Regan Barnes - Momivate

What’s with the ‘Tude, Dude?

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Hi, I’m Regan Barnes from Momivate, and this is your two-minute Mom Tip empowering you to elevate your mothering experience.

Have you ever been in a situation where complaining or whining might be justified, but for some reason you chose to take a deep breath and stay calm. It’s not easy, but it’s rewards are immediate! The challenge to accept responsibility for one’s own reaction is one of those self-discipline muscles that we need to build — and life gives us plenty of opportunities.

When we can’t control anything else about our circumstances, we can at least keep control of ourselves, our emotions, our attitude.

Charles Swindoll, founder of the radio program Insights for Living, got it right when he said:

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important … than education, than money, … than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.

It will make or break a company, a church, a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. …

We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.

We cannot change the inevitable.

The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you.

We are in charge of our attitudes.”

I want to empower my children by teaching them this concept, and I work (it is definitely WORK) to set an example of it, and together we’re discovering all the ways we can improve our personal reality simply by smiling, or letting things go, or looking for solutions, what we CAN do, rather than dwelling on the CAN’Ts. We aren’t perfect, — and yet we try to maintain a good attitude about our imperfections!

Mama, examine your attitude and how you might upgrade it in just one way today, and see what a difference it makes. Then share if this practice elevates your mothering!

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Screen Free Week

Hi, I’m Regan Barnes from Momivate, and this is your two-minute Mom Tip empowering you to elevate your mothering experience.

I get it! I get it, fellow mamas — I TOTALLY understand why TV is placed on a pedestal in our society. For one thing,

It’s basically a free babysitter, available at our beck and call
And it’s so nice that while my children are busy watching TV, they don’t make very big messes (although this also means they aren’t learning how to clean up messes…)
Another positive is that they tend to get so absorbed in the TV program that they don’t fight with each other! However, this form of hypnotized peace results in fewer opportunities to learn negotiation, compromise, forgiveness, and other positive relationship skills that come with conflict. Besides, when they’re done watching, it feels like they fight MORE than if they hadn’t watched it at all… as though the supposedly benign show has still had a negative effect.
Finally, PBS and similar educational programming make us feel good about letting them watch — “It’s like Preschool at Home” is one of the ditties I’ve heard the network claim… BUT preschool is interactive, multi-sensory, creative, and attendees can practice playing and getting along with peers… so I’m not convinced.

Why would I ever feel inclined to give up the free babysitter, free preschool, and fight-and-mess-preventer?

Well, the nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has researched why it’s crucial to curb our children’s screen use. They sponsor Screen Free Week, providing tons of resources to help us succeed in this practically impossible endeavor.

Additionally, they help us as parents teach tech-responsibility to our children because the reality is that being screen-free is a luxury not many of us can afford, oddly enough. So we need to be putting the necessary effort into teaching screen self-control starting as soon as the baby pretends her banana is a phone.

It absolutely definitely one hundred percent totally completely and drastically affects the atmosphere in our home when our “master-and-slave” relationship with screens has “we, the people” as the masters, not the slaves.

Mom, try going screen free for a day or two each week, then share if this practice elevates your mothering!

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Cherish the Doing

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Hi, I’m Regan Barnes from Momivate, and this is your two-minute Mom Tip empowering you to elevate your mothering experience.

Check out this quote by Anna Quindlen, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist and mother:

Cherish the doing a little more,
and the getting it done a little less!

I love this quote.

Too often, I’m trying so hard to get a bunch of stuff crossed off the to-do list, thinking that once those check-marks are there, I’ll be able to do the fun stuff.

Really, though, as a mom, the list just keeps growing… and that can be a suffocating feeling.

I joke about that with my kiddos, because the laundry is never really done — unless we take a day to run around naked!

Okay, so nudity might be slightly inappropriate — but ya gotta admit, there’s nothin’ like a dancin’ two-year-old’s flubby blubber!

That might be a more appropriate way to cherish the doing a little more — make the doing a little more fun. Turn up the music! Let’s Dance!

I’ll let myself eat a little chocolate during the doing, not just as a reward afterwards!

Take time to teach the little ones how to do the doing… they want to know, really they do! And that counts as quality time, during the doing!

What ideas do you have to help us all as fellow moms cherish the doing a little more? Motherhood is full of doing so let’s help each other enjoy the journey by deliberately cherishing the doing… then share if this practice elevates your mothering!

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Keep Calm and Mom On!

By Esperanza DeLaLuz

“I am just a mom.” I hurt when I hear someone say that! Mothers do the most important job on earth when they raise healthy, happy, productive children. Abraham Lincoln, our great president, said, “All that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

What not everyone knows is that the angel mother to whom he refers is actually his stepmother. His birth mother died when he was nine and, the following year, his father remarried. Sarah had children of her own, yet she was a loving and devoted mother to all of the children, and she especially nurtured Abraham in his desire to learn and read.

This is a comforting thought to those of us who are stepmothers, aunts, foster moms, and grandmothers, or who are in other positions of nurturing. The task of mothering is not only the province of those who give birth. To “mother”—which is defined as “to look after kindly and protectively”—is incredibly demanding, and just as incredibly—and critically—important. To mother is a noble task and those who participate in it, to any extent, are doing a great and valuable work.

However, in the midst of diapers, tantrums, mischief, and defiance, it may be a challenge to feel that one is engaged in a noble task. Often it feels like we are in “survival mode.” Roseann Barr once joked that if her children were alive at the end of the day, she had done her job as a mother.

I know for every mother there are days which feel like that. On those days, it can help to remember Abraham Lincoln’s feelings about his “angel mother,” and recognize that someday it may be your influence that sways the world.

The next time you are deciding whether to scrub the crayon mural off the wall or frame it, remember Sarah Bush Johnston Lincoln, and mother on!

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Curses of Living in Abundance

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Hi, I’m Regan Barnes from Momivate, and this is your two-minute Mom Tip empowering you to elevate your mothering experience.

America the Beautiful — and the WEALTHY! We moan and groan about the prices of gasoline and groceries… but seriously?!? The poor among us live better than the kings of the middle ages.

Living in an Abundant Society is a blessing… right?!

Well, yes!

I thank God every day in prayer for modern day luxuries and conveniences.

But I’m convinced there are also Curses connected to Living in an Abundance

The Seven Deadly Sins give us a framework to describe how our plentitude contributes to destructive vices.

Could being wealthy encourage lust? Since we have so much free time and expendable income, we can afford to spend time and money on pornography & prostitution… yes, those forms of lust have been around since the beginning of time, but they are more accessible, and –worse– more acceptable amidst abundance.

Since getting a meal is as easy as driving up to the fast-food window and paying a minimal amount for a high-calorie, low-nutrition meal, our gluttony contributes to our obesity and the resultant healthcare crisis, a curse for sure.

We’ve labeled an entire generation “The Me Generation” and talk worriedly about entitlement, a synonym for greed.

Meeting survival needs so easily means that we can focus our efforts on other things — or on nothing. We can be lazy but we won’t starve. Abundance means there are no built-in negative consequences to discourage sloth.

Why would having plenty lead to anger?! Opportunities to develop and practice patience, the antithesis to anger, are fewer and further between amidst abundance.

Envy fuels debt so we can “keep up with the Joneses.” Debt is definitely destructive.

Pride — the attitude that having more than someone else makes you better than they are — hmmm… Is abundance linked to pridefulness? Is childbirth linked to motherhood?

America currently has money for all of our needs and many of our wants, plus enough to help other countries. My hope is that we’ll enjoy the benefits brought on by wealth while conscientiously avoiding the potential curses it could contribute to.

Mom, develop proper monetary attitudes with your children, discussing wants versus needs so that living in abundance remains a blessing. Then share if this practice elevates your mothering!

Photo by Matthew Lancaster on Unsplash