Spring Cleaning Party!

My friend, Monique, pointed me in the direction of Simple Mom who is hosting a Spring Cleaning Party. I am a day late in starting, but I think it shouldn't be too hard to catch up. We are super busy doing lots of painting and renovating at my home, so the mess is driving me crazy! I'm going to do what I can. If your home needs a Spring Cleaning, I hope you'll join me. If it doesn't need cleaning, maybe you can start a blog and give the rest of us some good tips!

This Week's Parents' Review Article: Flower-Teaching

Photo Courtesy of Kinderash

I just love this time of year when each time I walk or drive around, I notice some new flower or green thing springing up. I thought it would be appropriateto sharpen our Mommy Brains this week by reading together the article Flower-Teaching by Dorothy Beale. We'll see you here on Thursday for a discussion.

Christine

Speaking of Great Parenting Advice

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Family Bickerings

This week, we are looking at the Parents' Review article entitled, "Family Bickerings" written by Leader Scott.

I don't know about you, but I was amazed the relevance of this article, written over 100 years ago, to the modern family -- at least it was very relevant to our family!

Scott is clear that bickering in the family leads to lost love and loosening of the family bond. While the quarrels of young children often centre around possessions or rights, if allowed to continue, they will simply become more sophisticated in adulthood. The 'heart issues' behind the quarrels will not go away as a child grows simply because he has gained in years.

The author points to moral training as the key. A few parents seem to know this is the case, but most don't. (I certainly didn't really think there was a whole lot I could do about it.) Scott says that a child's character contains everything necessary for the development of a host of good qualities, but depending on the training, each quality can become a virtue or it's opposite -- a vice. For example, "generosity may become either a Christian liberality, or a selfish wastefulness." (This reminds me of a family joke we have that puts a sarcastic 'positive' spin on greed. "Well, B, you were certainly very generous -- to yourself.") We make virtues grow by teaching a child to love others and vices by indulging the love of self.

According to Scott, family bickerings are caused by: 1. selfishness and 2. harsh judgment of others. He confirms my own experience the punishment in useless in changing bickering to harmony. Basically, he says indicates that virtues will only come forth with inspiration -- never by force.

A few practical points I enjoyed from the article:

• Keep your cool when children bicker. Avoiding your own anger, explain that the children's unhappy feelings are the natural result of being unkind to others.
• Inspire children with stories of goodness, of love and self-denial.
• A terrific parenting book I read said that, 'You get more of what you focus on'. In essence, this is what the author of this article is saying, too. He says that it is much better to tell a child that they love their sibling and should, therefore, share the snack with them than to say they are being greedy and should go away. I don't think we should ever point out negative qualities to our children, but inspiration is usually positive and the idea that we love someone is much more likely to inspire us to generosity than the idea that we are greedy. I often remind our that our children are friends and friends need to be good to each other. (Yes! A parenting star for me!)
  
• Offer children opportunities to practice sacrifice (but don't force acceptance) for a sibling. He gives the example of offering a child the opportunity to give up her 'turn' to go for a drive with mom in order to make a younger sibling happy. We are warned that the child will very often say, 'No' and we can simply respond by pointing out the happiness he has missed in giving a gift to another.
• Have a strict policy of not allowing children to criticize each other at all. Scott says that this will stop over half of all bickerings.
• Inspire your family with scriptures. There are a number of excellent ones in the article. Memorizing as a family ensures everyone is on the same page. I am going to add these ones into our regular memory rotation.

I found the author's approach to this subject very refreshing. I think, particularly, one idea that inspired me was that I don't have to constantly 'get to the bottom' of a quarrel. I can remember talking with a friend about this saying, "I just don't have the parenting skills to figure these things out -- to perform an inquisition each time there is a fight!" My friend, whose children generally get along quite well (certainly largely due to their excellent parenting) replied that she often just speaks to both children generally about treating others with love and respect. She asks them to think about whether they would like to be treated the way they had treated the other sibling.

Using family bickering as an opportunity to inspire our children to banish selfishness and cultivate generosity and self-sacrifice seems like the best possible character training 'program' in existence. Real life situations that arise in safe, family relationships are the perfect context. Good thing we have so many opportunities for character development here!

What were your thought about the article? Did you find some inspiring ideas for your family?

Whew. That was interesting.

Late Sunday afternoon, I was finally prepping my kitchen for a desperately needed paint job. I really dislike doing home renovations, so for me to get over the hurdle and begin a job like this involves a lot of effort. While I was busy wiping down walls with TSP, my three-year-old came into the house howling saying she had been hurt. Apparently, my 10-year-old son tied our wagon onto his bike and was pulling her around 'slowly'. (10yods and I have different definitions of 'slow'.) The wheel on the wagon buckled under, the wagon tipped and my daughter was flung out (of the slow-moving wagon).

I didn't like the way she was screaming and grabbing her neck. I am a non-worrier almost to a fault. Taking after my own dear mom, our kids have to practically have a limb fall off before I will take anyone to the doctor. However, when my child is screaming and grabbing her neck with no apparent injury on the outside, my mommy-antennae go up. We quickly decided she needed to go to the hospital. For a moment, I considered the fact that it is unwise to move someone with a neck or back injury, but decided we should go by car. However, our oldest daughter spoke out what I had been thinking, saying we should call an ambulance. She was right and I made the call.

The ambulance attendants were wonderful. Afterwards, my oldest daughter and I actually wondered if they send out specific people when they know there is a child hurt because they seemed to be so terrific with our little one.

While the attendants were checking her over, they became reassurred that there was no head or neck injury. However, as soon as they started to check her clavicle (collar bone), Steve and I both slapped our foreheads, "OH! Of course! The collarbone!" Our 5 year old daughter broke her collarbone when she was three and this daughter's behaviour was completely consistent with that injury.

We had a fun ride to the hospital in the ambulance. One attendant made our daughter a purple rooster by blowing up a glove and tying it off with medical tape. Upon arriving to the hospital, we were met by some lovely and reassuring nurses who were very sweet to our little injured girl. Shortly after, she saw the pediatrician who complimented her excellent verbal skills. "She is able to say just what is wrong, like an adult!" I think she is very articulate and speaks quite clearly, but I think what really makes a difference is that she is not shy. Any of our other children and the majority of three year olds will clam up when a stranger talks to them, particularly a male. However, our 3yo will just start chatting up a storm!

She was x-rayed and the break was confirmed. The doctor advised us that there was really no treatment necessary for a broken clavicle, but we could use a sling on her arm if that made her comfortable and give her pain meds. We were back home within 3 hours of her injury! (A medical miracle in itself.)

She had a pretty restful night, all things considered and required no pain medication after that first night. She is quite a little trooper, just going about her normal activities with her arm in a sling. She still has her hospital bracelet on. I'm not sure how I will get that off of her. I think she really likes it.

We'll see you tomorrow for a look at this week's Parents' Review article, "Family Bickerings".

This week's Parents' Review article: Family Bickerings

In continuing our 'mommy brain sharpening', this week, we will be reading the article entitled, Family Bickerings by Leader Scott. I will post my thoughts on Thursday and I hope you will post yours, too.

A Proud Knitting Achievement

I started knitting almost exactly two years ago. As I have said before, I hate relaxing. I find it very un-relaxing. Now, that doesn't mean I don't like to sit down. I just hate sitting there doing nothing. I am even wound up enough that during the first 24 hours after having a baby when the midwives force me to stay in bed and rest, I am dying to get up and at least go downstairs where all the action is! Knitting allows relaxing, for me, to be relaxing because I am being creative and productive while I am doing it.

Two years ago, I decided to learn to knit specifically so I could knit socks. Handknit socks are beautiful, useful and very portable. My purse almost always contains a small work-in-progress bag housing a pair of socks I am working on so that I can whip them out anytime I have a few minutes to fill. It makes unexpected waiting around very pleasant.

When I first started to learn to knit socks, I knit 'plain vanilla' (meaning just stockinette -- or for non-knitters, that means just straight knitting around and around) socks which were jazzed up by the use of self-striping sock yarn. Self-striping yarn changes colour all by itself giving the impression that you have done a whole lot of fancy colourwork. It is terrific for anyone, but particularly for beginners. Two years ago, I tried to learn everything I could about knitting socks. I used to look longingly at other people's complicated projects, sighing as I realized they were so far beyond me that I would probably never knit like that and would always just knit plain vanilla self-striping socks. I can remember, specifically, looking at several people's Twisted Flower socks such as these or these (this one is the designer's blog). I knew I would never be able to make them.

Well, guess what?! A few days ago, I finished up my very own pair of Twisted Flower Socks! And, after two years of knitting, I can honestly say they were a breeze. I didn't feel stressed out or even overly challenged while knitting them. I feel as if I have truly arrived in the sock knitting world. If you are a new knitter, I want to offer you a huge round of encouragement. It doesn't take long before you will be knitting things you never dreamed you could knit.

My very own Twisted Flower Socks

(For those who are interested, I knit these on 2.5mm needles, magic-loop, two-at-a-time, using KnitPicks Risata in the Dusk colourway. I really love the feel of the Risata yarn, which is a cotton/wool/elastic/nylon blend. It is very cushy feeling and my socks fit perfectly.)