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Parenting

Teaching Children Patience

Teaching your kids patience. It sure doesn’t come easy, but it’s an important lesson you’ll teach your kids for the rest of their lives! Use these simple actions to help your child or children develop patience. Start a Conversation: In the calm moments, ask your child important questions like, “Why do you lose your patience?” “How?” Make a Plan to Play: Camping is a great way for children to learn that the best things in life take patience. Plan an indoor camping trip and live like old-time pioneers. In this way, they get to “experience” having to use their patience. Never Stop Learning: Moms can learn a lesson in patience too! In teaching your children patience, you can learn how to love your child with patience.

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Parenting

To Persevere in Parenting

Choose Five days after I had my first child, Megan, I hemorrhaged and lost so much blood I had to be readmitted to the hospital for several days for surgery and a blood transfusion. Because of those complications, coupled with my heart condition, a second birth would be dangerous, so before we could have another child, we had to weigh the risks. When we felt it was time to have another baby, we intentionally made the choice, despite the risks, to have Emily. Eventually we chose to have a third child, Mark Jr., and again I hemorrhaged. The doctor then advised us that we should be thankful for our three healthy children and should avoid future pregnancies. Ten years went by, and there was no growth in our family number—until we decided to adopt two children. It was an intentional choice to expand our family.

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Parenting

Mom-To-Be Princess Kate: Will She Be Royally Overwhelmed?

Lately, I have been royally overwhelmed. It seems as if I have had so much to do for so long that I have lost my way in the maze of kids, husband, travel, book, work and just emergencies of one sort or another. For the first time since I had Emily (baby #2, otherwise known as the one who didn’t sleep for 8 months) I feel as if I am in a fog. I wake up tired and I go to bed with my brain in overdrive resisting sleep because of a relentless urge to make sense of the to-do list still undone. Lately, Princess Kate is in almost every magazine in my grocery check-out line. She has a demanding calendar. I couldn’t help wondering if she gets royally overwhelmed. And then I thought, yikes, I hope not because she’s about to add a baby to her agenda. Sigh. Poor Kate, she’s going to be tired. As a new mom with the demands of a more than full-time job and a husband devoted to his serving the entire country how will she maintain balance? How will she find time to bond privately with her baby and serve publicly? …

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Parenting

Building Patience

There are lots of reasons why a mom can lose her patience. I know because I lose mine all the time! I have learned through much failure that if I analyze why I lose it, I can take preventative action, overcome impatience, and exercise more patience. So here are the top five reasons why most I lose my patience, and five ways to build patience…

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Parenting

Love Your Child More by Pondering

This lesson is one that is an ongoing struggle for me. I am so easily distracted and over-committed that finding time to actually ponder requires super human restraint (and I have not yet found my super powers). Ponder is defined as: to think about something carefully, especially before making a decision or reaching a conclusion. As a mom I make decisions every day for my child–some big, some small. For the big decisions it is crucial that I ponder and pray before I conclude. This is the job of a passionate mom–to ponder everything she learns about her child so she can truly know her child. Do you add the bits of news and clues about your child’s life like puzzle pieces to your understanding so you can assemble a clear picture of what is going on in his or her life?

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Parenting

6 Things to Teach Your Child Before They Leave Home

My fourth graduated from high school last night. You would think I would have this down. But as I prepared to do this Daytime TV segment I realized, oops, I missed a few things. Good thing this one is a boy and little better at winging it! Learn to cook a healthy meal, and the cost eating out. Manage health and illness. Save and invest. Take care of your car. Learn to clean and do laundry. Have a healthy distrust of strangers.

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Parenting

4 Ways To Add Depth To Your Perception Of Your Child

Summer is the best time of year to slow down and really take a good, long, loving look at your child, your relationship and their future. To do so you will need to immerse yourself in their world and figure out what is transpiring in their head as they process life. Here are four ways you can add depth to your perception of your child…

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Parenting

Learn to Love Your Child with Passion

If you are here because of our iMOM Operation Summer Lovin’ for Moms and Kids–Welcome! This week the Operation Summer lesson to learn is about being passionate about our kids. I was and am passionate about loving, protecting, nurturing, and training my children. But in one particular case, I missed an opportunity to use my passion to nurture and train because I was unperceptive about what I needed to be passionate about. It was one of my bigger perception misses. I have a child…

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Parenting

2 Keys to Pondering About Your Child

Pondering takes selflessness, and selflessness takes self control. Those are the two keys to pondering that will help you overcome the 9 things that get in the way of pondering. Self-Control It takes self-control to put down a good book when a child comes in bored and wants to play a game. It takes self control to look up from Pinterest when your son walks in the door from school, or to get off the phone when your daughter needs help with homework. And it takes self-control to give up a party to help one of your kids with a school project or to cancel a tennis match to comfort a daughter who didn’t get asked to the prom. The great benefit of learning to exercise self-control is this: if you learn self-control, you will be better able to model it to your child. Self-control has another name: deferred gratification. Selflessness It takes self-control to be selfless. The job of motherhood is a selfless one, to be sure. Moms do not get days off unless they have a substitute, and substitutes are hard to come by and costly. Pondering takes selflessness. Selflessness is sacrificing what I want to do so I can do something …

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Parenting

My Adoption Story

I’ve always wanted to adopt. Adoption stories always drew my interest. But I think my desire began at age 15 while I was working with underprivileged kids. I had the hardest time sending home a boy named Jason every night. I just wasn’t ever sure what kind of condition he’d come back in. Mark and I had three children before our 6th wedding anniversary. I still wanted to adopt. Mark, however, didn’t quite share my desire. We did, after all, have three healthy children. I think it is that way for a lot of people. You’re either very passionate about adoption, or it just doesn’t quite register. I failed at several attempts to interest him. To be honest, failing is putting it mildly. I took him to some adoption classes, listened to various adoption stories, and that convinced him we definitely shouldn’t adopt. Plan B kicked in – I prayed for the Lord to take action. I believed it was possible. I shared with my sister that the Lord was going to have to drop a child in my lap. A year later, she called on the phone and asked me to go look out my living room window. I said why? …

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