Happy Healthy Christian Kids
“Crying is a good thing. Welcome the meltdown. Help your child feel safe enough to look beneath their anger to their softer emotions”
My husband and I are listening to an online parenting course. Learning about emotional regulation (of ourselves and our children) as a necessary precursor before attempting to guide our children’s behaviour…..
Continue reading “Crying is a good thing, welcome the meltdown…”
I am slowly waking up and pottering around the kitchen setting the table for breakfast. I have half a half-closed-eye on my children and am asking my daughter if she has “made-bubbles-with-her-hands” yet this morning. (We are doing well on the whole “going-to-the-toilet-independently” thing yet handwashing is still a work in progress).
I try not to push too hard…
“Honey, mmm, I wonder, mmmm, where is the soap?”. It’s too early for me to be able to properly embrace playfulness….
Silence.
More silence.
Where is this nearly-3-yr-old of mine? I’m about to go and investigate when I hear her…
Continue reading “No, gorgeous girl, the soap is not in the living room”Have you ever spent time walking up a long steep hill and longing for the summit? Or gazing at the night sky wishing for the dawn? A map and compass give us information about the terrain we are hiking. A clock (and a Psalm) reassures us that the sun will rise again, eventually.
Our need for orientation, to know where we stand, is very strong. We long for an understanding of the physical or emotional terrain that we are exploring and I feel rudderless, rootless when I do not know what is around the next corner.
A big part of our work as humans is to explore, analyse and describe our experiences, our relationships, our world. We discover landmarks which we then name and mark in some way.
And the people who went before us? The people who smooth out the path in front of us? They help us by making maps for us, by pointing out the landmarks. We gain confidence for our journey by listening to their descriptions of the pitfalls, the hilltops, the success-moments they discovered. And when I’m walking up a steep hill I find it useful to remember WHY I am climbing it. When we look backwards through binoculars, objects look smaller. When we “zoom out” from the close-up, my focus can shift away from myself.
Continue reading “Providing”
You know that amazing feeling you get when someone sits down beside you and listens deeply to what you’re saying and how you’re feeling? When they:
Where is Jesus to be found, this year, tomorrow, on Easter Sunday?
The Churches are closed, I have a 2 kilometre radius of a “leash”, and yet I know God is on the move, I am expecting Jesus to show up.
I am more than expecting, I know Jesus is going to visit me tomorrow, in a bigger, deeper, more transforming way than I can imagine. Even if my senses pick it up as soft, quiet and slow.
Continue reading “An Easter “hide-and-seek” experience with Our Lord”
Wouldn’t we love to get a glimpse of the Holy Family as they went about their “morning routine”? To see Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus get ready for their day and look after their home.
How did they go about their normal daily jobs of living as they worked their daily rhythm?
I am confident the Holy Family’s home was filled with love and simplicity and natural beauty. I imagine an inviting home filled with the gentleness of Our Lady. And I am pretty sure that Jesus probably did some regular “age appropriate chores” as the three of them loved together side by side as they went about their daily work of living.
Continue reading “Are your children resisting their “age-appropriate-chores”? It’s because you’re being too ambitious!”
Have you ever had someone put something really big, totally massive, incredibly scary on your “to-do list”?
Oh my goodness, I totally have. I’m thinking of several past employers (which was understandable, because, you know, that was their job), and sometimes my children….
Continue reading “Less Home-Schooling and More Home-Living”