As4Me

I’m rethinking our tradition of allowing jumping on the beds in hotels.
Awhile back, I heard of someone doing that, and I thought it was a fun way of discouraging jumping on the bed at home (which to be honest, has never been a large problem). We don’t let them jump on the bed for two [...]

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I found an excellent article on family vacations. It was written to fathers and husbands, but I found it quite challenging for myself. We spend much time preparing for a vacation: oil changed, laundry, house cleaned, finding ways to keep the children happy on a road trip. How about spending time preparing spiritually for the [...]

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Once again we drove home from California on a Sunday. I lost my purse, and we spent Saturday trying to find it with no success. So we packed up and left extra early Sunday morning, just in time to get to church in Phoenix suburbs. Last time we did this and found that it gave [...]

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Yesterday I noticed Bethel was getting clingy and irritable, and today I figured out why. David is her best friend, and the past week, he’s not played with her at all. Even though the cousins do play with her some, most of their games don’t interest her or make sense to her. I think she [...]

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One of the things that Lee and I talked briefly about is the difference between parenting at home, and parenting at Grandma’s house with cousins all around.
For one, our children watch more TV, play on the computer more, and play video games. They’ve done more of these activities in a week than they normally do [...]

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One of the great opportunities of travel is that you get a good idea of your strengths and weaknesses in how you are parenting. You see where you need more work, and where your instruction is paying off. Sometimes it is humiliating. Sometimes it is a time for giving thanks.
Today I took the children out [...]

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Making the Cross-Country drive was not as painful as it has been in times past. I have a few fairly short audio stories I’ve been saving for a trip, and Lee and I were both surprised at David’s ability to follow along. This is a new development. He still kept asking for clarification, but he [...]

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Today at the grocery store, both my older children kept touching food (e.g., dropping expensive peaches and pinching holes in ground beef packages), whining about something or another, and asking for food items. My youngest kept standing in the seat and crying when she was buckled in. At the checkout, I was embarrassed because I [...]

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Thinking about rights and bullies has started me inspecting my own life, and how often I help my children learn humility in this area. I think perhaps they do better than I do. In some areas, I think I’ve got this under control; in other areas, I think I could use more work. I’m most [...]

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Yesterday I mentioned I wasn’t happy with how I responded to a child who was bothering my daughter during storytime. Here is what I did: I quickly walked over to them, pulled his hand off my daughter, and said, “She asked you to stop poking her. Stop poking.” He got the message.
Afterwards, I finally figured [...]

Popularity: 17% [?]