The Busy Parent's Guide To Bringing Up A Child In The Lord

I wanted to call this The Lazy Person's Guide, but then I got real with myself and admitted that I'm not lazy.  Overwhelmed?  Occasionally, yes.  Tired?  Sure, who isn't.  But mostly just busy.  Busy all the time.  There are probably a dozen things I should be doing right now instead of blogging and those dozen things will get done after I finish here and before I start the NEXT dozen things on the list - the list that never goes away, never ends, never even seems to shorten some days.  (That list, by the way, is called life.  I always thought other people just got their lists done - now I realize no one is done.  Just one giant cosmic hamster wheel.)

Anyway, you get the point.  But I'm also a Christian and our family is raising children and this brings up the issue of what to do in order to, as some people phrase it, 'bring up a child in the Lord'.  To train them in the Christian faith, to school them in what it all means, to rid them of false ideas they pick up like a boat picks up seaweed and replace that nonsense with truth - how can I do that, being, as I am, so busy?

Well, obviously the first step is to WANT to do it.  To prioritize doing such a thing, which we do.  If I have time to read one story and I have a choice between two books, I will try to choose the one that will start a Godly conversation, or has a good moral to it over the latest Barbie Princess whatever.  If I have some time alone with a child, say on a walk, I will turn the conversation towards God.  If someone hits someone else, I'll use the opportunity to bring up how we treat each other.  It's all about catching your chances to bring faith into the everyday.

But what else can someone do?  Well, we started by introducing grace at supper, and have progressed to grace before any meal.  It isn't always heartfelt, but it is said.  We pray before bed, as well, and I try to make certain that that time we go a little more in depth.  How?  Well, I ask a lot of questions.  'Is there any person you want to pray for?  Is there anything on your mind?  What about so-and-so - since they are sick.'  The questions are meant to be a starting off point for thinking outside of ourselves.

I also make sure the children see and hear me pray.  I know this is a challenge for a lot of people, and praying out loud was for me as well, for many years.  In fact I still don't like it.  But I do it, and I have gotten more comfortable at it.  I pray aloud for them at bedtime, listing good things they have done and thanking God for those pleasant and loving aspects of their spirits, and then asking for Christ's help in improving those areas that could use improvement.  I also pray for myself in their presence - that I would be patient and loving and kind.

Beyond those rather obvious ideas, my main technique is to constantly surround them with as much Christian good influence as I can.  Not all Christian influence is good, but I pick and choose and do my best.  We listen to Christian music in the car while we're driving, and I sing along.  We buy cds for when we aren't anywhere near a radio station (we live in the middle of nowhere).  We listen to Christian music at home as well, but it's more of a car thing for me; at home I prefer to put on the classical station.  If they ask for a movie or a show I will offer something with good morals first.  Not that they watch anything not good as a rule but instead of a junky cartoon, for example.  To this end we've bought a lot of Christian children's shows and older shows.  We love The Andy Griffith Show.  I buy them books and stickerbooks with a Christian theme.  Not all the time, but often.

We also try to talk a lot about our faith throughout the day.  "Daddy's at the church!  What's Daddy's job?"  "Do you remember when we read this passage in church?  What did it mean?"  Or if a child brings up the topic (which happens a lot) "Oh that's interesting!  Let's look in the Bible and see what it says."

So there you go.  Since the children are homeschooled I probably *should* do some sort of more formal Bible study program, but as I said - busy.  Too busy to teach the Bible, just to live it.

Let me know what you do.

Frugal Accomplishments This Week

Inspired by The Prudent Homemaker blog, here are the things I did last week to be frugal and save money!

I aimed for a 'zero food waste' week and managed to only throw out one bag of kale that I forgot about in the back of the fridge.

I went through the children's clothing and pulled out the stained and ripped stuff to dispose of - but first I cut squares of fabric from them for the girls' quilts.

I rooted a bunch of green onions to get a second crop from the same bunch.

I did what I could to remove some stains from a blouse my daughter wears to church and had a good deal of success.

I was diligent in keeping the heat low and the lights turned off when I could.

I bought lemons on sale for a very good price and used some sugar from the last sale to make five jars of marmalade.  Each jar cost just under a dollar, excluding the jars which I already own.

I like to keep track of the things I do to save us money and still give us a full and happy life - maybe posting these on the blog will help.

A list of things to be thankful for, plus music.

It was a day of running around after a few days of more intentional schooling.  We tried a new math program this week and I was so ridiculous, accidentally printing off all these pages I never ended up needing.  Sigh.  There was a lot of back and forth second guessing before I took the jump and actually printed them, too. Should I?  Should I try something like this?  It's a spiral learning technique - do I like that idea?  Do I want to *make* my own workbooks?  Do I want to USE workbooks?  etc. etc.  It's so easy to second guess yourself at this stage of the teaching at home game.  I've done it, albeit with a very very relaxed approach, for two years now but I've never really REALLY thought in depth about curriculum and so forth.  What am I going for?

It ended up being such a teaching moment for me.  We did the lessons on the new curriculum that I had printed (oh, the printing, I can't let it go) and I wasn't sure and I wasn't sure and the backing and forthing, and then the clouds lifted.  Everything just became quiet and simple and I realized I needed to focus on the outcome.  What am I aiming for, here, in all of this teaching?  What is the point of it all?  And things have just been so much more streamlined.

And it's funny but peace and simplicity has just gone into so many other parts of life in the past few days.  The old cloth diapers I was hanging on to - I found myself discussing them with a friend and I said "you know, the new ones are so much better.  I'm so glad I bought these when the baby was born" and I thought 'why am I holding on to the old ones, then?  Why?'  So those will be finding a new home this week.  And David and I were chatting in the car and agreed that there was no reason to keep our stroller - why are we keeping it?  It's been falling apart for years now and the baby will not sit in it next summer I guarantee you, so it should go.  Really it should, and it should take its friend the broken stroller in the garage with it.

In the car I was listening to some beautiful music and it is in my heart right where all the fuss had been.

Purging!

I woke up early this morning, way too early (thank you, small people in my life, for ensuring I never miss a sunrise) but I tried to make the best of it by purging some of the children's clothes.  A big pile gone now, mostly of baby stuff.  Clothing in this house has a tendency to get a stain and then continue to rotate through the wash-dry-put away cycle over and over again.  Anyway, a bit less of all of that after this morning.  And then since I was on a role, and up anyway, I re-organized the homeschool cupboard as well.  All the workbooks that were being stored in other places are nice and neat and in the cupboard.  I've started a list of Things I Will Need For September, but you can probably guess that I'm a fairly minimalist homeschooler.  The list will be small.

And hey, since we're purging, why not feed everyone the collection of leftovers!

Homeschool Update

Here we are, at the end of January, so I guess I might as well do some sort of an update about how homeschool is going, although it really isn't anything thrilling at this point.

Mostly what seems to be happening is we're reading aloud a lot, plus trying to incorporate a daily math lesson, and some weekly art.  On top of that we talk a lot about all sorts of things.  What the difference is between perpendicular and vertical.  Coniferous trees.  The birds at our feeders.  Oh yes, we made bird feeders! Today we did math with skittles - grouping them into piles.  We watch nature shows and read about things that interest us.  The boy got a great book for Christmas - Julia Rothman's Nature Anatomy.  Such fun and a bit hit around here.

We were doing a storytime at the library once a week, but that has ended.  We still try to go to playgroup once a week.  We practice our letters and play games.  It's pretty low key and gentle at this stage.

In the fall I'll have a first grader and a junior kindergarten student and it will be a whole 'nother ball game.  I'm already trying to decide on curriculum and writing a scope and sequence and daily schedule.  I'll share them with you once they're all done.

In the meantime we're going to go look at the birds out the window.

Sickness

We've been thinking about having a cold over here for a while now and this morning it really hit us.  Full on pajamas on the sofa and lots of sleeping.  And we had to go to the church, the children and I, to switch all the Christmas decorations around to winter ones (blue and silver, mostly).  But I think children need to get out of the house anyway, even if they're sick.  The endless energy must go somewhere.

Sick time means chicken soup and blankets.  It means hot lemon and honey and warm baths and clean sheets on all the beds.  It is comfort and sleeping.  And hopefully it means getting better quickly.

I suck at blogging

Sigh.  And again.  I just cannot seem to recover from that blogging slump that started up when I discovered I was pregnant with the baby.  Ahem; the baby is now 19 months old and not really a baby, actually.  More like a tornado of energy and destruction.  Well, bear with me anyway friends.

So we're holding on through the winter and it isn't quite as bad as it was last year because this year the really cold weather didn't even start until January, compared to last winter when it started sometime in November and was still going strong into April.  That almost killed my will to live.  This year is better - I don't mind the winter from January thing.

Right now we're in the home stretch to achieve our big ministry goal - David's ordination.  If you've been following us through the journey then you'll know this is several years in the coming and we've worked our buns off for it.  Both of us.  All of us, actually, the children included.  We've all had to deal with David's extended absences because of required classes being held far away from home.  We've had to shoulder a lot of responsibility to get work done, as well as the financial strain of paying for seven courses last year and three this year, not to mention the travel. Last November he had to drive twelve hours just to GET to class.  That's a lot of gas.  And now we're down to the final push.  If the district board of ministerial development approves him this spring then he will be ordained at district conference this summer and all of our hard work will be worth it.

I'm incredibly excited about this but also treading really cautiously because we're not there yet.  David still has to finish the three courses this year (he has just over two months to finish all three courses, one of which can take some students up to six months to finish regularly) and then there is a final week away from us, this time in Michigan state for the in class work for two of the courses, and then receiving our date for the DBMD and taking some of our precious vacation time to travel (plus praying the old car will make it) to wherever that is and hopefully the final class grades will be in by then and the meeting goes smoothly and everything is approved.  Then there's the actual ordination, which after everything we've been through the past few years feels like the easy part.

At least we have everything paid for.  So there's that.