After reading a couple of other blogs and looking at my life, I decided I wanted a new schedule. I am really leaning towards homeschooling my kids next year and I need something that will work for our family. Plus, I've noticed that my kids, and truthfully myself, do better with some kind of routine. So, over Spring Break last week I decided to try something new. I've been reading about working with the kids and wanted a better way to make this work, so I decided that we would have breakfast and then work until our noon meal. Because most of my children are still fairly young I either worked with them or near them. We went through the house systematically and got a room finished before moving on, or until stopping to eat. After our noon meal there was a short "quiet time" period where the baby was supposed to take a nap (that didn't always happen) and after that we had free time where the kids could do whatever they chose. If the weather was decent enough they went outside and rode their bikes or played. If it was too cold or windy or rainy (or all three) then they read books or played make-believe. After dinner we would often do some fun family activity.
So that was the plan. For the most part it worked fairly well. My husband was home quite a bit of this week with a pinched nerve in his back, and so that kinda threw things off a bit. The kids just act different when Daddy is around. Overall, though, we got a lot accomplished. The kids did well with learning to put things away and it also made it a little easier to put their books and toys away knowing that they were going to get to play with them later. I got "help" doing a lot of the housework. I'm sure I could have done it faster on my own, but knowing the kids were helping me was a whole lot better than wondering what they were messing up while I was cleaning up. One day we washed walls, and that was hard. Little arms were getting sore and it was pretty boring. We learned singing songs while we worked helped it to go by faster. The best part, my house has stayed tidier for longer. We still have quite a ways to go because quite frankly, I'm lazy, but we are working on it.
I also tried to make our noon meal the big meal of the day. It's supposed to be healthier for you that way. This worked okay. I would get up and we'd have a pretty good breakfast, not really big, but good. I'd cook for lunch what I'd normally make for dinner. But then I wasn't sure what to have for dinner. That is where the problems came in. So, we would often end up making something heavier than I would have really liked. I would have been fine with a salad and smoothie, but the rest of my family wasn't keen on the idea. Some days they will eat salad, but not very much and the smoothie by itself wasn't enough. We also could only eat leftovers so many times before they wanted something new. I still love the idea of the big meal at noon. Maybe I could just do sandwiches or quesadillas for dinner?
I know a lot of moms (and kids) that just go crazy over spring break because they don't know what to do, but I felt like we all had a lot of fun. We had a plan, we had work and we had play. We didn't go anywhere special or do anything extra ordinary, but our ordinary days took on meaning and having a clean house made it a nicer place to be. I definitely want to use this during the summer. I am still using parts of it now. I am trying to discipline myself to work in the morning so that I can rest and play with my kids in the afternoon. I feel better when I do this, and the kids seem happier, which makes life at home a lot more pleasant. Do you have a schedule for your day?
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Why Staying Home is Important to Me
So why do I think it's so important to stay at home with my kids? Well, I think many of the problems facing us today are because of the breakdown of the family. Home is supposed to be a safe place where you have people who love you. It should be stable where the rules are enforced for the good of everyone. Yes, I said rules. A safe home has strict guidelines that keep the people there safe. Home is where you first learn that hitting is not okay and if you use language that is inappropriate you may get your mouth washed out. Home is the place where when you got your feelings hurt by someone saying something mean to you, you could come home and feel loved and know that your worth does not depend on what someone else said on the playground.
I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago. I had moved to a new town and one of my friends was helping to direct a school play. A couple of weeks into it one of the main characters quit and suddenly they were a person short. She did some character shifting and asked me if I would come in and do a small part in the play. I said sure. What I saw when I showed up shocked me. Kids were missing their cues right and left. Backstage they were talking and joking, but definitely not paying attention. They were not listening to the director, or her assistant. The worst part to me, a couple of members of the cast were teachers! Instead of lending support to the director and encouraging the kids to pay attention, they were standing around talking or doing nothing. Now, you don't have to take over for the director to help encourage someone to pay better attention. I saw young adults who had very little respect for authority and I saw adults who did not know how to instill or inspire that respect in their pupils. What happened here? I'll tell you what I did. I gave a lecture. I told the kids that I had never participated in a play where such disrespect was shown. I had never been in one where so far along and kids were still using scripts and consistently missing their cues. If this had been my high school when I was growing up then the director would have either canceled the play, or at the very least pushed it back. I could not believe the disrespect that they were showing the director and assistant director, and I told them so. It seemed like they took some of my words to heart because things did get better and the play went off okay. I learned a lot during those couple of weeks, though.
What does this have to do with mothers staying home? My parent's taught me to respect authority, even if you don't agree with it, respect it. It made me wonder how many of those kids had mothers at home with them when they were learning the core values of right and wrong and how to show respect to others. Or were their moms at work? I know that there are circumstances where both parents need to work outside the home, but there are a lot of "things" that we could do without to have better children and let a mom stay home. Another "better" car, cable t.v., a closet full of nice clothes, a room full of educational toys may all be nice things, and sometimes we think they are necessary things, but what is the true cost? I've heard time and again how little kids are more excited about the box that a toy came in than the toy itself, so even if it does teach them their colors and numbers, do they really need it? Wouldn't it be more fun for both of you, and less expensive, if you went and looked through a picture book and counted the puppies or named the colors of the flowers? Bonus, child is learning all of that, spending time with you, and growing more secure and confident all at the same time. Plus, it's good for adults to stop and count the flowers once in a while.
I also wonder what has happened to our society where adults don't teach, and expect, respect from children? There are some wonderful adults out there who do know how to get respect, but so many times I've seen kids walk all over adults. I've heard kids sass their parents, and not get punished for it. I've seen kids walk out of classrooms with the teacher doing next to nothing about it. Some of these same kids are those who grow up and when they get fired from a job for not listening to their boss they wonder what happened and moan about how life is so unfair for them and their boss was just unreasonable.
I know a lot of good moms who give up a lot of things once they have children. I have friends all over the place who have decided to stay home. Some want to give their kids all that they had growing up, some want to give their kids what they never had growing up, and some want to do a little of both. One thing that is common for all of these moms is that they love their kids. They want the best for their kids and they want to be the one there to teach them, to love them, and to make sure that they are being taken care of.
I think by staying home and creating the kind of environment where kids can grow into honest, hardworking people I am helping society. I believe that the more kids who have stable home environments, who have mother and father around who love them and take care of them, who have these good role models, the better our world will be. The more families there are who have both parents at home, the fewer problems kids have with drugs, sex and violence. The more times a child sees and connects with their parents the fewer their chances are that they will get into trouble. It's not always perfect, kids each get to grow up and make their own choices, but if given direction and teaching early in life they can avoid a lot of hard times later.
I want to always be there for my kids. I want to create the kind of home where they learn right from wrong. A home where they learn that honesty is the best policy and where my girls learn how to be good wives and mothers and my boy learns to be a good gentleman. I want to teach my girls to let gentlemen open doors for them and to be gracious when they do. I want to teach my son to hold the door open for ladies and girls. I want to teach my kids the Christian values that I grew up with and believe in. Values like don't steal, cheat, or swear. Be honest in you dealings with other people. Wait until you get married to have sex. Treat others with respect. I want them to learn about hard work and how the best things in life take time and lots of work. Along with teaching them, it helps to remind me. The best things in life are worth working for, but they often take time and effort. A diamond takes thousands of years to make and is under intense heat and pressure. A good person is often the same way. They have to grow up, they face pressures to see if they will hold to their standards, they will have to face growing up, but in the end an honest, hardworking person is someone that people can count on and that is the person that you want to work for you. That is the kind of people I hope to raise. That is the kind of person I hope to be.
I know that I haven't explained myself as well as I would have liked. My thoughts always sound better in my head. I truly believe, though, that my kids will benefit from me being home with them. Yes, we may not have as many "things" as if I was out working and bringing in an income, but some things can't be bought. Time is a precious commodity and I choose to spend as much of it with my kids as I can.
I had an interesting experience a couple of years ago. I had moved to a new town and one of my friends was helping to direct a school play. A couple of weeks into it one of the main characters quit and suddenly they were a person short. She did some character shifting and asked me if I would come in and do a small part in the play. I said sure. What I saw when I showed up shocked me. Kids were missing their cues right and left. Backstage they were talking and joking, but definitely not paying attention. They were not listening to the director, or her assistant. The worst part to me, a couple of members of the cast were teachers! Instead of lending support to the director and encouraging the kids to pay attention, they were standing around talking or doing nothing. Now, you don't have to take over for the director to help encourage someone to pay better attention. I saw young adults who had very little respect for authority and I saw adults who did not know how to instill or inspire that respect in their pupils. What happened here? I'll tell you what I did. I gave a lecture. I told the kids that I had never participated in a play where such disrespect was shown. I had never been in one where so far along and kids were still using scripts and consistently missing their cues. If this had been my high school when I was growing up then the director would have either canceled the play, or at the very least pushed it back. I could not believe the disrespect that they were showing the director and assistant director, and I told them so. It seemed like they took some of my words to heart because things did get better and the play went off okay. I learned a lot during those couple of weeks, though.
What does this have to do with mothers staying home? My parent's taught me to respect authority, even if you don't agree with it, respect it. It made me wonder how many of those kids had mothers at home with them when they were learning the core values of right and wrong and how to show respect to others. Or were their moms at work? I know that there are circumstances where both parents need to work outside the home, but there are a lot of "things" that we could do without to have better children and let a mom stay home. Another "better" car, cable t.v., a closet full of nice clothes, a room full of educational toys may all be nice things, and sometimes we think they are necessary things, but what is the true cost? I've heard time and again how little kids are more excited about the box that a toy came in than the toy itself, so even if it does teach them their colors and numbers, do they really need it? Wouldn't it be more fun for both of you, and less expensive, if you went and looked through a picture book and counted the puppies or named the colors of the flowers? Bonus, child is learning all of that, spending time with you, and growing more secure and confident all at the same time. Plus, it's good for adults to stop and count the flowers once in a while.
I also wonder what has happened to our society where adults don't teach, and expect, respect from children? There are some wonderful adults out there who do know how to get respect, but so many times I've seen kids walk all over adults. I've heard kids sass their parents, and not get punished for it. I've seen kids walk out of classrooms with the teacher doing next to nothing about it. Some of these same kids are those who grow up and when they get fired from a job for not listening to their boss they wonder what happened and moan about how life is so unfair for them and their boss was just unreasonable.
I know a lot of good moms who give up a lot of things once they have children. I have friends all over the place who have decided to stay home. Some want to give their kids all that they had growing up, some want to give their kids what they never had growing up, and some want to do a little of both. One thing that is common for all of these moms is that they love their kids. They want the best for their kids and they want to be the one there to teach them, to love them, and to make sure that they are being taken care of.
I think by staying home and creating the kind of environment where kids can grow into honest, hardworking people I am helping society. I believe that the more kids who have stable home environments, who have mother and father around who love them and take care of them, who have these good role models, the better our world will be. The more families there are who have both parents at home, the fewer problems kids have with drugs, sex and violence. The more times a child sees and connects with their parents the fewer their chances are that they will get into trouble. It's not always perfect, kids each get to grow up and make their own choices, but if given direction and teaching early in life they can avoid a lot of hard times later.
I want to always be there for my kids. I want to create the kind of home where they learn right from wrong. A home where they learn that honesty is the best policy and where my girls learn how to be good wives and mothers and my boy learns to be a good gentleman. I want to teach my girls to let gentlemen open doors for them and to be gracious when they do. I want to teach my son to hold the door open for ladies and girls. I want to teach my kids the Christian values that I grew up with and believe in. Values like don't steal, cheat, or swear. Be honest in you dealings with other people. Wait until you get married to have sex. Treat others with respect. I want them to learn about hard work and how the best things in life take time and lots of work. Along with teaching them, it helps to remind me. The best things in life are worth working for, but they often take time and effort. A diamond takes thousands of years to make and is under intense heat and pressure. A good person is often the same way. They have to grow up, they face pressures to see if they will hold to their standards, they will have to face growing up, but in the end an honest, hardworking person is someone that people can count on and that is the person that you want to work for you. That is the kind of people I hope to raise. That is the kind of person I hope to be.
I know that I haven't explained myself as well as I would have liked. My thoughts always sound better in my head. I truly believe, though, that my kids will benefit from me being home with them. Yes, we may not have as many "things" as if I was out working and bringing in an income, but some things can't be bought. Time is a precious commodity and I choose to spend as much of it with my kids as I can.
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