For future reference

There are times when I think 'I must remember to teach my Princess that when she is older. These things are a bit complex for a three year old mind but I think about how important it is to teach life lessons to my young ones.
For example: Advertising- I feel I need to talk to my daughters about the tricks of the ad agencies. We were listening to a song the other day and I thought 'when I hear this song it makes me feel sad. I must remember to talk to Princess about how music can effect the way we feel'.

Or another example is the way shop entice you to buy they products by the way they present their products. I remember walking into a petrol station having to buy my petrol and first I had to walk pass the magazine rack, then an ice-cream display (when on a hot day how easy would it be just to simply reach in and grab one without losing my place in the line) and then there is the ultimate test- all the chocolates and lollies. If I find this difficult to walk pass all these things how difficult in turn is it for a three year old to understand when all of these things are put WITHIN her reach then why can't she have them.

Life is full of trials and tests, I just pray that I can help to prepare my girls for these.

Life at 3

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/life/

This is a very interesting series. I remember catching it when the life at 1 was first done. It follows 11 kiddies and their families discussing different issues. I remember watching the stress issue for the 1 year old. Last night they spoke about childhood obesity and its factors.
They were:
1. Genetics- obviously if mum and/or dad are over weight then there is a great chance that a child could be challenged with this trait.

2. The socio-economic area which the child lives. This was for different factors, availability to healthy food, safe environment to play outside, what peers would be eating and doing.

3. The influence of the father. It mentions that even though mum might be an excellent example of getting plenty of exercise it is dad that is a major influence.


The one next week is about behaviour, which I look forward to. It sounds terrible but sometimes I need to know that my three year old behaviour is acceptable, no, maybe I should aim higher and hope that her behaviour is considered well behaved (fingers crossed). It is funny that in most social circles we always try to 'out do' others stories. If your child is good for doing abc then my child one ups it by doing xyz. But it happens the same with bad behaviour, I think in this case we look for the sympathy vote, who has the most embarrassing, naughty tantrum throwing toddler. Of course I (like most parents) feel like my child could win both.

Anyway enjoy the show or at least the website.

A new day

Some days we are going to do alot worse than good. Some days we are going to fail as parents. We are going to end the day feeling why was I given charge of this/these beautiful child/ren when all I do is going to fail them. Sometimes we might punish them before understanding the whole situation or we may not hold them to the behaviour standard that we have set and their behaviour has then got out of control. There is so many things we can do to 'mess up' our precious little ones, we are responsible for such a great yet difficult task in bringing up our children with love, discipline and wisdom and when we know we have failed at the end of one day what can we do?

We have a decision to make.
Do we throw up our hands and say 'I' just can't do this'?
Do we think 'I'm too tired to keep this up, I'll just stop them doing the bad stuff and let them get away with the rest'?
Do we say to ourselves 'I'll just make sure I love them and God will look after the rest'?
Or do we let go of the past (be it a day, or the whole of our lives) and go forth and love our children, discipline our children and teach them all about God and the wisdom He has.
Do we remind ourselves that God was the one who blessed us with these children and He would never give us a challenge that we couldn't handle.

When you have a bad day, when you are feeling down or worst a failure.
Remember tomorrow is a New Day:)

Who doesn't like

I haven't written in a while as I have been getting ready for my "baby's" birthday.
And the one thing I wanted to share was how nice it is to do special things for our children. For me I really wanted to start a new tradition in our family. It was that my husband bring our daughter pink flowers for her birthday. It is something that can be done each year and as she grows up it would be something that would come to mean something more and more. Unfortunately the florist was shut by the time hubby left work but Lord willing it will be something to keep in mind for next year.

I got this idea from a book which talked alot about having family traditions. Some families take a Christmas portrait, others take a bike ride on a Saturday afternoon, others go camping at Easter. It is really something that your children can look back upon and remember these things as special times in their lives. Establishing family traditions can also be establishing our legacy. Something that can be pasted down from children to grandchildren.

I encourage you to think about making traditions for your family. It doesn't have to be done often, maybe just a yearly occurrence. It doesn't matter what age your children are, if they are too young it is something you can tell them that you did when they are older. If they are older it can be a way of re-connecting with them. They may not want to give up their time but maybe it can be a tradition of sending them a text message at the start of the week telling them that you hope they have a great week.

Now is a great time to create traditions and begin new legacies.

Couch Time

I have tried to find a good definition of this online. But I was unhappy with many of the explanations as they were either very against the Ezzos or it was just explaining how wonderful it is but without an explanation.
Here is a simplistic explanation.
The objective of Couch Time is for your child/children to see the important of their parents marriage. It is also an opportunity for parents to spend some quality time together.
The Ezzos mention that couch time is done when the father gets home from work but in honesty this just wouldn't work for us as when Gorgeous Husband gets home from work he is ready for dinner as it is late and not long after that it is time for the girls bed. We figure that getting some couch time on the nights he is early or on the weekends is good because we can only do our best.
Some may wonder why not just have this time once the children have gone to bed but it is important for your children to witness that mum has put aside her work and Dad has put aside his work and that they are going to spend time with each other.
Some regulations that Ezzo puts on couch time is that
1. It is not time to discuss bad things that children have done through the day- children are in earshot and they don't need to think it is the time of day where mum and dad get together to complain about them.
2. Children are meant to be able to be/play by themselves and not interrupt this special time, except in an emergency.


3. Do not discuss topics that is going to cause a great deal of conflict.



The Ezzo put an importance on couch time because they also feel it is important that children do not grow up in a child focused family. Children are a part of the family not the focus of it. Children that grow up in child focused families have trouble coping in the adult world when employers, friends and teachers do not act like they are the 'cleverest boy in the whole wide world'.

Set an Example

"We can say no to our children's frivolous requests. We can explain our reasons. We can pontificate about the evils of materialism. We can discuss the difference between a "need" and a "want"...But we'll never truly convince them to be content with what they have unless we're willing to practice what we preach..."
1. Focus on things that have eternal value rather than fleeting attraction. Hebrews 13:5 tells us to keep our lives free from the love of money and be content with what we have because God has promised us that He will never leave us nor forsake us.
2.Give to others who are in need.
3. Take care of what you have. Practice good stewardship of the nice things we have been given.
Begin by making the the right choice for yourself. Your kids are watching. Live the life you want them to emulate.
This post has been taken from Happily Ever After and 21 other myths about family life
Karen Scalf Linamen

Being in the world but not of the world

How do we keep our children PURE and yet let them have friends.
The other day we were at the park and there was a bunch of children, obviously from a local football team having a bbq together. Watching the children I noticed that they were separated into different groups. One lot of boys were off playing football together, another group were playing on the playground equipment and another pair of boys would sulk along on the edge of the largest group in the playground. A few incidents happened that left me feeling a little deflated.
1. The two boys when they thought I couldn't hear them were teasing my two year old daughter about her t-shirt that said "I love Dad". Maybe they were uncomfortable that she was staring at them to get them to get off the swings so she could have a go but I just didn't get how children could pick on a child so much younger then themselves.

2. The group playing on the playground equipment were playing a rough game and one boy got injured. I had no idea as to which child was responsible but what was crazy was that about 4 or 5 boys just up and ran away saying 'it wasn't me, I'm getting out of here'. One girl offered him a free ride next turn but it was strange that no one seemed to comfort him.

I know that there is a lot of personal history and reasons as to why each of these children acted the way they did but it certainly shocked me and made me wonder how are my daughters going to be behaving in another 5-9 years on. How will they treat people?
It is never to early to teach children about being loving to all of God's creation and it is never too late to teach children that they are apart of God's creation and that they need to act accordingly.

Teaching new things

I was thinking about what and how I went about teaching my daughter new things. It always excites me when I see someone teaching their child about a new thing or new skill. This is a list and an order of things that I used when teaching my daughter. It did help that she was talking reasonably early so I was encouraged when I was getting feedback.

1. Animals- simply that a cow it says moo

2. Foods, Clothing, everyday items.

3.Colours- Lots of questions and statements. E.g Look at the beautiful blue sky. Next day Look at the beautiful sky, what colour is the sky?

4. Shapes- Squares, triangles, circles, diamonds, rectangles, hearts, stars, oval(egg), crescents (moon) I would sit down with her and draw them a lot.

5. Counting. We didn't really deal with what numerals looked like at this stage but I would imagine some children could pick it up now.

6. Singing- Mostly nursery rhymes this lead to abc song. We started off with shorter songs. Twinkle Twinkle was first, then ba ba. I would just keep singing them and singing them to her and then one day she would just start singing them along with me and then she would tell me to stop as she wanted to sing them for herself. I mostly found that singing was a great way to improve memory and speech.


7. This is where we are at now and it is drawing. We are trying to draw different shapes such a squares and circles and triangles. We use them to draw faces e.g

8. Next using the knowledge of drawing lines and circles we will start trying to recognise and then draw letters and then numerals.

This has been my current plan but I am sure I have left out a lot. Any other ideas as to what you have used would be greatly appreciated.

This is only an academic side of things which I suppose is more what I understand. I do know one sticks to their strengths but it means we often miss things like the physical, the mechanical, the imagination and lots of other things. It is certainly hard to get out of our own comfort zones to encourage our kids in all areas of life. Who knows maybe we will find out that things we didn't like as children might be more fun as an adult. Watch out Monkey Bars.

If you want your children to improve, let them overhear the nice things you say about them to others.
Haim Ginott


Can you just imagine the child just out of shot.
Mother: Well Mrs Willis, I can not tell you how much I appreciate (insert name) he was such a help to me this morning. He put his own dishes into the dishwasher this morning. He is growing to be such a big help to me.

One aside, I have also heard a very similar quote but it replaces children with husbands.

Why yes its another blog

This blog is to be dedicated to raising and enjoying my children.
Some posts will be about great new games we have learnt or craft or fun activities we can play with our children.
Some posts will be information that has struck or provoked a thought about raising my children. After all how can I enjoy my children if I don't raise them to be enjoyable, both to myself as well as others.
And some posts make be a simple thought for the day, maybe a quote or a bible verse about children and their training.
I do not hold to any particular author, child educator, or teacher so please bear that in mind for when I use a quote from someone it does NOT mean that I agree or esteem their opinions. I will be taking each particular quote for face value.

All that being said I would love for you to share some ideas about how you enjoy your children too.