Everyday Life
Yesterday was a typical day at our house, aside from all the chores that go along with getting ready for a weekend trip with the family to the coast. We still had our Thursday responsibilities of school work, cleaning, projects, organization chores, and practicing music in addition to meal planning, grocery shopping, loading and preparing the RV. After getting through with the morning errands,(before the little boys naps), we unloaded and got right into school. While some kids were working away at Handwriting and Spelling, the little guys tumbled on the tumbling mat, while I worked on the piano with my eight year old son. If any of you have taken piano or had a child take lessons for 3-4 years you know that there can be moments of frustration. Especially when a “younger female sibling” can do a particular part and he “can’t.”
I am sure that if you had siblings, you can recall a time in your life when you felt these similar emotions and frustrations; as a parent, maybe you can relate to having dealt with similar tensions within your home. I was sharing with my husband last night about this awesome opportunity I had for teaching with Austin, and he encouraged me to share it with you. So this week I will be posting probably three posts on separate topics in regards to parenting. All the posts will relate to this particular experience I had with Austin, my eight year old, at the piano the other day.
Over the years we have had many young people come to our home, and “flatter” our children on their behavior and attitudes of respect. They often ask us parents, “what do you do with your kids?” Since this is such a broad topic and really there isn’t any ONE thing any parent can do to “create” good kids… I thought I would share a glimpse into our daily life, so you can see the type of conversations I have with my kids.
I am NOT a perfect parent, by any means of the word, but I am trying my best to follow God’s example he gives for us parents to follow.
I try value my children, enjoy my children and work on relationships (even though it gets ugly at times). I take everything somewhat seriously (which I am personally working on), but that helps me to see sin for what it is~ SIN. My own sin and my children’s sin.
I am excited to start this new series which I will call Purposeful Parenting.
I hope that as I share transparently, that you will be encouraged and challenged. I am excited to share not just concepts that need to be applied in parenting but a real life example and the conversational process and interaction that occurred because of it. I believe strongly that good mentoring happens when people are real and transparent. One of Leaving a Legacy’s missions is to be a place of virtual mentoring for parents.
If you are not a parent yet, or a parent of younger children.
I hope that this series gets you thinking about how you were raised; and what you will do as a parent. If you weren’t really “parented”… asking the Father of All to teach you how to be a good father or mother, is a good first step. Getting a Mentor and or reading good books is a great idea as well. When parenting, you can try to be prepared, honestly a lot of parenting is reactionary, your habits will affect how patient you are with your children. Your personality, core values, up bringing, generational sins, selfishly indulgent (or not) lifestyle, all help to create your habits of dealing with conflict. When you are married and have children, you have more sinful people living together, so you have more sin, more potential for conflict.
May God be Glorified in our Mess,
Angie
