Five Quick Parenting Tips: How to serve your family without losing yourself.

Reclaim your time

It is easy to be swept up in caring for others. Families are busy and the demands on parents is constant. Sometimes the demands of others seem to steal the hours away from us - but it doesn't have to be that way. Here are five things you can do today to reclaim your time and better service your family without losing yourself. 

How to reclaim your time:

1. Be organized. Think of organization on a continuum. As a parent you must have flexibility to respond to others needs. At the same time you frequently have small batched of time you can utilize if you are organized. For example, can you sort the mail daily and respond without it piling up? This only worked for me when once I set aside stamps, envelopes, pen, return labels and my checkbook in a drawer together. Otherwise, I spent too much time each day looking for a pen. 

2. Don't distract yourself. It is easy to distract ourselves with screens whenever we can. When you finally have a minute to pause, take that minute to breathe and think, not just click and scroll.

3. Prioritize. Decide each week what is essential and what is ideal, then protect the essential and strive to incorporate the ideal. If it is essential that you pray for 5 minutes in the morning, protect that time. If it is essential that you hit the grocery store Monday morning or attend an important meeting then make it happen. If you really want to have coffee with a friend, schedule it, and build the rest of your time around that appointment. If you have to cancel, be sure to reschedule right away. Thinking wistfully about doing something won’t get you there. Take the small steps to make the important things happen.

4. Use your quiet time carefully. Separate your tasks into things you can do with others around (fold laundry, wash dishes), and things you need quiet time to do (read, pray, respond to calls or emails). Use your quiet time for the things that you do better or more efficiently when you are not distracted. Using your quiet time carefully enables you to be more present to your family when they want attention.

5. Work towards a simple routine. This helps your family to better anticipate when you are and are not available. My family knows I am awake at 6, but not responsive until I come downstairs closer to 645. They know I do my weekly planning on Sunday. They know I am usually in the kitchen from 5-630 each night looking for company and conversation. Even young children can learn the best time to come to you for snuggles or reading time or conversation based on your schedule not their impulses.

We all have just 24 hours in a day and we all have a responsibility to be better stewards of the time we are given. 

Being at home with the family can be personally taxing as the demands seem constant. With intentionality and purpose though you can still serve with love and devotion, and maintain some semblance of self and you grow through your vocation.  

“We must take all the care that God wishes to take about perfecting ourselves, 

and yet leave the care of arriving at perfection entirely to God” .

- St. Francis de Sales

Thanks for stopping by!

 Tips for a Happy Summer

We all want our kids to be happy, but as you enter into the summer months and have more contact with your children, I want to encourage you to help them learn and grow this summer by letting them be just a little unhappy.  

Sometimes we need a happiness reset. 

We have a tendency (called hedonic adaptation) to return to a happy-midpoint emotionally. This means that if we experience the same awesome event repeatedly, after a while it doesn't seem as awesome. We experience less pleasure from that same event. We then seek even greater pleasure to just feel the same level of happiness we felt before. A period of boredom, although generally not pleasant, will help your kids to more fully appreciate the fun parts of their day or week.  

Boredom has two components: low arousal and dissatisfaction. You can help your children to be more tolerant of boredom by building into your day times of low simulation (no screens, family prayer time, alone time), and by occasionally saying no to their requests.  Letting your children be bored is not the same thing as simply checking out and disengaging from them all day long. 

I am a huge supporter of planning and intentionality in family life. Each summer has looked dramatically different based on the kids' ages and our travel plans, but one thing that has helped is having some loose schedules posted in a central place. This can be a weekly or a daily schedule or both and I have examples in previous blogs (here and here). But I want to get you to think about providing structure when you create your schedule rather than over programming the children. Structure means having quiet time each day vs having a set time that they must read a specific book. Or building in some crafty creative time vs you planning and teaching a specific craft. When you schedule, you give them an idea for the flow of the day, you don't necessarily entertain them all day long. 

One area that is fairly structured in our home is meals. We typically have one wake up time and in previous years I make a decent breakfast for them. I do this because it will keep them from parading through the kitchen all morning and it gives them a good start. The key is consistency. Either make breakfast, or leave it up to them. But be consistent about it and provide some time frame for their meals. Breakfast 9ish,  lunch 12ish, snack 3ish and dinner 6ish works well for us. Getting everyone eating and sleeping in sync helps me escape the summer title of short-order-cook.

By providing a loose schedule, regular meal times, giving them a chance to be bored and saying no to their every demand, you all can have a happier healthier home this summer. If you have enjoyed these tips for a happy summer please share it with others!

Thanks for stopping by!

You Earned This

You earned this consequence. 

She looked at me with tears rolling down her cheeks "but maaaaaaaammm this is soooooo unfaaaaaaair." Repeatedly we seem to be having the same conversation, or echoes of the same conversation. And inevitably it ends with me being unfair.

I whispered to my husband who sat quietly nearby pretending not to listen.

 

"Am I on track here?" 

"Yes".

I keep coming back to the notion that punishments are not arbitrarily dealt in our home. Consequences are not given - they are earned through behavior. They are a predictable response. When words fail to bring about the necessary correction, we reach a point where continuing to talk won’t suffice. 

There is a bit of cognitive behavioral theory at work here. The mind is both incredibly complicated and also fairly simple as well. When we offer a reward for certain behavior, we are encouraging that behavior. Similarly we can encourage a behavior by taking away some negative stimuli. When we take away a pleasurable thing, we are discouraging the behavior. By giving a punishment or painful response, we also discourage the behavior. 

It is important to talk about things, but talking doesn’t always change the behavior as desired. As parents, we need to exert the least about of force in order to elicit the proper response in the child, because ultimately we do want the child’s internal motivation for good to do most of the work. Their hedonistic tendencies and poor executive functioning means we sometimes need to step in and add some external motivators for behavior. All of this is happening in a time when we are striving to connect and relate to a loved one who is naturally pulling away from us and forming their own concepts of who they are. 

No doubt my daughter will remember this consequence into her adult years. With God’s grace she will remember it as the time when she realized mom and dad really meant what they said, and not remember it in some other distorted way. A parent’s words, promises, rules, and standards should be upheld. Children push, test, and stress those ideas to see if they will stand. Our job is to show them that we are reliable. We mean what we say. We are consistent and intentional about our parenting. We won’t be swayed when we are on the proper path. 

As My Oldest grabbed his keys and headed to the door for school he simply said, “You guys are doing the right thing. I still remember when you took away my play station for a month”.

I don’t feel great about the situation. Although I have peace, my heart hurts that her heart is hurting. I know I would feel guilt if I just let her off the hook. My job is to help her grow, not to coddle her, lower our standards, and let her be the comfortable version of herself. I want her to be the best version of herself, which requires hard work and perseverance. 

Raising teens is hard. I am finding more and more with my daughters especially that I need to keep praying for spiritual detachment. I cannot parent them with the primary goal of receiving their love and affection. That is both ineffective and disordered. I must parent them with the goal of helping them and myself to grow in goodness. 

Holiness is the objective, not friendship. 

For more on motivation theory and how it can help inform your parenting practices read this post (here). 

How to Raise a Reader: Five easy things all parents can do

A few years back, I wrote a blog post with some tips on how to teach your child to read (available here). I still love that post, but now that I am homeschooling my 8 year old, I realize even more clearly that teaching your child to read is only the first step. Helping them develop a love of literature is something different all together.  I alluded to this fact in the initial post, but now that I am in the trenches with a reluctant reader, I wanted to revisit the research and add a bit to the discussion.  Here are my five tips for helping your child develop an appreciation for literature.  In short, here is how you can help raise a reader.

1) Model Reading.  If you spend your day on electronics and your evenings in front of the TV, don’t be surprised when your children want to do the same thing. You are showing them what you value. If however, you regularly read books, discuss them with friends and family members, and have them around the house, you are showing your children that reading is an important thing to do with your time. Make literature part of your family culture. 

2) Escape in a Book Together. Children’s books can sometimes be simplistic especially for bright children. Take on a more challenging author together, and let them relax and escape to the sound of your voice reading good literature. There are some good middle-school level books that will engage both you and your child. This will also give you something to share, something to talk about, and some quality, low-pressure time together. If your child doesn’t want to sit, don’t make them. Active children may need to move or color while you read. That is okay too. Now that my older children are in High School, we are enjoying reading some of the same books (just at different times). It has given me a renewed appreciation of the classics, as well as an appreciation of how hard they work to get through some of the tougher works. 

3) Materials Matter.  Let them choose their own books. My four children all have different favorite books, and different favorite genres. Let them choose what they read; don’t force it. If they hate mystery, try animal stories, or historical fiction, or nonfiction, or children’s classics, or adventures, or sports… get my point? Let them find their niche and don’t be judgmental about it. Starting a book and then deciding not to finish it is not a sin. The world is full of other literary choices. 

4) Eliminate the Competition. When given the option, many children would prefer to watch TV or play video games or run outside rather than settle down with a book. Eliminate the other options. Build reading time into your schedule. If they want to just sit quietly with a book on their lap not reading, then that is okay too. You can’t force them. But if they have an interesting book at their reading level, they will probably crack it open and dive into the story.

5) Motivate Them.  With some of my little ones, we have needed to institute a 1:1 (or 1:2 rule). You can have 1 minute of electronics for every 1 minute of reading.  We found a small, timer bookmark recently and are using that with my youngest now. She sets the timer and can keep track of her time with the book. 

In our busy, distracted culture, developing a love of reading is not likely to happen on accident. It takes intentionality to cultivate an appreciation of literature. 

If your child is still struggling to read by the third or fourth grade, talk with her teacher or the pediatrician. She may need a different approach to instruction and internalization of the processes required for reading, before she can really enjoy a good book. 

Happy reading & thanks for stopping by!

Compressing as a Remedy for Stressing

Sometimes when a muscle or joint is super tight a therapist, rather than stretching the area, will compress it in order to get it to relax. It seems counter intuitive, but it works to help that area to relax. The other night I found myself in one of those parenting moments of heightened anxiety. Maybe it was the storm outside, or the cancelation of practices (I am horrible with changes to the schedule), maybe it was the soundtrack of our life with the thump - thump - thump of the ball against the wall and the chatter of the girls interrupted by thunder outside…regardless, I found myself in the kitchen barely keeping it together.  I took deep breathes and tried to show prudence in my response to the little loves and their requests, all the while feeling a constriction in my entire torso.  I was at that moment that I just gave in. I gave into the tightness and stress and confusion in the schedule. Rather than continuing to stretch myself I constricted. I turned inward. I grabbed my rosary and went room to room asking each of the kids at home if they wanted to join me for the rosary. Right now.  In the dinning room. I sat with my 13 year old and we just prayed. And as promised a peace came over us and over the home. There are three things in this situation which were bold and new for me.

1) I prayed in a very public space.
2) I invited the kids to join me instead either demanding it, or hiding from them.
3) I added something sacred during a time of day when I typically was simply responding to the needs of others.

Let me tell you that in moments of intense frustration, I rarely have the wisdom to turn to prayer. But just as it is counter intuitive to compress a muscle that needs to be stretched, when we are stretched beyond what we think we can tolerate, we too must compress, and rest in the Lord. And sometimes that means adding something to an already full or overwhelming situation. Rather than stripping away tasks on the list, sometimes we need to add prayer to the top.

Running Away

I ran away tonight.

Full retreat. Glass of ice water in my hand.

Everyone was having fun. No one was listening.  We were trying to get the kitchen cleaned up and everyone (but me) was having an awesome time.  My husband had taken Anna to wash her feet after getting bit by an ant, and I was alone with 3 joyful but disobedient kids. I was the only one working and this was THEIR responsibility in the first place.

So I ran away.  They protested at first, knowing now that I wasn't there to help it would take much longer.  But I was done.

"I am leaving. You are on your own to clean this all up. 

Dishes unloaded, reloaded, counters wiped, trash taken out".  

They protested just enough and then they just cranked up the music and got it done.  It took them a good 20 minutes but they were happy.  Dad joined them to loosely oversee and the laughter echoed down the hall.  It lightened my heart but also made me a little sad.

Sometimes I just need to get out of the way.  I need to let them succeed or fail. I need to step back and let them have fun serving joyfully in their own way.

I wish I could be The Mom who doesn't micromanage.  After a week of planning and managing people and time schedules and curriculums for Vacation Bible School, this first day at home I am trying to step back and just relax, but it is tough. I wish I could be more fun and in-the-moment. But I am really afraid if I did that my kids would NEVER get to bed, my husband and I would NEVER get any alone time, and my house would look and smell like a toxic-waste dump.

Sodality: How I came to be a "Church Lady"

For a few years, now a dear friend of mine has been inviting me to the Ladies Sodality meeting at our church.  This ministry has been together for almost 66 years (which is a long time for our fairly new church) and serves the parish and community in a variety of ways.  I spoke to the ministry as a guest when I started the Mom's Ministry and again when I helped get our Women's Study program up and going at our parish.   

But becoming a member? The meetings were nice, and the ladies were lovely, but the description of the ministry didn't sound all that appealing: 

Women of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel who are above the age of sixteen and registered in the parish interested in serving our parish through hospitality and fellowship in a variety of ways. This year Sodality celebrates 64 years at OLMC; our volunteers host bake sales – raising money for the parish Easter candle and an annual scholarship for one young woman graduating from OLMC and attending Catholic high school; cleaning the Sacristy Friday mornings; washing and ironing small table linens; making baptismal bibs; and providing delicious refreshments for RCIA and other parish programs and events.

All I read was bake, clean, wash, iron, sew, bake again.  And all I could think - 

 I already have those jobs. 

I don't want them in my free-time too.  

But my friend kept inviting me and I kept coming.  And slowly Our Mother worked on my heart and opened my eyes.  

First of all the description of the group is lacking.  If I were to describe this ministry it would be as such:

Women of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel who are above the age of sixteen and registered in the parish are invited to join our parishes longest running ministry. The Sodality is a lifelong commitment to join the Army of Our Blessed Mother Mary.  A multi-age group, we are a community of women who meet regularly for community building, fellowship, food, and prayer.  We care for the needs of the parish and larger community though our personal service, through our prayer groups, and by raising funds for the church (for items such as the Easter Candle, as well as for incidental gifts such as student scholarships).  

The ministry is not about washing and cleaning, although those tasks do need to be accomplished at every parish.  

Rather, Sodality is a group of people striving to be holy.  The word sodality actually means Union of prayer, or fellwoship  or friendship. These women in our parish's sodality are single, married, young and old.  Some have children others do not.  But we all share a devotion to Our Blessed Mother and God's Holy Church.  Sodality members have been saints and even popes, but mostly they are people just like us.

I have wondered a bit what took me so long to say yes to this ministry and officially become a "Church Lady".  


And it is pride.  

At our parish this ministry has a reputation of being a group for the old ladies - you know - the "Church Lady" played by Dana Carvey on SNL. Hilarious, but not something I want to be.  

After attending for a while I found myself asking -why wouldn't I join? These are awesome and holy women whose ages span from teens to 90 years olds.     

During the induction ceremony (yes I got "jumped in" by the ladies), I had to commit to strive to be a woman of virtue, who practiced Faith, Hope, and Charity.  I am to be held accountable for my actions to Our Mother, and to these women for life.  They will serve as mentors and guides as I navigate my own path to holiness, and someday perhaps I will be able to follow their lead and grow to be a worthy mentor myself.  

We meet one Saturday morning each month... won't you consider joining us?

What is stopping you right now? What is holding you back from taking that next step on your journey to Christ? Have you invited others to join you on your journey? Ask today, ask tomorrow, and keep asking.  Someday we will say yes!  

Thanks for stopping by to think with me!

Looking to motivate your kids? A parent's look at motivation theory

Motivation Theory

The term motivation refers to that which energizes, directs, or sustains behavior (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2002).  Different people are motivated by different things.   Need for affiliation, need for approval and achievement motivation are the three big ones.   Motivation can be internal (intrinsic) or external (extrinsic) in source.

Let's set these two terms in the context of chores - something kids traditionally aren't motivated to do!

Intrinsic motivation is often driven by a natural curiosity, a need for cognitive consistency, or high achievement motivation (excellence for its own sake), a strong sense of self-determination, or valuing competence.  For a child who is intrinsically motivated, she may do chores because she loves tidying things, or values having a clean area, or likes working along side her parent”.   You can promote intrinsic motivation by focusing on the satisfaction, enjoyment, or pride that comes from the success in doing the task.   Targeting your child's self-efficacy can help, as children are more motivated to do that which they think they will be successful in doing. 

A child who is externally motivated on the other hand,

Part Two in the Allowance Debate: The work for money approach

Welcome back.  Just as a recap, my family did not pay us for chores, but rather provided us with an allowance.  We had chores that were not optional, and we did not get paid for these.  I covered all that and gave a quick review of motivation research in the last post.     This post is the story of my husband's family's approach and the merging of two very different attitudes towards chores and allowance. 

Part One of the Allowance Debate: NOT paying your kids for chores

One issue that seems to be hotly contested, is the idea behind paying kids for chores, versus just giving them an allowance.  Kids can start doing chores when they are really young.  And really they SHOULD be doing chores when they are little, because then it is just part of the family culture.  You don't have to suddenly ask them to do these horrible thing - work.  Chores are more than just help around the house.  Chores help kids develop self-worth through work.  Whether they are compensated for those chores influence how they relate to money and work as adults.