From Herding Kittens To Getting Out The Door In The Morning In Peace

I'm going to confess something to you: I am a poor manager of my time. I drive my husband crazy because I can't seem to get ready on time, and having three children did not help me become any more punctual. We lived in a house five minutes from school and my girls still had an embarrassing number of tardies. Shame on mama. Not to mention that my older daughter, who already was an anxious little thing, would always ask, no matter where we were going, "Mama, are we late?" And that I was growing tired of feeling frantic, and wanted to say sweet, encouraging things to my kids in the morning to send them off on their way besides "Hurry! Hurry!" Something had to give. Two years later, which included a long term subbing position at the school, a new baby, and a move further out of town, I am happy to say that we are on time every day. I don't tell my kids to hurry. And best of all, our mornings are peaceful, which means my kids generally head into school with smiles and a spring in their step, so I'm going to share some of our systems with you. Your kids deserve to have a happy start to their day, too, and it doesn't take more work from you, so you can take a breath and relax! 1. It starts with the clock. Figure out how much time it actually takes to get up, get ready, eat breakfast, pack lunches, load into the car, and complete your drive to school. Then set the alarm accordingly. I need a 10 minute cushion to snooze, so I add that in and set my alarm ten minutes earlier than I actually want to step out of bed. My girls also have an alarm clock for themselves, and must get up to it. If not, I come in with a spray bottle of water. I have only had to do that once! 2. We start getting ready the day before. When the kids complete their homework, it gets signed and then they put everything back in their backpacks and hang them up on the hooks by their door. Their coats and gloves are also hanging there, right where they placed them when they got home from school. Their shoes are in their own bins in the front closet, easy to locate and match before heading out the door, right where they put them when they got home from school. Their clothes are often already chosen and placed in a stack in their room, ready to dress in the morning without having to spend time making decisions, which is difficult enough for two young girls! Please notice that I am not doing this! I trained them, over a period of weeks with reminders, to put things where they belong so that they are in the right spot when they need them next. This is a life skill, and it is never too early to train kids to put things away where they belong! Toddlerhood is the best time, but if you are having to start now, a daily inspection, followed by lots of praise when they get it right and gentle guidance when they don't, is usually enough to get them on track. 3. I set them up for success in the kitchen. When I clean up dinner, I often put favorite leftovers into small containers and set them in the front of the fridge so the kids can grab them for lunches in the morning. I keep a plastic bin on a low shelf with all the small containers and lids they need to pour snack-size portions of cereal, fish crackers, pretzels, etc. On another low shelf I have the snack basket, which I stock with granola bars, baggies of cereal, crackers, and other dry foods they might want for breakfast or to pack in their lunches. In the fridge, again on a low shelf, there are fruit cups, yogurt, string cheese, lunch meat, sugar snap peas, and other things they like to eat at school. In the cabinets, the peanut butter and bread are within their reach. This has all been planned out with one goal in mind: my kids need to be able to pack their own lunches. For most of last year, I was nursing a baby, and it was incredibly helpful for my other children to be able to help themselves in the morning. I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before! What I love now is the cooperation I see in the morning between them, as one child sometimes fills both lunch bags with snacks and the other takes care of the waffles in the toaster. Not only are they learning to be independent, but also to look out for and be considerate of each other. Meanwhile, I can feed the toddler and dress him, write notes to put in their lunches, and inspect their lunches to make sure they are packing veggies, protein, etc. and not just three different kinds of breakfast cereal. 4. I changed my language. When my kids were smaller, we had a list that a teacher sent home that hung on the front door knob. It had cute little pictures of a backpack, shoes, clothes, a toothbrush, and so on for asking if all of those tasks had been completed before heading out the door. It was perfect, and so helpful for the little ones, but my big girls eventually became offended that I would ask them to check the pictures before leaving the house. And I am avoiding saying "Hurry! Hurry!" My girls still need gentle reminders to keep moving forward, but now they sound like this: "What do you still need to do?" or "What time is it, ladies?" They check themselves, or the clock, and keep moving. Granted, some mornings need a little more forceful prodding if we had a little too much fun the night before, and my gentle voice turns to "Shoes!" "Brush!" "Coat!" so we can make it out the door. But no yelling, and no hurrying. That's my personal goal. 5. I embraced who my family is. We need to have a cushion of time to hit the snooze once. We need to have some things ready the night before because only the seven-year-old is really a morning person. You might not need to do these things, but knowing who your family is and what they need to get moving with happy hearts in the morning is the jumping-off point for any system that will work for you. Whether you need to set your clocks earlier than the actual time, or tell yourself it takes longer to get somewhere than it really does, or wear your pajamas to drop your kids off, I'm not judging. In fact, I have done all of the above. But figure out what it will take, and then set everyone up for success, including yourself. Proverbs 31:27-28 says, "She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her." My kids may not be sitting in the car calling me Blessed, but they are no longer asking, "Mama, are we late?" **Sometimes people ask my husband and I about our parenting, because we have kids who are usually obedient and fun to be around. We are doing the best we can by the grace of God, we often make mistakes, and there is no formula for a perfect family. That being said, we also do some deliberate things to try set ourselves and our kids up for success. We try to use the Bible as our authority, common sense, and the advice of wise people God has placed around us. We believe that we need to look long term in our parenting toward the kind of people we would like our children to be one day when they are grown, people who love and serve God and the people around them. I also read a lot of books about parenting, and I'll give you the titles of two of my absolute favorites: Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes in You and Your Kids by Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller; and On Becoming Childwise: Parenting Your Child from Three to Seven Years by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam. We have certainly not arrived, but we are on a journey. God bless you as you pursue Him on your own parenting journey!

Missing Diamonds and Having Hope

I may have told you about my ring before, but it's a story that bears retelling, and I feel like it's time to tell you again. Do you ever get in a funk, feeling like you are stuck in a rut? Frustrated that that you have lots of friends but still can't get someone to come over for dinner? Or your friends are in different places in their lives and schedules just don't match up? Or you are lonely and don't have close friends in this season of your life? I'm an outgoing, social person, a "Tigger" personality, and it's hard for me to deal with being alone. It usually happens when my husband is on the night shift, when I look around on a Friday night and think, I have lots of friends. Where are they? On a fun family trip, or home with their own spouse, or too tired from their own busy week to do anything. Poor me, right? Suddenly I'm telling myself I have no friends, like a moody twelve-year-old girl, and there I am, in a funk. It's a pit I just dug for myself and then flung myself into, and I ought to know better, because my history is a minefield of these pits. They are dug by moments of self-doubt, self-pity, always because my focus is on myself in that moment. How can I get out of the pit? The opposite of digging a hole would be building something up, and the opposite of keeping my eyes on myself would be having perspective, zooming out, seeing the panoramic view of my life. The solution is stacking up the memories of when God provided for me and my family, looking back through my history and choosing to see those altar moments instead of the pits. God's people used to stack stones up in a heap to build an altar in remembrance of those moments when God provided for them in an unmistakable way, so they could walk by it later and remember that God came through for them in the past and would do it again in the future. Those altars, those stacked stones, brought hope. Our pastor talked about this very thing on Sunday, confirming in my heart that I needed to share it with you. He shared Psalm 77:11-12, "I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds." He also shared Psalm 37:25, "I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." I can look back through my life and see all the times that felt frustrating or even hopeless, and remember that God came through for me and my family each time, so that we always were provided for: a place to live because a landlord agreed to accept less rent, money for bills that arrived in an envelope from people we barely knew, a job that provided for our family just in time after one was taken away, friends for our family after a time of loneliness. During a particularly difficult time in our family's history, my husband bought me a beautiful ring with my daughter's birthstone at the center and some tiny diamonds on the sides. Two days later, one of the diamonds fell out, and I asked him to take it back to the jeweler and have them fix it, since it happened so quickly. He never did take it back in, and my frustration with him gradually gave way to understanding, as I saw how much he was hurting at the time over outside circumstances, and I had to let it go. God came through for our family in an incredible way very soon after that, and we were able to sell our house quickly instead of foreclosing, a new job was provided, and we began a new life in Washington. I began to see that missing diamond not as a flaw that needed fixing, but as a reminder of that time when everything felt broken and hopeless, but we were still provided for and God sent just what we needed. That missing diamond is still my stack of stones, and I have shared that story with my daughters, with friends, and now with you to give you hope. Whether it's a time of loneliness, financial trouble, sickness, a hurting spouse, or any other difficulty, don't dig a pit to sit in. Build a stack of stones out of those memories of God coming through for you, and dwell in a place of hope instead. "Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer (stone of help), saying "Thus far has the Lord helped us." 1 Samuel 7:12, NIV.