Suffering at the Hands of Family: A Personal Invitation and a Gift

This is the title of a new post on one of my favorite blogs this morning. See it Here. Very appropriate. It's a must read, please take the couple minutes to read it.

Why do familes hurt one another?  Why do we as family members treat each other in a different way then we would treat a friend? (Perhaps because a friend can walk away permanently?) Why do family members feel they have the "right" to tell another in their family how or in which manner they ought to run their lives, raise their children, conduct their business, live out their faith?  Huge subjects even without someone's judgment breathing down our back eh?

How about if you are a young adult and are being judged?  So, so damaging. What if you are a young adult who is different than your parents? Oh boy.....fireworks.  What if you are a young adult and you are different, and you are being judged and you see things VERY differently?  Now it's a real mess. Are you any less of a person who has any less dignity? Are you worth less in the family?

Why must there be this sort of conflict? The problem is as old as human beings. The solution is as old as Christ. Forgiveness, understanding, trying to walk in another's shoes. 

We are not all the same. We do not all think the same.  Outside the objectively moral realm, what is right for one is not right for another. This sounds so obvious yet we try and put our idea of what we think someone's life ought to be squarely on their shoulders with the weight of a boulder. It is unfair and unkind at the least. It is full of pride.

Think about how we can make another person miserable. It does not have to be anything big. Small jabs, little criticisms, a nasty face when our approval is sought. Withholding our approval, our kindness, our love. This is serious and cruel and it certainly achieves it's desired effect.

We do not have to love everyone as in being their best friend, but we do have to love everyone in that we should not be making them miserable and we should be ready to help if necessary. Love means wanting the best for another person, wanting them to get to heaven in the end, but "the best" is not necessarily what we think is best but what God thinks is best.....keeping our own opinions out of it.....therin lies the problem within families.

Why can a family member's decisions not be respected even if they are not our own?  If they are totally different than what we might do?  Does God not achieve His mission with all different sorts of folks?  He did create all these different kinds of people after all. Is one member so much better than another that they are always right? Silly.

Okay, even if we think our opinion is the best and most important (and it is not being followed), is that worth losing relationships over? Obviously for many, many people it is. I see this often, I have done this often...too often.

So let's get this straight (insert confused face).....being RIGHT is more important than being HAPPY?   REALLY? 

Losing the happiness and peace in a family over being right is more important than accepting someone's decisions that are different than ours?  Okay...got it. Makes sense right?   NOT.

Think about it. Pray about it. Are you the perpetrator or the one judged? Or both? 

Remember you and I will spend eternity with some of the folks who either inflict this pain on you and I or on whom we inflict this pain. Oh boy.

~Blessings~

Lisa

Peace and Schedlues

Kids like to know what's going on.

Mom's get tired of answering a million questions a day about what is happening next.

One word.....Schedules

I know, if you aren't a Type A who thrives on lists and schedules this may sound daunting.  I promise it is not. Even a loose schedule results in less whining, better behavior and less real-time thinking for Mom! 

Kids do better knowing what is going on and when. If breakfast is always at 8:00 they know what to expect. If the kids always go outside at 11:00 they know after they come in it's time for lunch. If they take their daily nap after lunch you will get far less whining if it's always after lunch. My Grammy used to always say in response to a "why" question, "It's the law of the land"!  I used that so often when my children were younger and it always satisfied them. The attitude of, "oh well, it's just how it is" helps kids to shrug and accept.

One perk to a schedule is it allowed me to know when I would get a bit of time to myself to read, get something done or time for a phone call to a friend. I could look forward to that time each day and the break it offered. Some days it was my lifeline!!

As a natural scheduler, I always followed a daily schedule with pretty firm nap times. I had friends who were not schedule types and they frequently struggled with daily meltdowns as kids got over-tired.  If naps are in stone, kids will accept them much better. Some of mine would even ask to go night-night and I would always know it must be close to 1:00PM.  When kids get rest they are much more pleasant for the rest of the day.

Meals at our house were pretty much on schedule too. Once the kids could tell time it saved me answering, "What time is dinner"? 101 times a day! I also posted a menu so when they asked what was for dinner I could refer to it. When they learned to read they could just go look for themselves.

Setting up your day not only helps children, it helps Mom when the old brain feels like mush. By the middle of the week it's pretty hard to keep your brains on track if you have little ones. My menus and schedule helped me stay cheerful when I didn't always feel very cheerful. 

Another thing that helped my children's behavior a lot was not over scheduling our day. I pretty much kept to an activity either morning or late afternoon (after naps) and maybe something for the family at night. Never all 3 or behaviour issues would inevitably arise. I think this is a huge issue for families now. Kids are booked like executives. Morning, afternoon, evening then falling into bed.  I really think this fosters being overwhelmed and family strife as members rush around trying to meet time deadlines.

We have always had "quiet time" in our home. Every weekday the children who didn't nap had their "quiet time" where they could read, do puzzles, draw, their choice of activity as long as they were quiet. Many years ago I read a Mother Theresa quote that spoke of quiet. She felt we all needed quiet to find God and peace in our days. I know for myself, I need quiet time to re-charge and organize my thoughts. It keeps me from getting too high strung and too fast paced which results in tension with the kids. This "quiet time" worked beautifully in that all our children to this day enjoy quiet with no music or T.V. needed. This is super important in our media saturated world.

If you cannot abide schedules and they make you feel like a prisoner, maybe just scheduling naps for the same time each day will help behavior issues. Maybe just easing off on overly busy schedules will bring more peace to your home and life. Just being together is a priceless endeavor that doesn't seem to be valued as highly as achieving many things per day. 

Value it.

Treasure it.

It disappears too quickly as children age and go off on their merry way.

~Blessings~

Lisa

Speaking to a Child

Our children are assets, not liabilities, yet so often we treat them as possessions and not persons by the way we speak to them.

How we speak to our kids is one of the most important things we practice in parenting. How something is said to a child, whether 6 yrs. or 26 yrs. is critical in what their reaction will be. This puts a lot of weight on our speech and manner.  Probably more than we like or are comfortable with.

Have you ever been ready to be helpful or compliant or cheerful only to have someone give you instructions in a condescending or sarcastic tone and you find yourself acting or speaking in an ugly way?  I have.  Minutes before, you were ready to do whatever was asked, now you are snotty, belligerent and not communicating very well. 

This is exactly what happens with parent/child communications so often. It is also the number one question I'm asked by young mothers, "How do I get the kids to listen to me"? One of the things I found to be simple and effective, is to..... 

speak to my children the way I speak to my friends' children or a neighbor child.

Most folks would never speak to a friends' child the way they speak to their own. It's destructive in the long run because we are not giving the children we love and nurture the same consideration we give those outside the family. It's so simple really and not very hard if we can remember that little sentence.....

I will speak to my children the way I speak to my friends' children or a neighbor child.

Trying to overcome a habit of speaking critically or sarcastically or condescendingly to a child is a noble thing. Because we rarely examine how we speak to our children the negative speech becomes normal and then we cannot figure out why we aren't getting compliance. Think about how you give an order....is there an invisible "stupid" at the end of the sentence?

Thankfully it is pretty simple to make the effort to change this. Try to keep remembering your children are more important to you than other children and should be spoken to as such.  I will speak to my children the way I speak to my friends' children or a neighbor child. Write it down, put it on your mirror, on your cupboard, in your car. It doesn't require any methods or certain kinds of words, or anything complicated. Pretend you are speaking to your best friends' child and you're there!

It is instant gratification too. You will be proud of your ability to stay calm and cool when the kids may not be.

This requires self control obviously. One of those very difficult things to practice because individuals are so different in what they believe control is.  When a child isn't speaking to a parent properly, it is then that we need control of our face and voice and speech. They must see the parent in control at all times if a child is to learn self control.  It is not as hard as it sounds, but consistency is the key. Every time, any place, regardless of circumstance. 

Arguing back at a child is a major no-no if you want compliance. You are not on their level, you are trying to teach them to be on your level eventually.

There are those who would say a sassy child deserves to be spoken to in a harsh way. I disagree. Again, how would you deal with your best friends' child if they were to be sassy to you?  The calmer you are, the more in control you are the better your message is heard. You can be firm and kind at the same time. You are the adult, you are ultimately in control, but the way you gain control is the teaching moment for children.

After all, our children are our most precious assets, they should know we value them as much as any other people in our lives. Children can feel disrespect from adults. They can feel when they are being spoken down to. This does not encourage compliance.

When they feel valued, they want to please.

When they are complimented they want to do more.

If they are understood and comforted when they fail, they experience mercy.

When they see we do not over react and judge, they come to us willingly.

~Blessings~

Lisa

When Pain Produces.....

Can unrelenting, blinding, throbbing, life changing pain produce anything positive?

Oh yes.....

 Ballade of the Stars

Mon Coeur

 Austin Pruitt, takes his pain and produces something beautiful. He chooses to do good with what he is dealing with. It's always a choice no matter how hard, no matter how unfair. And sometimes something beautiful appears.

Did you know many musicians suffered?

Robert Schumann suffered terribly.
Ludwig Von Beethoven was deaf!
Ravel suffered a degenerative disease of the brain.
  Felix Mendelssohn suffered multiple brain aneurysms.
George Gershwin had a brain tumor.

This young man suffers from Intracranial Hypertension (also called Pseudotumor Cerebri). www.ihrfoundation.org/

Both Stevie and I have this. Bobby has also had a bout with it. Only 1 in 100,000 people have IIH. It is high cerebrospinal fluid pressure in the brain. It has a host of symptoms, identical to a brain tumor....all unpleasant. We have brain shunts, more specifically ventriculo-peritoneal brain shunts that take fluid from our brains via a tube and drains it into our tummies. I have had 3 brain surgeries for IIH and Steven has had 1. All 3 of us have had multiple spinal taps. However, it isn't near as a big of a deal as the decompression brain surgeries as far as recovery and it sure does help. Steven came back to life so to speak after his was placed! We are so grateful.

As well as our VP shunts work, we still have days where they either malfunction or get clogged causing issues with pressure and this can be pretty nasty. Nothing can do artificially what our bodies should be doing, but we are grateful for our surgeon Dr. Paolo Bolognese and his expertise at fixing us!

Please watch this amazing video and listen to all of the others he has written also. They are absolutely breath taking. We try so hard to be positive around here with our medical mumbo-jumbo. It's inspiring to me to see someone at this age do something wonderful with his pain to bless others.

~Blessings~
Lisa

Unconditional Attention

"I sent her a note thanking her for being so ‘there’ during our lunch. I didn’t know how else to express my joy. She wrote back, ‘I was there, fully there, because I wanted to be.’ It was wonderful. And maybe it was a silly thing to thank someone for, but to me, today, anyone’s time and attention feels like such a huge gift."

"Unconditional attention is just as important as love sometimes.”

These are two short excerpts from a favorite blog of mine,  Hands Free Mama.

"Unconditional attention is just as important as love sometimes."...... and maybe the same thing. I run into conditional attention often....so often. I see it in public, I experience it with my adult children, my husband and I can get my feelings hurt by friends who divide their attention when with me. I only give a certain percentage of my attention depending on what I may be doing.This is a new cultural phenomenon. It is not a good one.

Being a Mom of a large family and especially one that homeschools, time with unconditional attention is precious. Time connecting with my children is what my life is about. Especially now.

In the days before I had multiple brain surgeries and went from a 100mph speedway gal to a school zone gal of a whopping 25 mph, I never stopped in the day except for my 10 minute power naps. I lived on a schedule, had goals and had more than enough to do each day for my children and husband. My life revolved around them and each day I served them with all of my heart and soul. This is what I had always wanted, then was blessed to be able to do. I tried my hardest (and sometimes failed) to stop and pay attention anytime any of them needed to show me something wonderful or tell me something important.  But I was always needing to get to the next thing so they did not get unconditional attention.

After my first surgery I spent a long time living in constant guilt and sadness that I was not the mom to my younger 3 that I had been to the first 5. This was something I had always sworn would not happen...that I would not poop out in the homestretch.  Now I was not able to do field trips or hikes or, for awhile, even go outside. In the wheelchair was how they saw me, not the always-walking-fast me from before. I couldn't just throw them in the van and go to the zoo for the day or spend time at friends' house on the spur of the moment like we used to.  Guilt, guilt, guilt.

One day as I lay reading to them I realized with a bang that I WAS LAYING THERE READING TO THEM!  Big DUH.  I was thrilled. I was happy. I was shocked. It was okay that I was not doing things for them. I was with them....unconditionally.

How can a relatively smart Mom be so darn dumb? The forest was before me and I had been lamenting having no trees.These little boys had so much more of me than my older children. There definitely were things they were not getting to do, places they didn't get to go but they had my undivided, unconditional attention because I couldn't DO anything else!

Now that I can do a bit more, I choose not to DO too much, GO so much, get so much DONE. I see that efficiency may not be such a great thing all the time. Sitting, talking, laughing, listening, sharing is what I have to offer now. It's different but it's awesome. I still at times, long for the days running around being efficient, but I now do not have to regret not spending quantity or quality time not only with my youngest 3 sons but with the older kids as well. I have time to listen to their very important adult problems, struggles, achievements and bad jokes. I concentrate and stop everything to give these older guys unconditional attention. It can be exhausting but is ALWAYS worth it.

This revelation has also taught me that unconditional attention is one of the greatest gifts one can give. Whether it's my children or my husband , a friend or even the checker at the grocery store. Giving unconditional attention to anyone matters and boy do people notice. Our society is so stinkin' fast paced now, that giving a bit of decent attention is a real...well...attention getter!  I can see someone's demeanor change when I just take the time to really listen or ask a question..... stop and pay attention.

We can all feel when we do not have someone's attention...right?  Let's make it unconditional and we all benefit.

This goes for my relationship with God too. 
It is a struggle to give Him unconditional attention. 
Unconditional.
Rough word. 
Just being with God. 
No "conditions". 

I have fallen in love with this wonderful phrase. I have always tried to pay attention to people but the additional word, unconditional, is just something special.

Thank you Hands Free Mama

~Blessings~
Lisa