WELCOME!
What does it mean to parent by faith?
To me, it means to have:
FAITH in our ability to learn how to parent well.
FAITH in our kids and joy in the personalities God has given them.
FAITH in God and His ability to help us raise healthy, productive, joy-filled and faith-filled kids.
I sincerely hope I can help you do just that, and that we learn from each other along the way!
Laurie
This short personality quiz is excerpted from Delight in Your Child’s Design by Laurie Winslow Sargent, and was contributed by Kim Miller, Laurie’s editor at Tyndale House.
In some ways, determining your child’s personality is an inexact science.She is likely a blend of more than one personality type. A child’s relationships and experiences also influence the way she behaves.
Still, it is helpful to get some sense of why your child acts the way she does. Try to answer the following questions to see if you can discern a pattern in your child’s behavior and help you understand and identify some of his or her strongest personality traits:
1. You can truthfully say, “I’d be a millionaire if only I could bottle and sell my child’s . . .”
a. optimism.
b. persistence.
c. kindness.
d. confidence.
2. Your son keeps you up until 2 a.m. the night before his school’s science fair because:
When children are in the hospital, it can be a frightening experience: not only for sick kids but also their parents. Some moms and dads are thrust into the foreign world of intensive care with the birth of a premature baby. Many parents with a baby in the hospital also have older children, so must make additional decisions about ways to help kids at home. If instead of a baby, it’s an older child who is sick, mom and dad must also decide how much to tell that child, preteen, or teen about his diagnosis and upcoming treatments.
Thankfully there is a wonderful new resource for parents of children with special needs. Different Dream Parenting: A Practical Guide to Raising a Child with Special Needs, by Jolene Philo (published by Discovery House) offers parents immediate support and practical help.
I’ve found so many great links so far this month, I want to be sure you don’t miss them! I tweeted about these via @LaurieSargent, Nov 1-17, 2011. If you’re on Twitter, you may not have caught them all. (Feel free to re-tweet any you like!) If you’re not on Twitter, these should all be fresh to you.
Be sure you catch the post about family photographer Me Rah Koh on television TODAY (2:00 Central Time), and the one on Operation Christmas Child, so you & your kids can get your box in in time this week to your local drop-off area.
Enjoy!
PHOTOGRAPHING KIDS
Enjoy these links to articles on the topics of: ADOPTION, SCIENCE, CHARITY, CHILD SAFETY, SPORTS, FAMILY AND FAITH: (Click to see full list plus links.)
Quite a few parents have asked me, “What qualifies as play?” as if there were one answer. One dictionary defines the word playful as:
“high spirits, gaiety, and humor in action or speech.”
Hmmm. Fun is a key element!
Do you have fun with your children? Do they have fun with you? And how do you do that?
Let’s look at one bunch of intriguing synonyms for play:
“. . . cut up, be the life of the party, play the fool, carry on.”
Playing the fool may be tough for you if you struggle with spontaneity. Yet it can be learned, and I believe it is worth learning. You don’t have to truly be a fool, but you can be willing to look a little silly on occasion in order to connect with others in a fun way. Silliness comes easier if you start with babies. Merely sticking a shoe on your head makes a baby laugh, because he’s learned just enough about the way the world works to know that sneakers make ridiculous hats.
One evening when my son Tyler was six months old, he was trying desperately hard to crawl, but just couldn’t get it. Instead, he flopped about like a fish out of water…
Photo by ppdigital
On ABC’s Supernanny episode with the Phelps family (Season 6: Episode 3) plenty made me cringe. However, one scene stuck in my head for days. Consequently I have a few thoughts on what Supernanny forgot to tell the Phelps.
In that scene, the mom repeatedly asked her child to clean up his toys. In a video shot of the floor, it looked as if every toy he owned covered it. Most moms can identify with that: Lego® blocks, mixed with action figures, mixed with who-knows-what. Aaack!
When the boy didn’t comply, Mom became enraged. Yelling and spanking didn’t work. Supernanny Jo’s suggestions, including the infamous Time Out (until the boy agreed to pick up his toys), plus anger management for Mom, helped some. Indeed, Mom had to handle her anger differently. And I’m all for time-outs, although effectiveness varies according to personalities (I’ll address that in my next post!).
Yet critically missing from Supernanny’s advice were tips on how to prevent the problem in the first place.
Photo by Karpati
Going stir-crazy? Cooped up? Need to get out of the house for a day with your small children?
Even in the smallest of towns, you can find things to do and people to meet through the following places. Here are 7 fun places to go with toddlers or preschoolers. Some of these places will seem ordinary to you, so may simply serve as reminders of places you haven’t been for awhile. But look too for tips within each place in the list.
1) Libraries often have story times for preschoolers (you can take your baby, too) as well as other, more elaborate programs. The library in one tiny town we lived in (2,000 residents) brought in jugglers and even live parrots! Many town libraries are connected to larger library systems that sponsor traveling programs. If you want to check out books, but find it too stressful perusing shelves while managing small children, visit the online catalog while your kids nap. You can pick up the books at the front desk when you go in for story time.
