Realigning

I've been reading a really helpful book lately called "The Parenting Breakthrough" by Merrilee Boyack. It was recommended by the National Young Mother of the Year (at this blog, which I love reading because she has such great ideas!!). So far it's been super helpful and has helped me better realize my important job of training my kids for adulthood. She focuses a lot on training kids for hard work and responsibility and on teaching good financial habits and teaching good financial information.

A few months back I read someone's blog and she referred to herself as her kids' personal assistant. That phrase has bothered me ever since. I really don't think my job is to be my kids' personal assistant. My job is to be their personal trainer. I think the relationship between a personal trainer and their client is different than that between someone and their personal assistant. When my kids become adults they will very likely not be able to afford a personal assistant, but I hope that I will have trained them well enough to successfully take care of themselves and run families of their own.

If you read this book, I want to know so we can talk about it! She has really good advice on what kids need to be prepared for and how/when to do it, how to get them to work, and how to teach them about finances (though I need to read that part several times because some of the info about interest and mutual funds went over my head). By the way, she starts real financial training (letting kids invest small amounts of money in mutual funds or the stock market so that they learn with small unimportant sums) at some young age like 12.

The last couple days have been different around here. I've stopped priding myself on my ability to multi-task. Instead, Jozie and Haven and I have worked together and played together. We've put away dishes, wiped tables, weeded the yard (they didn't do much on that though), learned about the dryer lint trap, watched the washer start its cycle, put away all our clothes, and planned our week's meals and shopping list. When we're done doing work, we play together. I've found that I've been much less stressed. So far it seems that the same amount of work has been accomplished, but it's been more enjoyable. We've also started a work chart for Jozie on a dry erase board and today at lunch she thanked Heavenly Father for her chart and her blue marker. :) So far so good.

Something that I appreciate about this book is that the author talks about the importance of getting a "backbone" and enduring whining/complaining for the sake of training our kids. I agree 100% with this! One recent example is that we've been teaching Haven that she has to eat a vegetable before she eats the rest of a meal. She missed a few meals because she refused to eat one baby carrot or one pea. I worried that she would forever have a bad feeling for vegetables, but actually the opposite happened. After some training she accepted the fact that she has to finish that carrot before eating anything else, and she does it and doesn't seem to mind anymore. Kids this age are mold-able, and we do them a favor if we help them mold themselves in good ways.