Ready-Set-Go is an every morning challenge in our house. Someone inevitably either cannot find a pair of socks, their P.E. bag, someone ate someone else’s lunch items or, just maybe, on the way to school they remember left-behind homework. Ready is often MIA when it’s time to go. The utopian ideal of tender wakings leading to calm, ready-to-take-on-the-day stances become mornings fraught with frustration – and I feel as if I’ve failed as a mother even before the day has reached Go-status. I wanted to reclaim the potential of the morning. I wanted my boys to exit the vehicle …
Back to School with All Your Might
Still, school is starting. The dog days of summer lead to full backpacks, lunchboxes filled with mama’s love, pens, pencils, paper, binders, and homework. School has the potential to be so much more than the tools of school. Have you ever felt like the old adage, “Oh, honey, just do your best,” sounds more like, “Aw, I realize you really can’t do better, so you don’t have to try so hard.” Listen the next time someone says that. Are they really promoting someone doing their best work? I realize different children have different gifts. I realize not every gift turns into an …
Raising Boys as Knights in Training
You know why public schools were created? So that every citizen could read their bible, so that no one would ever be able to take away an individual’s salvation by omission of knowledge. Being able to read the bible gave every citizen control over the destiny of their soul. America was built on the foundational principles of Judeo-Christian faith and values. No other country had ever been built on the foundation America created. Communities, schools, our government instilled those principles, raising boys and girls to be men and women of faith. Boys to men weren’t ridiculed, belittled, diminished because it …
Feed My Lambs
“Do you love me?” Jesus asked Peter – you and me, too. “Yes”, Peter answered. Jesus told Peter – and you and me – “Feed my lambs. . . . Shepherd my sheep. . . . Feed my Sheep” (John 21: 15-19) A few weeks ago, my family chose to sponsor through Compassion International an 11 year old boy in Haiti. He is one of those lambs that need feeding, literally and spiritually. My support allows for others to spiritually mother and father this boy – and it allows those spiritual parenting hands to fill bowls and make soul-contact that …
Translating Love Letters & Another GREAT GIVEAWAY in Our WEEK of LOVE
TODAY’s GIVEAWAYS… 21 Ways to connect with Your Kids by Kathi Lipp Still I Will Praise Thee by Renee Bondi ENTER TO WIN by COMMENTING, SHARING this POST through Twitter or Facebook, and get EXTRA BROWNIE POINTS for sharing a BLOG ON YOUR SITE about the CONFERENCE (bloggers are added to our BLOG PARTNER LIST when you email us and let us know when and where to find the post!) *WINNERS will be announced in SUNDAY’s LIST OF WINNER of our WEEK OF LOVE! __________________________________________ I’m learning that sometimes when I try to do extra-nice things, extra-unpleasant things …
Living New in the Same Old
“How’s it going? – A New Year? A New Day?” – question asked. “Oh the same old, same old,” comes the cliched same old answer. And it sounds so glass-half empty – so not new – so already faltering outside the New Year gate. Sometimes, even on a shiny New Year day, that’s how I feel. Laundry still piled up. Hungry mouths to feed. Teens still angsting – just maybe over different things. Trying to grow where I’m planted, though I find myself sometimes surprised about exactly where I am. There’s a lot of same old, same old in my …
Common Sense Thanksgiving or Maybe a Thanksgiving Like Passover
Thanksgiving isn’t a one dish meal. It’s a feast – with lots of dishes – each one part of the Thanksgiving Story. Yet most of us treat the history of it like a one dish meal. One dish treatment risks turning Thanksgiving into a regular every day until one day, stores remain open. Maybe it is treated as a play-day off. Who needs all. Some will treat it as a play day off. Who needs all that turkey, anyway? There is a reason it is a feast day, a day when all the stores should be closed – a …
Solution Revolution
“You’re not doing the same things,” my husband said when I was working with my second son when he was 2, 3 and 4. “Yes, I am,” I remember answering, somewhat frustrated. “The same things aren’t working.” Regardless of the age, sometimes “the same things” don’t work. Developing children requires a diverse strategy arsenal. For academic development, we used alphabet puzzles, flash cards, animal alphabet cards, Bob Books, Now I’m Reading Books. One learned to spell his name first in sign language. Another chose Garfield over classics – our home library is stuffed with Garfield, Snoopy, the classics, World War …