A Good Catch!

By Annette T. Durfee

If you look for the good, you surely will find it.
Is that really true? And does it apply to life with our families? I believe it is and it does. But sometimes it is hard to see the good in people. Looking for the good requires that we assume the best in our children and create an atmosphere where they can learn from their choices with as many chances as they need. But we all know that looking for the good is so much easier to say than to actually put into practice because it is easy to see what our children are doing wrong. And negative behavior begs for our attention. So, we have to be conscious of our responses, because, honestly, who wants to be yelled at all day? Not me! It certainly is not motivating and it destroys that feeling of love that we are all trying to achieve, faster than a speeding bullet! So, what can we do instead to foster this idea with our families?
A better idea is to “catch” them doing right! Here are four ways to help us do that. I’m sure you could find more! I would suggest doing one or two at a time so as not to be overwhelmed as well as to add a spark of enthusiasm which generally accompanies something new:

1. Words of Praise: Let’s say that you’d like a peaceful atmosphere in your home and it seems at times like it is anything but that. Try looking for those rare times when they are getting along. We might say something like, “I’m hearing such kind words from the back seat. Thank you!” Or, “Look how well you are getting along! I’m proud of you!” “I like how you’re sharing your toys!” The tricky part is remembering to notice those positive moments. One way to accomplish this is by making a picture in your home hang slightly crooked. Each time you walk by and see it, it becomes a quiet reminder that now would be a very good time to catch your children doing something good!

2. Jar of pom-poms: Choose an area of focus where you’d like to see improvement. It’s even better if you choose it as a family so you have their input and buy-in. We worked as a family at one point to encourage the phrase, “I would love to” when someone, usually a parent, was asking for help with something or reminding them to do a certain chore. What a difference this phrase made as it began to shape our attitudes towards serving each other with love rather than having to be coaxed or begged with a put-out attitude. When the person said the phrase, “I would love to,” they went over to the jar and put in a pom-pom. And when the jar was full (and our hearts were fuller) we all celebrated by going out for ice cream! You might want to do the same thing and change it up a bit depending on your family’s needs.

3. The Family Book of Honor: In my children’s elementary school, they occasionally had assemblies where a few students were chosen to sign the school Book of Honor. We adopted this idea for our family by nominating people at dinnertime to sign the Durfee Book of Honor, and with it, to write down the great deed they did. Although we only did this for a short time, I must admit that it was fun to have a record of so many good deeds. And it created a feeling of warmth in our home, of looking for the good in others, cheering on the achievements of others, and of striving to do well.

4. Family Rewards: While this idea could work well for any number of improvements, I think it is particularly good in raising children to be strong, good, and valiant. The idea is to choose the values that you’d like to emphasize in your family. Make a few certificates and concentrate on one area each week. Maybe you’ll want to announce the winner of the week at a family dinner and post in a place of prominence – perhaps on their bedroom door or bathroom mirror – someplace where they will see it often and be reminded about just how good they are. I can’t remember where I got this idea from. Maybe it was from one of you? And maybe I made up some of them. At any rate, here are the ones I ended up settling on. You might find others that suit your family’s values:

* Self Starter Award: For someone who took the initiative, saw what needed doing and did it without being asked, or went the extra mile without being asked.

* Neat as a Pin Award: For someone who kept their room clean, straightened up, put things in order, etc.

* Leader for the Right Award: For someone who stood up for what they believed, resisted “following the crowd,” tried to influence someone for good, etc.

* Ice Breaker Award: For someone who made a new friend, started an interesting conversation, asked a question, gave a thoughtful compliment to someone, etc.

* What Would Jesus Do? Award: For someone who remembered to ask this question during the week, and, as a result, consciously made a good choice or decision.

* Peacemaker Award: For someone who helped our home to be a place of peace and love. “Blessed are the peacemakers – for they shall be called the children of God.”

Let’s admit it. We all like to be noticed and praised for the good we do. So instead of letting our families flounder by fishing for compliments, let’s strategize and guide our families as we charter new waters together. As we look for the good, we can tackle family problems and with a little love as bait and hook, validate their efforts and reel in a good catch!

Photo by Jayanth Muppaneni on Unsplash

By Annette T. Durfee

They all do it. You know – that thing that drives you up a wall!  No matter the age of your child and in spite of your best efforts, they inherently know exactly what button to push to get us to react.  And it seems that the more we push for them to stop it, the more they pull back until the tug of war has escalated and within seconds ruined the sense of peace and beauty that we so desire in our homes.  So what do we do?  How can we conquer this frustrating behavior that frays at our nerves, fuels our frustration, and tests the limits of our patience?  Here are a few ideas that I have found helpful.

1. Take a break.  Sometimes I have found it very helpful to take a few steps back.  Retreat into my room for a few minutes – ALONE.  Breathe!  Regroup.  Punch a pillow if it helps!  Timeout for Mommy is not only healthy, but a sanity saver!  As you remove your presence from the child they also get a chance to recover and try again.  And while I take a break, I do what my knees were made for – I PRAY!  I have found so often that when mothering moments go awry, I need all the help I can get – I need help from a higher power.  For me, this is God.  I have found that He is always there – never too busy for me, never burdened by yet another plea for help.  I pour out my heart with my worry, frustration, anger, and then, I LISTEN.  Sometimes I get an idea – I can see how I could have prevented the situation or how I could react in a better way next time or something simple I could do to help my child.  It may not be the entire solution to the problem, but it is enough to get me headed back in the right direction.  And as I follow it, I regain confidence and my child and I regain a positive momentum.  Other times after prayer, I am left with a simple yet reassuring sense of peace: I can handle this.  I’ve got what it takes.  I am a good mother.  And other times, the answers come along the way as God, my Father in Heaven, who goes behind the scenes, also goes with me and adds to my efforts.
2. Become curious.  Other times, it may help to take a step back and ask, “Why?”  Why is my child behaving this way?  What could he or she be feeling right now?  What things are going on in this stage of their life that could cause this?  Is there a little sibling rivalry going on behind the scenes?  Is there a new baby that is diverting my attention? Is there something going on at school?  I wonder what is hard for them?  How do they feel about themselves right now?  Is there something I could do or say that would help to redirect their attention to something positive?  When we become curious, we open up the door to the possible feelings of our children and we become more compassionate, empathetic, more loving.  We can even help them to feel supported by helping them voice their own feelings.  “Are you feeling sad, frustrated, lonely?  How can I help?”
3. Model the behavior you want to see. As hard as it may be to believe, it just may be that your child has not thought of a better way of doing things, even despite perpetual broken record pleas from you.  They may be in need of a consistent example to follow.  Let’s say that your child has developed a habit of running through the house screaming.  Although it may make you feel like pulling your hair out and yelling back, muster the mentality to smile and speak with a calm and quiet voice instead.  “Let’s use our inside voices.” The important people in our children’s lives are like great big mirrors.  What our children see in us, we will also eventually see in them.  So, let’s be the best mirrors we can be accompanied with a smile, a hug, and a kiss. 
4. Shaping.  Whatever we give our children attention for they will repeat.  We already know that our children do the things that drive us bonkers often to get attention.  So why not turn it around and use this to our advantage?  Rather than handing out negative attention, we could choose to focus on those things that we want to continue and offer praise when we see them.  For example, when I wish that the children would not fight and argue, I thank the child at a time when they are being a peacemaker.  “I love it when . . .”  You fill in the blanks.  My mom did this for me once in a simple way that stuck with me.  One day she gave me a Mr. Goodbar candy bar with the explanation, “because you’re so good.”  I didn’t know about shaping then, but every time I remembered that tasty treat, along with her other caring words and deeds, I felt like I was good and I tried to prove her correct!
5.  Realize that we are not meant to control others.   I think I all too often learned this lesson the hard way, scraping the heels of my feet as I skidded along the road of hard-won control.  As I struggled to learn a better way, I reflected often on a quintessential quote that I pinned on my Value Board:  “Never let a problem to be solved, become more important than a person to be loved.” (Thomas S. Monson) Such a beautiful reminder!  This thought helped me to remember that the little people in my life were not bad, they were learning, just like I was learning how to mother with love.  Our children will inevitably do things that we do not approve of and this is not, I repeat NOT an indicator that we have failed as parents. And while that means that at times we need to discipline, we can leave out the empty threats, arguing, bribery, fighting.  Yes, our mission is not to control, but to teach, to influence, set an example, and – the best part of all – love them like crazy!

Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

By Annette T. Durfee

Mom must have been magic!  No, really!  Everything she touched in the kitchen tasted like gold in your mouth!  (well, except for liver and onions – but hey, I’ll forgive her for that!) But seriously – melt-in-your-mouth rolls, warm creamy soups, comforting casseroles, tantalizing roast beef dinner, savory shepherd’s pie…I could go on and on!  Just what is it that made Mom’s cooking so great?!  Was it the splendor of eating in a palatial hall on bona fide China?  Was it that she served a 7- course meal made purely from scratch?  Or was it that she spent the entire day slaving away in the kitchen?  Hardly!  Mom was and still is a fantastic cook and hard worker to boot, but practicality has always been a quality that was surely at the forefront of her mind.  I think that you and I both know the real reason for that mouth-watering taste of home:  Mom served every meal with a heaping spoonful of her secret ingredient . . . LOVE.  Yep!  You knew that she loved you when you ate it.  I’m quite sure that I didn’t fully recognize it then.  In fact, I probably underappreciated her efforts.  But regardless, her secret was there – sort of an underlying message that would waft through the kitchen and down the hall, whispering for us to keep coming back – back to the kitchen, back to the table, back to the warmth of her influence – sign, sealed, and delivered with a kiss.

So how do WE do that, Moms?  How do we, with limited time and means, and sometimes limited skills in the kitchen, infuse as much love into the process so that even if it’s not their favorite dish, our families KNOW that we love them when they eat it?  Here are a few ideas to add to a list of your own fabulous ideas:

Plan ahead – Nothing says “stress” in the kitchen quicker than not having a meal ready when hungry tummies come calling.  I’m sure we’re all familiar with the “hangries” and that doesn’t even come close to that warm feeling we are trying to create.  So, what can we do to avoid this?  Mom took a few minutes each day to prepare the meal – taking the meat from the freezer to the fridge the night before or squeezing in a few minutes in the morning to start the crockpot going.  Many moms also plan out meals a week or so in advance so they can add items to the grocery list for a one-stop trip.  Let’s see, anything special this week?  Andrea’s birthday cake on Friday and the potluck social on Saturday.  And of course, we’re really busy on Tuesdays and Thursdays so we need a quick and easy option for those nights.  Some families choose to make it simple by assigning a theme to every day – something like:  Mondays – Italian, Tuesdays – Taco Tuesdays, Wednesdays – soup or salad, Thursdays – crockpot dinner, Friday – pizza night, Saturday – leftovers, Sunday – sweet and simple.  What kind of plan would work best for your family?

Bring along a helper or two – If you’re like just about every mom on the planet, you don’t have a lot of time to spare, so why not engage your mini chefs?  That seemed to be the way it was with Mom.  We not only felt her love with the delivery of the meal, but she infused an extra sprinkle of love into the meal by including us in the very process.  There we were, side by side, where she gave one-on-one instruction on peeling the carrots, shredding the cheese, chopping the bananas, and browning the hamburger, all the while sharing stories and building trust.  When my children were small, I tweaked this a little bit.  I found it to be more than a little chaotic and unsafe with everyone “helping” in the kitchen all at once.  So, I capitalized on their interest and willingness to help at a young age by assigning one child per day to help me with meal prep.  With only one child to focus on, I found it was a lot of fun.  And if my children made it, they usually ate it too! After a few years, I put them in charge of making one dish for the meal and eventually the entire meal with me there to supervise if there were questions.  When time came for them to walk out the door to go to college, they had become great cooks and could really fend for themselves! Now that’s love in your pocket!

Eat together as much as possible – Thinking back to those growing up years with Mom, I realize that it wasn’t so much WHAT we were eating as that we were eating together.  Mom not only took time to make it just for us, but then she ate WITH us.  That fact helped us feel that we were the most special people in her life. She had time for us.  Dinner became a time to linger longer and talk it out. What was funny?  What was hard?  What did we do when we were little?  What did we learn in school? What was important to us now?  She learned from us and we in turn learned from her – manners, values, attitudes, beliefs, her life lessons, how to laugh at life, how to get along with each other, and how to tackle the hard stuff that life threw at you.

These are just a few of the little things that strong families are made of and can create a bit of heaven in our homes.  In fact, that idea reminds me that one time in her late teens, my youngest sister said, “Do you know what heaven is going to be like?  It’s going to be just like this – all of us sitting around a table and visiting and laughing while we enjoy good meals.”  Well, I’m all for that – especially if it includes a little homemade pie with ice cream!  So, whether it’s a fancy night of chicken cordon bleu or a simple PB&J sandwich, trust that you’ve got that special ingredient right up your sleeve, ready to make any meal a magical memory.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

By  Diana Duke

They say that patience is a virtue. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a virtue I once mastered and then lost somewhere along the way. I think back to a time before I was a mother, when I had all of the patience in the world. I worked at a group home for children with disabilities and quickly found how much I loved it. As time moved on, I started a family and found myself venturing into other fields. However, at the top of my priorities was being a mother to my children. I had an amazing husband and, although we had our struggles, life was good. 

I wish I’d had more time to be the wife I always wanted to be, but things took a turn for the worse and I found myself widowed at thirty-one. I completely fell apart for a while. I lost my sense of self, and that patience I’d had was now something that I was searching for. I feel that it is something I am really struggling with, yet all of the time everyone around me is telling me, “You have so much patience—I don’t know how you do it!” I am constantly being told what a good mother I am and, though I am grateful for their kind comments, it leads me to wonder who I am. 

I don’t feel patient. I don’t feel so wonderful all the time. I think we as mothers are often our own hardest critics. However, I am pretty competitive, so I have to believe that the bar that I set long ago for myself has to be attainable or I wouldn’t have set it in the first place. I want to be happy, and I want my children to be happy. I find that getting back to the basics makes life so much easier. Being patient with ourselves, patient with our children, and being patient with those around us makes us kinder and more gentle. 

I know that it can be hard when you don’t know where to start. But you just have to start where you are. So that is what I’m doing—jumping in and starting where I am. Even as I write this, I have found myself worrying; not knowing what to write about; stressing out that nobody wants to hear about my chaotic struggles. But we are human and we all have our own challenges. We need to be patient with ourselves.

Right now one of my challenges is the never-ending laundry pile—I never get to cross it off my to-do list, so I never get the satisfaction of completion. However, what I can do is set a goal for how many loads I can do today. That way I am able to cross something off my to-do list with satisfaction. I can go on and on about the steps I have to take to be patient with myself. We are all different; what works for me isn’t going to work for everyone else. But each of us can do something to quiet those negative, self-defeating thoughts in our heads. What are some things you can do to be patient with yourself?

Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash

By Esperanza DeLaLuz

Being a mother is a thing that changes you forever. Once you make that commitment to a child, it’s the child’s well-being, growth, and happiness that is the most important thing in your world. You’ll go without sleep, go hungry, clean up disgusting substances, labor for hours to create the perfect event or costume, and spend hours and hours repeating activities that would otherwise be incredibly boring.

Recently, I found myself playing 27 games of Candyland in a row because my 5-year-old granddaughter loves that game and can play it competently. I don’t like Candyland, but I love the excitement on her face when she makes a good move, or the exuberant thrill when she wins. Even the sadness when she has to go backwards is just adorable!

Do you know the history of Candyland? During the Polio era, before vaccines, there were lots of very young children in hospitals, and they were very bored, lonel,y and unhappy. But many of them were too young to read and unable to play games without adult involvement.

In 1948, a retired schoolteacher named Eleanor Abbott decided to create a board game that could become a distraction for very young patients. The outbreak had forced children into extremely restrictive environments. Concerned with the spread of polio, parents kept their children indoors, and children were frustrated. Games like Candy Land became an ideal way to keep them occupied.

Children who had contracted polio were isolated, physically weak, and often confined by equipment. Candy land was designed to let young children play by themselves. As long as the child can count to 2 and match colors, the child can play. Candy Land offered the children confined in hospitals a welcome distraction—but it also gave immobilized patients a liberating fantasy of movement.  The joy of movement, especially for polio patients, seems to have been integral to Abbott’s design philosophy from the start. The original board even depicts the tentative steps of a boy in a leg brace!

The game teaches pattern recognition and following instructions. It shows children how to play together—how to win humbly or lose graciously. The game is designed to be outgrown. As soon as a child realizes that there is nothing that they can do to alter the course of the game, they begin to desire more challenging entertainment. But there will always be young children who need a game that they can play, and Moms and Nannas who will play 27 games in a row for the pure joy of watching a child play.

“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world.” Agatha Christie

Some material was excerpted from: “Candy Land Was Invented for Polio Wards” By Alexander B. Joy

By Esperanza Svyeta

“Your greatest contribution to the world may not be in what you do, but someone you raise.” Andy Stanley

Sometimes the things about being a mother that are the most meaningful to you are not the things you would expect. Cards, gifts, and messages of appreciation, are wonderful and meaningful, no question. But some of the things that have meant the most to me are the late-night calls where a child calls to tell you something…. 

They have lost their job; the market has gone soft; and they are at risk of losing their home. Your heart breaks because you aren’t in a position to offer much financial help, and then your child says, “But we’ll get through it, Mom. We bought a giant bag of beans, and another bag of rice. We had some food set aside. Thank you for teaching me how to live poor.” Who knew that all those years we struggled to get by would be a blessing to our child?

A child called to tell me of her struggles with a child with behavioral issues, as a result of special needs, who is doing so poorly that the school is wanting to do something to make life easier for themselves, a thing which is not in the best interest of her child. Again, my heart ached, because there was not a lot I could do for her, besides listen and be supportive. They live very far away and its such a complicated process to resolve this kind of thing. Then she says, “But I knew what to do, Mom; I took him to be assessed, and then I told them they need to get him an IEP, and I told them I know they have to do something better.” I said, “Wow, how did you know how to do those things?” She told me she had watched and listened as we worked with her foster brother, and so she remembered what to do.

A child who had been struggling to find a good way to live, decided to go into the military to help build a better life. The call in the late night told of the challenges of boot camp, the demanding discipline, the hard work and myriad mundane tasks. BUT, assigned to clean bathrooms with another recruit, who was clueless and lazy, our child shone, having been taught to do chores (however reluctantly those lessons were endured.) The child who, as a child, threw tantrums over having to do the dishes said to me, “Thank you, Mom, for teaching me to work.” I was thrilled (and floored!) Who would have thought?

Photo by Chase Clark on Unsplash