Thoughts on Parenting, Part 1

I'm taking a great parenting class at church right now and it's being taught by two wonderful people. The first week we talked about having a plan/goals in raising our kids. At first, I thought maybe I didn't have a concrete plan, but as I've been thinking about it, I do. And the goals I have were ones I had thought about long before I even became a mother. Here are a couple of them:

1) When Annie she enters a room, other people are happy she's there.
2) When Annie encounters someone struggling or different than her, she feels empathy.

Obviously, this is not all-inclusive. But #1 is huge; it's the basis of most of my discipline. This is why I teach her that we say please and thank you, when someone prepares you a meal you eat it whether you like it or not, you treat others nicely, share, don't lie, steal, etc. Oh, and my favorite, "you don't talk to mommy and daddy (or insert whomever here) with an ugly mouth."

#2 is pretty big, too. Most of the jerks I know don't have the ability to understand other people's pain or feelings. Obviously, I don't want Annie to grow up to be a jerk.

When we pray with Annie, one of the little lines we often say with her is, "may Annie learn to the love the Lord with all her heart, soul, mind and strength and love her neighbor as herself. And may she grow in widsom, and stature and in favor with God and man, just like Jesus."

Hopefully, that prayer along with discipline and love will help Annie grow into a graceful young woman--despite all the mistakes I am surely making every day.

New Year Already?

Could another year have passed by? 2008 went by so quickly I can't even believe it.

2008 was not a great year, but not a bad year. Pretty blah although alot changed. Looking back, I think it's been pretty stressful which makes sense in that we moved into a house with many repair needs, I've unnecessarily worried about too many things and over-extended myself a few too many times. I'm hoping I'll do a little better with these issues in 2009.