one little word report #3: family

Next up, the family goal!

Goal: Spend 30 minutes intentionally playing with the kids each day.

How it went: This, I realize now, was an unrealistic goal as stated. I thought I could easily stop everything for a full 30 minutes and just play with the kids. This was not practical for a few reasons: First, the kids didn't always need me when I had 30 free minutes. Why interrupt them when they are playing happily? Or put pressure on myself only to play when I had a full half an hour?! Second, 30 minutes is a really long time to play pretend, talk about ABCs, or do other things I may find boring but the kids love. A really long time.

So, a few days into this goal, I made a mental change to the wording: Spend 10 minutes intentionally playing with each kid, and involve them in my day.

This worked way better!! It gave me the push to stop and play but didn't set up an unrealistic expectation for myself. So for example, if Charlie wanted to play with our ABC fridge magnets with me, I would find a stopping place in my chores (and ask him to wait) and then set the timer for 10 minutes and play. He felt listened to and loved, we got some good learning time, and I had specified an end time for him so I wouldn't get too behind on the other things that needed to be done. (He is still a little disappointed when its time to stop, but he knows we'll have more time later).

Bonus? Some days I am able to make multiple 10 minute blocks per kid, and that is even better! They get that love-time spread out throughout the day instead of just in one long chunk.

I also loved that separating my 30 minutes into 10 per child meant I could focus better on just that kid. Charlie usually wants to play cards (which means I am to stare at the cards he chooses for me and not touch or otherwise disturb them while we sometimes talk about which numbers are on them) or play with the fridge magnets, while Gracie has enjoyed reading to me in the evenings after the younger two are in bed.

And the second part of this goal--to involve the kids in my day--has been good, too. When someone needs some TLC and I am in the middle of a chore or cooking or something, I have been trying to involve them. This often means a task like unloading the dishwasher or making granola takes (much) more time and effort, because I am teaching little hands how to do new things, but I realized that it will (1) allow us to spend time together without making me feel so behind on the house, (2) teach them life skills that they really need to know, and (3) prepare them to help manage the house so I have more time to play with them.

What surprised me was how capable my kids are when it comes to learning new things--and how happy they can be when we do chores! I taught Gracie how to fold laundry, for example, and she actually likes sitting with me to fold together. There is always some frustration for them when they're learning (us, too, right?!) but they are really bright and more dextrous than I thought. Gracie can fold socks into sock balls and make a sandwich, and Charlie can now put on his underwear and pants himself--we're working on shoes next.

NEW GOALS: I'm going to keep this up as well. And my new goals?
Be more mindful of the kids' perspective.

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts from Power of Moms (its a wonderful, helpful website about being a mom--solidarity! We can do this!), and one thing they brought up recently was that we sometimes get mad at our kids for doing things when they didn't know the rules to begin with.

For example, I might get mad at my kids for getting their church shoes dirty, when they didn't know they weren't supposed to run and play in those shoes in the first place. How would they know that, right? Why would a kid think--Oh, unlike my other shoes, these shoes are probably for walking nicely but not for running in mud. No. If I haven't explained the rules beforehand, all they are thinking is--MUD!!!! YAY!!! So it doesn't make sense to be angry.

I forget a lot that everything in this world is brand new to them. And I get impatient or upset because I'm not looking at their perspective. So that's my goal starting now (and for a while, I bet)--just to take a breath and see things from their perspective--and prepare them for potentially troublesome situations (explain the church shoes!) beforehand whenever possible.

And have Family Home Evening once a week. Our church encourages us to do this weekly (traditionally its on Monday night) as a way to connect with and teach the kids. So we do a (very short, as fun as possible) lesson about something (anything from reading the scriptures to why we need to help mom clean up our toys), have a special dinner (something the kids love), and then do something special like play a game together or go on a little outing.

We've had a hard time doing this because our kids were little, and because Steve's schedule is so variable we could never make Monday FHE's a consistent thing. So finally we just decided to choose a day when we look over his schedule each week. We've done it two weeks now, and so far its going well. The lesson part doesn't feel natural yet, but I think that with some practice we'll find what works for our kids. :)