do still use a song to get everyone quiet before praying for our food. Instead of saying, "Be quiet now, everyone be quiet, Judah, stop talking...........", we sing a very short song, "For health and strength and daily food we praise your name Oh Lord." There are other songs people sing before prayers as well. It really helps get everyone quiet and they then know it's time to pray and are usually then quiet.
Songs can be used at other times of the day. Many people use a clean-up song with preschoolers or a march song to march off to bed. I can remember my mom doing this when I was little!
Psalm 89:1 I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.
Psalm 95:1 O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
Psalm 98:4 Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.
Good Morning Hugs
One thing I try to do every morning is to give out good morning hugs. Usually this happens right before breakfast. I make sure to get to each child and give them a big hug and say, "Good morning Cody, I love you. It's so good to see you". They all love to come get those good morning hugs! It was so cute hearing my 1-year-old asking for his "moening ug" when he was 1! It really helps me to start out each day appreciating each child, no matter how I may be feeling out recent behavior. It reminds me of how special each child is!
Links
Dr. S.M. Davis' Solve Family Problems DVD's - GREAT resource for teaching about child training, parenting, marital relationships etc. He also has great resources to help understand teenage rebellion. He has spoken at many homeschool conferences as a keynote speaker.
Steve & Terri Maxwell's Titus2.com site - WONDERFUL books and CD's! We personally own, Homeschoolin With a Meek and Quiet Spirit, Preparing Sons to Provide for a Single-Income Family, and Just Around the Corner and have gotten much great information from these books. We also love their daughters children fiction books.
Large Families
Links
MOMYS (Mothers Of Many Young Siblings) Support - GREAT site with message boards, an e-mail group, and many resources from women with at least 4 children. If you need great ideas to help you thrive with a bunch of kids, this is the place to go!
Above Rubies - Very encourging free magazine. This is printed when donation funds come in. There are articles on large family issues, marital issues, adoption, healthy foods etc...
Organizational Tips
Lunch Prep Survival
If you're like me and have lots of kids, it can be a challenge getting lunch on the table. It seems that every day when it's almost lunch time, chaos breaks out. All the kids are hungry, crabby, and fighting and it's impossible to make a lunch. The best thing I've found to do is to keep it simple! We have sandwiches every day for lunch. Don't feel guilty if you don't have creative lunches! It's more important to keep things simple and keep peace in the house!
The way I managed when all my kids were a bit younger was to make the lunches in the morning before the kids got out of bed. (I had 6 kids who were 7 and under at one point) With sandwiches made, going into my day was so much less stressful. Then when lunchtime comes, I just pull out the bag of sandwiches and grab some fruit and veggies, set the table and we're ready to go!
Now that my older kids are a bit older, they make the sandwiches right after breakfast. They're calmer, well-fed and happy at the time so sandwich making usually goes pretty well. Then when it's time to eat, we just grab the stuff and eat. Maybe it's not very fancy or anything, but with homemade bread, it's a pretty healthy way to go.
Hope that helps someone if you're struggling with the lunch thing!