Tag Archives: tweens

5 Tips For Getting Out The Door Faster

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5 Tips for Getting Out the Door Faster @thebusymom.com

Our family has been through a huge transition over the past few months. After 8 years of homeschooling, we enrolled our kids in a small, private Christian school in our town! So, for the first time in 12 years of mothering, we are finding ourselves needing to be a little, teensy bit better about preparation, organization and getting out the door in the mornings on time.

Even if your kids aren’t in school, you might need to get out the door earlier for church, homeschool co-op or just a doctor’s appointment. We all have times when we have to be somewhere at 8am!  And as the holidays are upon us, it seems there is always somewhere else to go, right?

Now, I will preface this post by saying I’m an on-time person. Or even early, generally speaking. I have an almost compulsive quality about me that drives my husband nuts. If something starts at 8am, I do NOT want to be walking in at 8am. I want to be there, in my seat and have everything I need for the event around 7:55am-ish. So, that said, I hope this post will still help you even if you tend to be one that runs late everywhere you go. I think we can all make progress and do better in this area, even if you generally are on time most days!

5 Tips for Getting Out The Door Faster

1. Prepare as much as possible the night before. I *might* be a tad bit compulsive about this too. I walk around my house at night looking for something, anything I can do that might help the morning go better. I help my kids find shoes, clothing, everything they will need BEFORE they go to bed. I set out all their lunch boxes, water bottles, and backpacks. I look through the backpacks at night to pull out papers I might have missed or needed to look at. Everything is ready to go.

2. Get up 10 minutes earlier. This one is hard; I really, really like my sleep. But, if you can make yourself get up a little bit earlier, isn’t it worth that lack of frustration in running around your house like a mad woman? I have noticed that when I am up, even a few minutes earlier than my kids, I am more calm when they lose a shoe or take 20 minutes to brush their teeth. {grin}

3. Make bedtime smooth and earlier. This is another hard one. But, if your kids are up late watching tv (or even mom, ahem) getting up earlier will be even harder! That bedtime routine you had when your kids were toddlers? Don’t stop! Keep that routine going or start a new one. They may not need to be in bed by 7:30pm anymore, but as my kids get older, it is still important to me that they get enough sleep!! START the bedtime process 30 minutes earlier than you intend for them to go to sleep. Have your children help you in walking around the house looking for backpacks, shoes and whatever they will need to get going in the morning.

4. Pack a tote bag for each day of the week, or each outing in your week. I’ve done this in the past with a pool bag. I keep sunscreen, goggles, the pool pass and anything I need at the pool IN THE BAG and I don’t pack, unpack, repack that bag every time we go to the pool! Have a bag like this for your weekly co-op, have a bag ready for church. When you walk in from co-op, hang it on a hook and it’s already ready for next week!

5. Turn on upbeat praise music. I saved my favorite for last. I can’t tell you how many bad moods a little Mandisa had zapped away in my household, mom included! Sometimes, out of desperation and just not wanting to hear one more, “I can’t find my shoe! HE THREW MY SHOE! Mommy, make him find my shoe!” I turn on the radio in our kitchen and turn it up. So maybe this would be considered avoidance. I like to think of it is as pointing my children to Jesus. {grin} Sometimes we need a little re-focus and music is just the way to do this. So, if you want to be one step ahead of your argumentative children, turn that music on as soon as you wake up the kiddos!! Everyone will walk around the house singing, getting ready, and you will wonder what in the world has gotten into everyone! Actually, as a wise mother, you will know what has gotten into them!! Praise fights off the worst of our enemies!! So get your praise on, first thing in the morning!

I hope these tips help you! I’m sure as veteran busy moms you have some tips for us, too! I would love for you to share in the comment section YOUR best tips for getting moving and out the door in the mornings!

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How to Spoil Your Child in Five Easy Steps

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Twenty five years ago, I had a lot of theories about parenting. You know—because I was a kid once. Boom. Qualified.

Yeah.

Don’t judge.

These days, I have a lot more grace for new parents. Having raised two of our seven to adulthood, I have to say, I died on a lot of hills that really didn’t need to see a battle at all. I dug my heels in over stupid things like whether or not my children could watch Pokemon. True story. Moral? There really are things that we can fixate on that won’t matter much in the end.

Flipside? There are also things that definitely WILL matter. Mark my words. We’re living in a culture of over-indulgence. As parents, we’ve been duped into believing that our kids “need” a whole bunch of stuff that they don’t need at all. So if you want to spoil your kids, start here:

  1. Make sure they have an iPad or a smart tablet. At the very least, give your kid a cell phone. After all, these things are important. Think of the apps they’ll miss out on and games they could be playing. Eight year olds need tablets and laptops. Kids are noisy. This is a great way to keep them out of our hair. Besides, it’s dangerous outside. And boring too. The kids told me so just last week.

    Since when did “wants” become “needs?” Since we let it, that’s when. I’m not sure when we decided that childhood required all the trappings of adult life—but if our kids are watching our example, we might be in all kinds of trouble in this area. I get the importance of being able to contact a child at school, etc., but they don’t need a “smart” phone—a simple dumb phone will do. Data plans are expensive. If you kids can’t pay for a data plan, don’t give them one. And that brings me to my next point…

  2. Pay allowance to your kids for simply being alive. Kids need money in order to learn how to spend it wisely. Besides, they only get one shot at being a kid. Make it as carefree as possible.

    Children need to learn to work. Giving a child responsibilities and chores says two things right off the bat: “You’re a valuable part of this family” and “The world doesn’t revolve around you.”  Parents don’t need to give their kids money for the sake of doing it. When was the last time you got money just for being alive? We don’t help our kids by giving them allowance for doing nothing. We enable them and teach them to live dependent on others rather than teaching them that there is reward found in working for what they have. Look around you. Watch the news. This mentality is not working for our nation, and it won’t work for our kids.

  3. Buy their clothes new. Thrift store clothes are for “other kids.” Who cares if they’ll grow out of that new pair of pants in three months? It’s your job to make sure your kids have the best of everything, and clothes are an important part of a child’s developing identity…right?

    I grew up in a houseful of seven kids. Hand-me-downs were a way of life for us—and it’s become a way of life for my children, too. Don’t misunderstand: I’m not against buying new things once-in-a-while. But most families simply can’t afford to fit every growth spurt with a new pair of Levi’s. Taking your kids thrift-store and consignment store shopping not only teaches them to be wise stewards later in life, it offers a healthy lesson in humility. (Besides, you’ll save a lot of money, too.)

  4. Forgo opportunities to help others on a consistent basis. Our kids don’t need to be “exposed” to homeless shelters and soup lines. The church pays for a janitor, so I don’t need to volunteer our time to tidy up the place… and if that single mom can’t afford to pay her babysitter, well, it’s her problem, right?

    Wrong. It’s our job as parents to lift our kid’s eyes up so they can see beyond their own circumstances. Helping others develops empathy in our children—something that video games can never do. When we take our children on mission trips, encourage them to volunteer in the nursery and help them pick out toys for less fortunate kids during the holidays, we’re telling them that they’re part of a bigger picture.

  5. Don’t require respect from your children. It’s okay if they don’t answer when you speak to them. Asking kids to make eye contact and speak respectfully to adults sends a message that adults know more than kids. Don’t worry if they’re rude to their teacher or other adults. Using “Mr.” and “Mrs.” is old-fashioned, and so is asking the adult what they would like to be called. Forgetaboutit. (said in my best NY accent.)

    This might be the one of the biggest issues we face as parents in this culture. Children who are not taught to respect authority or treat adults with respect miss two important milestones on their journey toward adulthood:  They miss the benefit of recognizing that they are in a season of learning to be worthy of respect themselves, and they miss the opportunity to practice humility. Sure there are many adults who are not worthy of respect, but that’s not the point. If we allow our children to be disrespectful to us as parents, they will not have respect for anyone. That’s a fact.

Hey. I’m not trying to sound like a mean mom—I love my kids to the moon and back. But I worry for our future as a nation when I see children who are overindulged and self-important. It’s becoming more and more rare to see a child disciplined for speaking disrespectfully to an adult or show up to an event sans smartphone. If we want a culture of self-absorbed, selfish and myopic adults, we’re well on our way unless we start to see those “old fashioned” values as timeless instead.

Be the parent. Your kids will thank you for it.
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Heidi St John Firmly Planted Family Devotional For All Ages

To Date or Not to Date? That is the Question…

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Courtship v. Dating. These are hot-button topics for many families these days. The following post was written by my friend and Busy Mom writer, Gina. I love her heart and perspective, because it’s not fear-based or rules-based—it’s grace based. Raising teens is difficult. Let’s not make it more difficult by making things harder or scarier than they need to be.  Thanks for the insight, Gina! With two of my seven now grown and gone, it’s still a great reminder to me that at the end of the day, my kids belong to God, and my job is to teach our children how to listen for His heart. His is the only opinion that matters.

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What does the Bible say about dating? What about courtship? Interestingly enough, the words courtship and dating are not found in the Bible. So, if the Bible indeed does say so little about dating, why are there so many books written telling us how we should think about the subject?

Dating is another one of those issue that we’d like to have all the answers. We’d love to have a list of rules that we can hand our children and tell them to follow. There are books with different Christian philosophies for us to consider, but the bottom line is that there are very few hard and fast Biblical rules.

As my children were growing up there were a number of popular books available to help us form our philosophy of dating. We studied them and decided what we agreed with and what ideals we wanted to teach our kids. As our kids got older we realized that what we were doing was taking those ideals and imposing them onto real life people. If these ideals are not Biblical, but a man’s idea of how he thinks things need to be to walked out, we are in danger of imposing on our kids a burden that was never meant to be imposed.

Maybe this whole dating issue is a little simpler than we want to make it.

What not to do:

  • Do not react against our cultural extremes (or what we don’t agree with that our parents did!) and throw out the whole concept of dating. Just because our culture may not have boundaries in dating doesn’t mean the concept is wrong. Of course, we must separate from any world view that is not consistent with God’s heart. (2 Peter 2: 20)
  • Do not idealize the practices of another era (ie the victorian era) or culture, decide what is “God’s way” to do things, and then impose them on your kids.
  • Do not let this issue be one that causes division among believers.  I’ve known moms that proudly announce “MY kids DON’T date!” and with that announcement there is the potential to put up walls between them and a mom whose kids do date, or whose kids may be struggling in this particular area. Any issue that is not clearly set out in scripture should not be one that causes division. We need to give room for the biblical principles that are found in scripture that might be applied to the concept of dating or courtship to look different from person to another.
  • Do not hold up a book  to be the gospel truth.  Glean what you can from books, but since there is so little in scripture written about this subject, we must remember that these are merely ideas or suggestions that a man (or woman) have come to.

What to do?

  • Pray! The fact that the rules of dating are not found in scripture gives parents another opportunity to pray for God to guide them in the lives of each child. It also reminds us of the fact that they are individuals and that things might look a bit different from one child to the next.
  • Teach! We can look at biblical principles and do our best to teach them to our children so that they can apply them to all their relationships, including those of the opposite sex to whom they may find themselves attracted.
  • Talk! The discussion can start long before our children are anywhere near the time when dating might begin. Attraction to the opposite sex begins very early in life. It is a normal, God given desire and attraction. We should never make our kids feel guilty for having a normal attraction, but begin the discussion about how to handle that desire. Draw them out and listen to their thoughts and heart. Don’t dictate to them how they should think.
  • Inform! You can begin by sharing that the ultimate goal in dating is to meet a potential marriage partner. Dating can be used to get to know the opposite sex, with marriage in mind, but also a chance to learn how to interact with the opposite sex in a God honoring way.
  • Pray some more! We need to pray for, and with, our kids. Ask God for wisdom to know how to help your kids walk out this area in their lives. Encourage your kids to pray about what this should look like in their lives. When the time comes that they come to you and express that they are interested in someone, you can begin to pray for wisdom on how to handle the friendship.  James 1:5

There is one important, non-negotiable rule of dating. The scripture is very clear that God’s desire for believers is that they marry a believer. So, that would be one hard and fast rule you can have. 2 Cor. 6:14

Read the Word. Pray. Seek God’s direction. Pray for your children. Allow God to do things His way in your children and their relationships, and try to  enjoy the process!

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my eye upon you.

Psalm 32:8

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Who Is Your Hero?

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Who is your hero

Have you read Heidi’s post Teaching Our Kids About Honor?  I did, and it resonated deep within me. In the post, Heidi shares the importance of teaching our kids honor and how, as a society, we are bestowing celebrity status upon people who haven’t earned that honor.  It caused me to reflect upon my childhood, and my heroes growing up.

Honestly, my “heroes” weren’t the best. Like many teenagers, I was interested in what the world counted as worth – beauty, fame, power. I knew the names and backgrounds of Victoria’s Secret models better than those of the disciples. I looked up to whichever pop artist had the  #1 song on the countdown charts more than the Proverbs 31 woman.

And it wasn’t good for my spirit. I could have had better heroes. I wish my heroes had been Ruth or Nehemiah.

Now before you get too upset, let me explain, I’m not saying Victoria (or her secret) is evil. Personally, I don’t believe that our heroes have to be solely from the Bible.  What I do believe – wholeheartedly and passionately – is that we should be asking these questions:

Do my heroes point me toward the cross? Do my children’s heroes point them toward the cross?

Christian heroes

This country needs a revival of true, faithful heroes! We need men and women who give the glory to God before taking it for themselves.  We need less “experts” shouting from their corner of the media and more students of the Word. We are in need of leaders who consult the Truth, not a round table of advisers. Can I get an amen?

Too often our heroes have been athletes that, when caught cheating, continue to lie, blame others and fight their punishment. Or celebrities who are famous for nothing more than being wealthy. Or actors who glamorize the enticing life of sex, drugs and rock & roll.

I don’t expect my heroes to be perfect. But what I want is for them to point me to the Truth. I want them, when they falter, to admit their mistake and share their repentance. I need to be encouraged in my faith. I hope to be reminded daily that the only true hero is the One who sent his son to die on the cross, because He is the reason for this life I lead.

Who is your Biblical hero? Do you have an everyday hero?

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Delight-Directed Learning for ANY Homeschool — Part Four (free printable)

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delight-directed homeschoolWelcome back to my series on how to add delight-directed learning to ANY homeschool! You can read the first 3 installments here:  Part One,  Part Two and Part Three!

This is probably one of my very favorite ways to add delight-directed learning to our homeschool. And with summer upon us, the timing for this could not be more perfect!

Create a “fun school” jar with exciting activities you know your kids will enjoy.

The concept is super simple. Just grab a Mason jar or empty peanut butter jar — even a coffee can will work. Write your fun school ideas on slips of paper, fold them up, and toss them in the jar. On days you want to add some delight-directed learning to your day, you’ll have plenty of ideas there for the choosing.

I’ll give you a few ideas to get you started, but please — take requests from your children to add to the jar, too (that’s part of what makes it delight-directed!). Then take a break from “school” and let them choose from the jar what they will do that day. Here are 15 fun school jar suggestions to get you started:
  • Go on a nature walk with a list of items to look for (leaves, moss, animal tracks, acorns, flowers, etc.). I have a free nature printable I’d love for you to use for this. It has a scavenger hunt and journal pages for all four seasons. Download your free Nature Through the Seasons PDF.
  • Create art.
  • Do messy science experiments.
  • Collect an insect or other creature in your backyard (butterfly, moth, ants, spider, turtle) and observe it for a couple of days before releasing it. We have a box turtle that lives in our yard. My son loves to keep him around for a couple of days now and then for observation. He can tell you more about box turtles than most kids, I think.
  • Learn about how to use Word or PowerPoint.
  • Grab a camera and look for interesting things to photograph. Learn about digital photography while you’re at it.
  • Visit a nursing home with a list of questions to interview one of the residents.
  • Plant a garden. Even if you live in an urban area or apartment, you can grow herbs in a container or use root vegetables to make a table top garden.
  • Visit your local zoo or aquarium. Choose one or two animals to learn about before you go, then photograph and observe while there.
  • Find a creek or pond and collect water samples to study. Find rocks perfect for skipping and see how many times you can skip a rock through the water.
  • Visit your local state or national parks. National and state Parks offer amazing fun and educational opportunities for a low cost. We even seek them out when on vacation!
  • Learn about the history of ice cream; then go out for an ice cream cone.
  • Go geocaching!
  • Make pine cone bird feeders and hang them in a tree in your backyard.
  • Taking a walking tour of your city.

fun school jar

Heidi St John Guide to Daylight

How to LOVE Your Teen

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How to LOVE Your Teen

If you have one or more teens in the house, you probably know that it can be hard to love them at times.  REALLY. HARD.  Those years are full of so many changes both for your teen AND you.  Things aren’t nearly as simple as they used to be.  Their hormones are changing at warp speed, they desperately need to become their own person, and they have no idea what that is supposed to look like.  And neither do we.

We currently have 4 teens (along with 2 married daughters and 2 younger children).  I have often felt like I am walking through a maze with a blindfold on trying to figure out how to get them to adulthood with our relationship intact.  They will probably always love me, but I really want them to LIKE me by the time they become adults.   I have blown it more times than you can imagine, and somehow I still have a good relationship with all of them.

But it takes work.  It means being intentional.  It means loving them when they are the hardest to love.  Here are a few ideas on how to LOVE your teen:

Listen:  Be available to talk when they need to.  My experience is that they usually want to talk about the time you are ready to FALL into bed at the end of an exhausting day.  I have often resisted the urge to point them to the door, but honestly, I’ve never regretted taking the time to listen.  I don’t know that the glimpses into the secret places of their hearts would have happened at any other time.

Offer support:  It’s super easy to keep parenting them like they are in elementary school, telling them what to do instead of asking questions without judgment.  Even offer to DO something to help. This helps them know that you are on their side.  When they feel supported, they are encouraged to come to their own conclusions about things.  It’s crucial that they learn to work things out for themselves and in this type of conversation, you often have the opportunity to help direct them.  It’s also more likely that they will come to you for guidance more often.

Validate:  It’s really important that our teens know their feelings are valid.  The truth is that no one can tell someone else how to feel.  So when our kids are dealing with feelings of disappointment, frustration or anger, we need to give them validation by empathizing with them. I don’t mean that they can act any way they want to, don’t get me wrong.  That part does need to be kept within boundaries.  But it’s usually best to wait for their emotions to diminish before problem solving or discussing possible solutions to the deeper issues.

Encourage:  It’s doubtful that you could give your teen TOO much encouragement.  They are already dealing with loads of self-doubt.  Do you remember what it was like to be a teenager?  It’s crazy HARD!  What are some of the ways you would have liked to be encouraged? Try some of those out and see what happens.  I recently emailed letters of encouragement to each of our teens.  I took my time and was thoughtful in what I wrote to them.  They were thrilled!

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Don’t forget to ENJOY your teen.  It can seem like conflict is endless at times, so it’s that much more important that we have FUN with them whenever we can.

Lastly, don’t think for one minute that you can pull this off without God’s help.  I’ve never felt so needy as I have in parenting teens and I’ve never felt God’s presence so strongly.  I’ve seen Him answer VERY specific prayers for the hearts of our teens over and over again, and I’ve had the privilege of watching our teens grown into amazing, confident, God loving adults.

Growing great kids is NOT for the faint-hearted, so be brave and be encouraged!  It’s a worthwhile investment!

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