Mommy's toolbox--Preschool and Kindergarten

Some folks have been asking questions that I hope this "rerun" will help answer.

My carpet tells the truth about me.

In the room that holds the tiniest little girls, there is actually lettering, with reversals, written in permanent marker scrawled in the middle of the floor. I'm confident they will disappear with some alcohol and scrubbing, but I just haven't felt up to it.

We got rid of a set of wooden bunk beds last year that were over 20 years old. As we took them apart, we found the names of our older children scratched, often with misspellings, all over each board.

We have to check under the cushions of our bar stools periodically for discarded sandwiches, etc. that someone may have slipped away hoping to dishonestly earn some dessert.

I have to check in corners and under beds for clean clothing and toys that were stuffed in order to avoid some "work". Sometimes I might find a half-eaten candy bar or half-empty can of pop that was hidden because the perpetrator was discovered before they could finish off the "booty".

Raising children is not easy. There is very little "science" to it at all. Even after all these years and all these children, there is no way I could narrow it all down to a few paragraphs or even a few libraries filled with volume upon volume. Children misbehave, and they destroy things that are nice and meant for their pleasure and comfort. They yell and cry at all of the wrong times, and they are messy and often smell bad. If you care at all about them, you will have to work, work, and work some more to raise them right.

But they are wonderful, and they are worth it.

There are some reading this that are slinging it out right now. Having three little folks under five years of age, and then throwing in an illness or two, takes a lot of life.

Then, when parents decide to home school, the pressure mounts up. Not to mention that most other home schooling families look like they have it all together--they home birth and grow all their own food and never eat bread from the store, decorate and even change their sheets once a week! These pictures are not the reality, of course, but if we allow them our own illusions about the lives of others will chase us and hound us.

We have been conditioned to believe that children need to have formal schooling as early as possible, or they will become "behind". When I was young, preschool was something that was being toyed with, and now it is almost considered a necessity.

But preschool and Kindergarten are not necessary for the educational development of children. These two "grades" were formulated because it is understood that the sooner a child becomes institutionalized, that is, pulled away from his parents, the more easily the propaganda of the culture is accepted, and the more easily the influence of parents is rejected. Preschool is little more than playing and learning institutional obedience. Kindergarten is not much above that.

When I decided to keep my first daughter home, my first inclination was not to formally "do" anything--just live life and let her develop and see how things went. But a well-meaning relative, one who already was sure I had jumped off the dock and was headed for the abyss, insisted on buying my first year's curriculum.

When the box came I was excited. I loved flipping through the colorful texts and wanted to get started right away.

It wasn't long before I was quite frustrated. The babies kept getting into everything or crying or the phone would ring. Worst of all, my daughter hated the materials and didn't catch on like she was supposed to. What an awful mess it was!

Then I would get pregnant and sick, and the whole thing would seem to shut down for a while, except that it was in these times that things actually progressed. The children would then have fun just drawing and playing Lego's and exploring. Since I was pretty sedentary, I would read novels aloud to them--Little House on the Prairie, Old Yeller, and the like. It was during these times that I would research and find out that I could relax.

And so I would like to offer some simple suggestions for those with many children up to age seven:

• Don't be afraid. You taught your child how to walk and talk, and reading isn't that complicated. Take the pressure off and you will do much better.

• Have these supplies on hand: Paper, scissors, glue, crayons, a cheap watercolor set (these items will cost you less than ten dollars during the "back to school" sales), some home-made salt dough, some picture books from the library or thrift store and a good set of phonics flash cards and number cards.

• Invest in a child gate. This is good to keep the kids "corralled" so that the mess they make is localized, instead of letting them have free reign over the whole house so that you never feel as though you can get anything accomplished!

• Keep food simple. We used to eat just two different breakfasts and lunches every day. The kids never got tired of them--and I always knew what to fix!

• Have a stash of snacks for yourself. I learned this after I went through a time of being about 10lbs underweight. I would feed the kids and then forget to eat!

• A good book to have on hand that will teach you how to teach reading is Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. My kids usually get tired of this book by lesson 50, but it lays a great foundation for more advanced reading.

• The outward-focused life is for another season.

• Have paper, pencils and crayons always available, with parameters set up to prevent waste. One way I have done this is to tear my sheets of paper into quarters, and in this way if they make one scribble and decide to move on, the whole sheet is not wasted.

• Save the messier supplies for "special" times. This preserves you and your house.

• Have daily "quiet time" after lunch and clean up--do this for your marriage as well as your own health.

• Keep media to a minimum. I don't allow computer time to children this age at all. Television (they don't watch cable or networks) is only for special times.

• Read aloud daily, if at all possible. Even if it is the same book over and over. I think I have Green Eggs and Ham memorized almost completely.

• Answering questions is about the best thing you can do. You are the walking book that a child refers to whenever he is puzzled. Count it as a privilege!

• Use the necessary errands of life as learning experiences. Tell them stories about your childhood and God and sing together in the car. Teach them how to behave in public. Explain things to them as you are doing them so that they will feel included and important to you.

• Teach them how to tie, whistle, blow bubbles, hopscotch, ride a bike, fold a towel. These are both fun and inexpensive activities and help them to develop the fine motor skills necessary for all the other stuff.
  

If you just live and love your child, he will gain a much better education than he could ever receive during these years in some institutional setting or with some formal curriculum at home. It's not "parental perfection" but loving response that is key here.

Mommy's toolbox--large family myth busters

We are all praying for the dear Duggar family, especially concerning the recent and premature birth of their 19th baby. While looking online for an update on the situation, I came across an article trying to deal "objectively" with the subject of life in a large family. A lot of what was presented in the article was attributed to expert opinion (medical doctors and psychologists were quoted) as well as personal anecdotes from adults who grew up in large families.

How many times have I heard the same horror stories, the same accusations, the same fears from so many different sources?

First of all, I don't know about you, but I am not made up of steel. I am flesh, and I am emotions, and I have a sinful tendency to doubt God's care for me. So when others place in front of me all sorts of reasons to go back and reasses what I thought before was God's calling, it can stumble me--sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for longer.

In the end, the folks who are saying these things are only agents, they may be normally loving, supporting and life-giving, but they slip up just as we all do, and they may have been fed huey all their lives and aren't aware of another way of thinking. I have had to learn to look at discouragement and fear from the perspective of source; the enemy of God is at the heart of it all.

But God's truth is greater, although it may be harder to see it through the filters of this world; our own mindset, the preconceived assumptions and ignorance we all suffer from.

Here is some truth that encourages and strengthens me.

1. God is the Author of life. He is the Boss of bosses, He is the creator, the "Visionary", if you will. This truth trumps all others for me.

If God is in control, and He is the Ultimate Lover of mankind, then He has a plan. All of this funky "family planning" is nothing but part of the big lie that the devil gave us--that God is keeping something from us all, and within this lie is the understanding that He is a dullard when it comes to population projection.

If God is who we say He is on Sunday morning (one popular song on the radio and in almost all American churches contains the line "God of all creation"), then why isn't He the same God when we look at how many children we should have, how they will be provided for, how they will each affect the earth?

In the worldview of the Bible, the earth exists for mankind, the earth needs mankind. The idea that this planet could do a lot better without humans is not Godly, it is not even smart, and it will usher in great suffering and violence.

2. Children in large families are not neglected or underprivileged. I must have heard every horror story that exists concerning children in larger families. The older children worked too hard, the younger ones were spoiled, the middle ones were overlooked, etc.

Of course, there are families in which neglect and abuse are daily occurances, but I believe that statistics will back me up that these things happen more in smaller families. Even larger families living in less-than-perfect conditions lend more comfort to children than smaller ones, simply by the fact that the children have each other.

From a personal perspective, growing up with "scientific" spacing between my lone sister and I of 5 years, I can say that I am happy my children don't live with that sort of loneliness. Sure, they don't always get along perfectly, but my kids still have each other.

My parents bought the lie that 5 years of separation between siblings would mean the parents have more money, time and affection to spend on each--but what really happened is that then they could treat us as "optional"; they didn't have to spend too much time with us, or even consider us when they had money to spend (we didn't take up too much of their time) or eventually split up. This is not bitterness speaking here, I think I would have become the same sort of parent if I had not been given reasons to reconsider.

Fact is, whenever someone is considering having more than the average allotment of babies, folks immediately site someone they know (one of those friend of a friend sort of things) who grew up and didn't have any underwear or something silly like that.

People can be poor, but not all poor people come from large families. For most of my childhood I didn't have my own room, I wore cast-offs, but these things didn't make me feel poor. What made me feel poor was coming home to emptiness every day after school; it was like feeling as if I had no meaningful connections with any other human beings.

Most folks today have no idea there is anything different than the childhood I experienced. We have forgotten what it was like before the junk in our lives became the foremost reason for our existence. The hours of television commercials have had their effect until we actually believe warm relationships are secondary to getting ahead or purchasing the next "thing".

3. Having lots of children hasn't killed me. I am supposed to be all worn out. I am supposed to be sickly and old and ugly--more so than folks should be for my age.

But the opposite is true. At the age of 45, I don't look 45. Yes, I have some bagging and some wrinkles, but when I look at others my age, they don't look any better (a hard, sinful lifestyle will put more wrinkles in one's skin that having a baby will). As far as health is concerned, I always answer "no" to all of those medical history questionnaires whenever visiting the dentist or doctor. Of course, I could just be blessed with some hereditary aversion to disease, but the point is that having children has not affected me adversely, in fact, there is all sorts of research that pregnancy and breast feeding are quite beneficial to a woman's well-being, both physically and emotionally throughout her lifetime.

This is a major scare tactic used by others to discourage women like me from having children. "Your breasts will droop," one relative told me--but gravity isn't kind to any of us, and I'd rather give my body over to productive nurturing than to sag and bag for nought!

4. Children only strengthen my marriage. It is sort of a joke between us--our children are the obvious evidence we have some time for each other!

True, we don't have a lot of money to go on trips to the Bahamas, and for many years even a restaurant meal was out of the question.

But these things were never that important to us anyway. We are married, not for the glitz and passion, but for companionship, for someone to share the joys and hardships of life with and grow old together.

Children don't detract from our marriage, they add to it. They give us reasons to hold onto our wild emotions, to keep us from giving up when things are no longer "fun" or even "sentimental".

They are something we share; kissing their silky newborn feet, chuckling at their attempts to explain and understand things.

Sure, if you are selfish individuals, lots of children will drive you apart from each other, but selfish people don't do well in marriage, no matter how ideal.

I have said before that having lots of children will not make you wise or kind or financially settled, but it will give you more reasons to be so.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood and chief promoter of the birth control pill, believed that the best thing one could do for a child born into a large family would be to kill it. She had been born into such a family, with an alcoholic father. The children didn't make her childhood less than optimum, it was the sin of her father that colored everything for her, but she focused her bitterness on babies because she could not condemn the sin in her father, because she did not believe in sin, or God.

Children do not take from us, they bless us. Sin is what makes life intolerable--not babies. Babies don't rob us blind, the devil does.

And every time we follow the leading of that one who is out to steal, kill and destroy, we face dire consequences. What's the alternative? Falling into the everlasting arms of a loving Creator God!

Mommy's toolbox--Work on the balance beam

When the children and I are on a walk, we love to keep to the curb, arms stretched out to the sides, carefully balancing as we pretend the street just a few steps below is an ocean full of alligators. When we miss a step and fall in, we feign dying, with convulsive screams and cries as we are eaten by the phantom asphalt alligators.

Raising babies is delicate, and sometimes seems precarious, work. Children are not just pets or hobbies, they are eternal human beings. When they are babies, toddlers, and then children under our care, they see their world through us, the way we live and respond to them. What a great responsibility we harness and carry!

Just as when we fix a pitcher of herbal iced tea, the sour portions of life must be measured to compliment the sweet, and vice-versa.

For instance, I need to cuddle and swoon with my infant, but I also must make sure he has clean clothing, and warm, clean and safe environment—how do I accomplish both in the same 24-hour period?

And things are complicated exponentially when I add another little person, then another, then a few others.

I just want to be honest here. I know how it looks on TV—easy. But each of the mothers of mega families have gone through the same things, don’t be fooled into thinking that just because they look like they have it all together they didn’t struggle early on. Everyone does. I know I did, and still do on many occasions.

But one thing that does happen as you grow in numbers as well as in years, you remember how God helped you through other passages, and so you gain an understanding that He will help you through your current trials—that the alligators in the pavement aren’t real at all, that His arms actually catch you when you fall.

Sometimes He tells me to forget the house and hold the children, other times He tells me to let the little ones cry and get my affairs in order; both are necessary, both are called for, it just takes wisdom to know what is called for and when, and only God really knows how to accomplish everything well, I know I don’t.

5 Ingredient mothering

I love cooking made simple. I especially love those recipes whose ingredient lists are 5 items or less.

Good mothering is simple.

1^ST add a great helping of the fear of God. What would bread be without flour?—nothing but a pile of mushy goo. What is mothering without God and His word?—a pile of emotional mess.

God’s love, expressed as a Father giving up His own Son, is the beginning of good mothering. I know for a certainty that my own sinful nature is not the gauge that should be used to meter out life for my children. I am as incontinent as the weather—one day in good spirits, the next in the depths of despair.

It is also with the idea in mind that these children are not my own that I keep my own desires in check. It is not often, but it has happened that a child would possibly push me over the brink into the chasm of unrestrained malevolence. The knowledge of God and His injunctions to deal with mercy and imitate His benevolence keeps me on track.

Conversely, if I listen too much to their complaints and crying, I can be swayed to think of themselves as lifelong “victims”—never able to persevere through adversity to reach their full potential.

Next, mix in a lot of “sugar”—take in deep drafts of the deliciousness of each child. Spend lots of time enjoying how they are made, how they move, how they speak, how they think. Let your delight overflow with massive amounts of praise, adoration, and affection.

How I love holding my baby and kissing her fuzzy head, listening to her when she giggles as I tickle her, catching her adoring gaze and meeting it with eyes brimming with tears of deep emotion. I often place my toddler on the counter beside me while I work in the kitchen, and she talks to me and I get to hear the first inklings of the person she is inside. I drink in the sweetness of my 5-year-old’s smile, the voice of my 7-year-old, the caress of my 9-year-old, and the different stages and personalities of all of my children, even up to the 26-year-old who is daily learning to be a mother herself.

And don’t forget the salt. By itself, sodium chloride is bitter, and even scalding, but mixed in the right amounts, it brings out the best in all the rest of the ingredients. Correction by itself can scald a child’s heart, but when mixed with the proper amounts of love and affection, brings about the best results.

Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the demands of life and think of children as necessary nuisances, and so correction under these circumstances conveys this attitude to the children, and they respond by acting out our own expectations of them. We then feel justified at “cracking down”, and the cycle repeats itself over and over again. This is when we become discouraged, wanting to give up and ruing the day we ever birthed them!

But without any correction at all, life is filled with uncertainty for the child. He is new to this life, and he hasn’t a clue how to control his own desires and emotions, let alone his body and its natural urges. He needs us to give him parameters, lines of inclusion and exclusion, and to give him consequences to keep him within or without these lines. Where there is a proper balance of correction and love, a child’s heart is at rest.

Milk is symbolic of abundant provision. Children have basic human needs of food and warmth, but good mothering goes beyond these. No matter the circumstances, a good mother gives her children the best she is able.

My daughter Anna recently told me the story of a mother in India who worked around the clock in the house of a merchant just to earn the privilege of gaining a place for her baby to sleep on the stoop of a door. This mother stinted her own nutrition to provide for the child, and eventually worked herself into the grave. As soon as the mother died, the little boy wandered about aimlessly, until some missionaries were called and who gave him a place to rest. Even though her means were nil to none, she gave her best, her all, to lavish provision upon her child.

No matter what our current provisions may be, we need to bestow upon our children the best we can provide. We owe it to them with the most clean, organized, and pleasant surroundings possible. We need to care for their clothing—not only that they are practical, but modest and pleasing to the eye.

We need to offer food that is nourishing and delicious, served with flourish and generosity. Whether it is a bowl of oatmeal or a steak dinner, it’s the smile and the attitude that will make the taste either good or bad.

Leavening gives bread texture and volume. Mothers need to add some fullness and height to their children. They need to encourage higher thinking, higher goals, higher speech and conduct.

Of course we are mindful that our homes are places of relaxation and comfort, but they should never be let go until they become pigsties. Children need to be taught manners and taught to speak properly, to love each other and the elderly, young and helpless.

They need to be instructed in personal hygiene, in the care of their environment. They need to have an appetite developed, not for cheap entertainment, but for time well spent in the inculcation of mental and artistic pursuits and disciplines that bring out the best in man and womankind.

Planning family times with this in mind is a great part of our jobs as mothers. We need to give alternatives to the entertainments of our age which actually work against true recreation.

Then, when we have added and mixed and shaped and formed to the best of our ability, we must trust God to do the proofing and the baking. He is the Master, and our efforts are only as effective as His blessing on them, and the choice of the child itself to receive them.

I often think I have taught my children the things they will need, but then I realize they must make them their own. Just because they leave my home doesn’t mean they are “finished products”; life does a fuller, deeper work when they leave. But the foundations laid here have given them all the head-start they have needed to brace for the many cold winds that have blown and will blow across their path in the years to come.

Bible time--Love covers it all

1 Peter 4:8

And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

The first motion pictures were simply a series of still photographs which, when viewed in quick succession, gave the illusion of continuous movement.

We sometimes have the false notion that the lives of people are static, unchanging, like the scattered stills we place in our scrapbooks.

The other day we were looking through our family photos (I have not been able to get a handle on these—they are in somewhat of a strange order of packets and envelopes in a huge plastic storage bucket labeled “memories”).

Each picture was just a sampling of life in the past. Some of the pictures brought back wonderful memories, some not so wonderful. But they could not tell our whole story, just tiny little freeze frames, often posed and not the reality of the moment or the complete circumstance, mood, etc.

Sometimes we take pictures of each other and assume we know the whole story. You might come into my house on any given day and gain just a glimpse into my life. If I have just come in from doing monthly grocery shopping, you might see boxes and cans and stacks of all sorts of things everywhere as we are in the process of putting things away. The laundry may be a little backed up, and we may have a few messy beds, etc.

But if you were to come a week later, you might find everything as neat as a pin, with children securely fastened to a schedule which keeps us all humming along. The bathrooms would be clean, the laundry caught up, and something would be simmering happily in the crockpot for the next meal.

On the other hand, if I were in the throes of morning sickness, on a very bad day you may wonder if we had any order or family cohesion at all, and, even if I assured you these days were few and far between, you may not believe me.

What if you were to enter into my home at the one moment in months that my older children began to bicker and my babies cried? Would you conclude my life is utter chaos at all times?

We were once acquainted with a family with a number of children, I believe they had seven at the time, and I was expecting my fourth. A relative met the mother at the library one day and remarked at how “awful” she looked, implying it was because of the number of children she had. My supposition this mother had a “bad hair day”—don’t even single, healthy people have a "down" day once-in-a-while?

Of course we can judge each other by freeze frames, and we can conclude and spread all sorts of speculation to others, but we are just outsiders. There is only so much damage we can inflict from our limited vantage point.

The real damage is done on the inside, when family members, such as parents with children, children with parents, brothers and sisters, choose to judge themselves and each other with a “freeze-frame” mentality, and the worst damage is done when we allow the enemy of our souls to convince us that we should freeze-frame ourselves, and that God is in the business of freeze-framing as well.

But He isn’t, and we shouldn’t be.

Yes, perhaps you grumbled at someone for a few seconds yesterday, but you stopped and you reflected and repented, and you haven’t done it in years and you rarely ever lose your cool—don’t freeze-frame and let it color your whole existence.

Your son lied, your daughter defied, and you dealt with it handily, but it is over now. Don’t freeze-frame him/her. Let it be just a flicker in a long line of frames. Let it go and cover it over.

Your husband or wife said the awful thing, forgot the important thing, did the evil thing. Deal with it, let it go, and forget it. Keep the film rolling and look for the greater good in the whole movie—the larger action that was captured by the movement of all the frames.

And don’t let the assumptions of others give you a picture of who you are, and don’t let them affect how you make decisions or live your life. Let God be the Author and Finisher, let Him have the Sovereignty to know how to unfold, and to protect you from them all.

And make sure you plant seeds of covering when you catch someone else in one of those awkward moments, without assuming or placing them into a convenient box in your mind. Give everyone in your life room to grow and change bigger and better than the small parameters you place them in.

Don’t even freeze-frame God. He can move and do and create outside of time and space and everything we think. Believe Him when He says He works it all for good, even though this part of the movie seems doubtful, and the menacing music is playing.

Deliverance is just around the corner.

Father, help me to forget yesterday, except for the lessons You want me to retain, and the good that can be gleaned. Let me love today with a clean slate, an open book. Teach me to have Your grace, and your faith, for the people in my life, the people outside my home, and those inside my home. Thank You for not throwing me away, for speaking faith and life into me, even on those days when I must be so disappointing to You. You are so wonderful!

In the name of Jesus,

Amen.