Motherhood Tips 9

Sunday, 07. March 2010 by Renee Ellison

Some days mothers don’t even get a chance to talk with themselves, finish their own sentences, let alone get encouragement from another older mother!  Send this to as many mothers as you can—moms who might be running on empty.

Six tips:
Parenting Tip
Home Management Tip
Kitchen Tip
Sewing Tip
MarriageTip
Devotions

Parenting Tip:  Managing the mental diet of your child
Your child’s brain is sacred ground.  What gets written on his brain is largely your responsibility for about 12 years running, and cannot EVER be erased once it is in there.  In the beginning, he is like a new sponge right out of the wrapper.  He will sponge up grimy water or pristine mountain spring water…depending upon where you set him.  Sponging up endless media can sadly damage a child in some hidden ways not experienced by children born in other centuries.

Sitting in front of hours and hours of entertainment has become a substitute for real life in many homes today, including Christian ones.  Internet surfing and watching DVDs and TV rob a childhood of developmental hours spent in skill acquisition, self-initiative, relational interchanges, and high productivity.  Entertainment has even replaced the wholesome work ethic—even any appetite for it, as the body is repeatedly and ongoingly lulled into passivity.

If you entertain a child too often, you rob him of the ability to think UP an activity by himself and for himself.  Staring at the baseboards has value, because eventually a child casts around to DO something OTHER than stare at the baseboards…but you have to withdraw the entertainment LONG ENOUGH to birth the initiation.  Growing the ability to have a consecutive reflective thought gets nixed while sitting in front of dizzying frenetic advertisements day after day.

As a child, Edison would have been robbed of his tinkering time, the Wright Brothers of their daydreams while they were lying on their backs, staring at the sky.  To constantly watch someone ELSE live life robs you of YOURS.  And to be stirred up about someone else’s football game/score, or someone else’s emotional trauma/dilemma in a TV story (something your child can do NOTHING about) diverts the developing child from his own high intrigue, or from developing his own home-based business that grows an unbelievable personal confidence, or cultivation of his own talent that brings untold beauty/pleasure to others, if done well…i.e. mega hours of practice.  And there is certainly no time to tend to or alleviate someone’s real suffering down the street.  There’s no time… period.  It has all been given over, sold out, unavailable.

Instead of parking your child in front of a DVD, let him LISTEN to adult conversations.  Have him simply BE with you, next to you, within earshot of you, at your SAME dinner table WITH the guests.  The child will soon learn how to shape an interesting conversation, how to respond lovingly, and how to stick WITH a person emotionally, and all of this will help him mature at an astonishing rate.  Also, he will have enough reflection time to begin to learn how to think progressively…i.e. reach a conclusion…something denied the chronic dissipated TV watcher.  Some children don’t even know where the OFF button to their TV is LOCATED.  It has been on since they were born.

And finally the other real fear, for a conscientious parent, SHOULD be the altered realities children are escorted into via the screen—where evil is called good and good evil, where children dip down into fantasy worlds whose principles are in direct conflict with Scripture.  They encounter creatures and activities that are nowhere found in reality, which give rise to fears, paranoia, anxieties and bad dreams that children were never meant to have.

These parallel realities are in the same camp with divination and witchcraft, and in fact may have been formed there. In the old days, children read stories about things that could happen in their own life with their own dog.  Something different is going on today.  These are invitations into parallel realities.  Children are escorted there swiftly through overpowering visuals and pounding, driving action.  The addiction is life-altering at profound levels not understood immediately.  All we knew was that we “needed” the convenience of the visual babysitter.  Our need will become their addiction.

Even Christian films may have problems, not the least of which is dragging a child’s formative brain through the cartoon or buffoon renderings of Biblical characters and even God himself which then, ever after, relentlessly come to his mind each and every time he wants to pray.  Hours and hours of Christian DVDs straddle our children with having to go through a thickly layered visual interface to get to the real deal, the real spiritual realm.  It is no gift.

I’m so radical about this issue, I’d say allow no exposure to TV or Internet until a child is ten years old (when he has the ability to distinguish between the abstract and the concrete)...and even after that, to limit it.  Let the child have a fighting chance to have a real childhood, unmolested by visual garbage, Joseph’s fictitious or real? coat of many colors, Noah’s fictitious or real? ark, frantic pie-throwing, car-chasing, and stabbings without number.  Replace all this entertainment with real life and real challenges…encouraging your children to make something of themselves.  Reclaim those hours for high purposes…the more hours the better.  Achieving greatness begins the moment a child is born.  Hours are investments in one sort of capital or another.  You hold the keys. 

Home Management Tip:  Diffuse the huge
All of us have things in our lives that we wish we would make ourselves do and simply can’t get the old body to cooperate with.  We foot-drag terribly…worse than our children do.  We know we need to exercise consistently or pray more or daily make a big huge salad to improve our heath, or tackle arranging those family pictures, or clean the closets.  We make high resolves that never happen.

With any discipline or any overwhelming project that we know we SHOULD conquer, the pattern for most of us is to psyche ourselves to hit it hard.  We succeed on the first day, but that is usually followed by a corresponding crash for the rest of the week or month or year!

How ‘bout trying the opposite approach?!  Why not try incremental conquerings?  For example: exercise just five minutes, but do it ALL this week.  Or just do three push-ups while standing up, pushing off a wall…but do it every day, all this week.  Mark it on the calendar…reward yourself at the end of the sixth day with something you never get to do much of, like… read for ten minutes or… hide in a closet and completely finish one thought of your own, or something phenomenal like that.  Then next week up it to ten minutes EVERY day.  Mark that on the calendar.  Grow a discipline like the tortoise did, rather than opt for the crash and burn approach of the hare.

In putting yourself under new management to acquire this new habit, you have to engage in a kind of sequential suicide by dropping EVERYTHING to just go do it.  You can kind of even rev yourself up by doing war hoops like those bobsled teams do in the Olympics before they all jump into the narrow box to shoot down fifty stories in a minute.  Try leading with your body, short-circuiting the slower rational planning section of your brain…just plop your feet out of the front door to go for your walk once a day.  Ask “why?” only when you are out on the road with a half a mile already behind ya!  Or reach out your hands to sort the closet and drag your brain and sluggish emotions along AFTER your actions.

Just take one little menacing area, one little area of guilt, one “dive and cover” topic, and apply yourself to it for five minutes.  Break through inertia with creeping baby steps.  Coach yourself with a little activity in that direction, followed by a lot of lavish praise.  “Way ta go…did you see THAT…I actually made a dent in the thing!!!!!!!!!”

By the way, here’s a suggestion about family picture albums.  Forget it.  Just slide those mountains of pictures into album sleeves as soon as they are printed.  Pencil in the dates on the back of the pictures before they go into the sleeves—and call it quits.  I know moms who have shoeboxes full of pictures that never get sorted, because they are waiting to do the million dollar work-up of the best family album ever.  Or, you could assign the job to your children and take what you get!

For some huge jobs, the best strategy is just not to care! Resist being the hare OR the tortoise; instead, go sit in your favorite chair and read to your child or enjoy a good book yourself.  There is nothing in the Ten Commandments that says you HAVE to do family albums, polish silverware, or train your children to speak Arabic!  If God didn’t require it, why should you?!  Often we tie ourselves up like Lazaruses with our own expectations.  Sometimes WE make life far more difficult than it needs to be.

Kitchen Tip:  Renee Ellison of HomeschoolHowTos.comAprons and pie crusts
(1.) Make yourself the world’s best apron.
If you want one, here it is!  This is an apron you can slosh on all over at the kitchen sink!  That means you can work fast and don’t have to be so careful.  And you can see your pretty clothes through it.  Hang it on a hook in the kitchen where you can quickly grab it.  You’ll LOVE this apron.  I have several cloth aprons, but always grab this see-through vinyl one instead.  I wear it nearly constantly while in the kitchen.

54 inch medium clear plastic vinyl comes on large rolls in the fabric department at Wal-Mart.  Measure your favorite apron and go get some of that vinyl to match that measurement.  Cut an apron out of it, attaching fabric only for a neck strap and waist ties out of fabric.  When you sew the neck and waist ties to it, first cut a 2 by 2 inch scrap of vinyl and fold that over the apron’s edges right at the spots where you’ll attach the fabric, and stitch through all three layers of vinyl to really secure the ties.

(2.) Use your leftover vinyl scraps to make the tool for producing the world’s best-looking pie crusts.
Out of your leftover scraps of this vinyl, cut two 13 inch circles to use for rolling out pie crusts.  Draw around a plate…if the plate is only 12 inches, measure out an inch all around the edge.  Roll your pie crusts out between these two pieces of vinyl each and every time you make a pie, and your crusts will come out splendidly thin!  Roll your dough to within 1/2 inch of the edge.  Peel off the top layer of vinyl and plop the crust in your pie pan, then peel off the second layer, gently loosening it evenly all around the edges with your finger first.  Your counter, hands and rolling pin all stay clean.

Pie crust recipe:
2 C whole wheat flour
1/4 C grapeseed oil (or any cooking oil)
1/2 C rice milk or (other milk)

Mix in a small bowl.  Stir with a metal dinner fork until the ball of dough chases your fork around the bowl.  You’ll think at first it is too wet, but keep stirring for a minute.  You want your dough to be pliable, but not sticky.  (If it is too sticky, add a touch more flour; if it is too stiff, add a touch more milk).  But it should come out just right!  Let it sit for 10 minutes before rolling it out.  This lets the flour thoroughly absorb the oil and milk, making it far easier to deal with.

Divide dough in half.  Roll out between your vinyl circles.  Makes 2.  If dough spreads/rolls out beyond the edges tuck it back in between the layers, and re-finger press it through the vinyl.  Make it perfectly round at about 12 and 1/2 inches.

Sewing Tip:  Attitude is everything
Ripping out is part of the forward process of sewing.  You have to make your peace with ripping out.  Edison found 800 ways that didn’t work before he discovered the thing that DID work to invent his light bulb.  Do you think he ever again had to go through the 799?  Do you think anyone he ever TAUGHT had to go through the 799?  He firmly understood the process.  To become an expert at anything means tolerating all of the trial and error, going at the task again and again…sticking with the one thing until it is mastered, then going on to the more difficult level.  Would you rather have Edison for your tailor or a McDonald’s cashier?  Effort SHOWS.  Effort counts.  Effort over the long haul results in something very pleasing.  Ripping out is PROGRESS.  Just ask Rembrandt or Bach.

With sewing, you have to enjoy the journey as well as the destination.  Smell the roses; FEEL the fabric; enjoy the colors; enjoy the process of gaining a skill and growing a new competency.  Enjoy the tweaking.  What else in life can you tweak without squawks from the entire family?  This could be part of your private world, as well as serving your family with the results.  Keep it stress-free.  Avoid ever putting yourself under a deadline. Have your children wear something ELSE they already have, if time runs short.  Refuse to be panicked about a skill YOU took on.  One older seamstress who had learned to relax and be content with the whole process once told me: “A good needle and thread are far cheaper than a psychiatrist’s bill!”

Marriage Tip:  A hard look at temptation
Temptation is not sin.  Rolling it around in one’s mind, savoring it, sucking on it like hard candy IS.  Loss of control over marital temptations is wrecking havoc in homes around the world, Christian and non-Christian alike.  Far from showing resistance to temptation like the Pilgrims and Puritans did, the modern church is filled with moths (people) who dance near the flame and think nothing of it.  This prevalent looseness with regard to temptations to adultery or even mental adultery is the result of two fundamental misunderstandings: 

one: of the nature of the guy/gal who is the current temptation for you or your spouse.

and two, what temptation really is designed to do, and the degree of strength necessary to throw it off.

Ever have the experience of cutting through a bright, gorgeous, shiny apple, and finding it all brown, mealy, and rotten at the center?  That is a picture of the insides of the entire human race, and of every man/woman who could potentially be a temptation to you or your spouse.  (Hence the need for a savior, by the way.)  Margaret Thatcher said: “Civilization is a thin veneer.”  In other words, if you push anyone’s buttons far enough you will find a self-absorbed beast at the core.  In the heat of a temptation, don’t forget this.

Every movie star, news announcer, hero of a romantic novel, yes, even your pastor, your business associate, your friend…all have some decay at their core.  A complete stranger may be dressed up in a nice suit as he stands on Main Street.  As your car whizzes by, the sight of him might unexpectedly cause you to catch your breath…or your spouse may catch his at the sight of a nicely dressed woman.  But just remember, that nicely suited fellow may also cheat on his clients, drink too much, and have out-of-control spending habits.  A man might have polish and pluck in public, but his business affairs be in shambles.  Another might be sentimentally satisfying with roses and poetry but looks at himself in the mirror too much.  There might be three women in the audience who know, independent of each other, that that TV evangelist has a real problem with women.  All is not gold that glitters.  Mankind’s preoccupation with self is total, whether he’s a man or a woman.  In the heat of a temptation, don’t forget this.

Keep in mind that (in addition to the rotten core) every potentially tempting man has a warehouse full of idiosyncrasies that people close to him must cope with(just as your current spouse has).  You may not know it, but your spouse copes with idiosyncrasies in YOU, too!  One talks too much: another doesn’t talk enough.  One goes to bed with cod liver oil creams and white gloves to preserve his hands for violin performances; another goes to bed with his ski boots on to increase his muscle strength.  One studies too much; another RELATES too much.  One is too perfectionistic; another is too scattered in his thoughts.  One has sleep apnea…another snores or spits.  In the heat of a temptation, don’t forget this.

Finally, keep in mind that temptations are not cute little will-of-the-wisp suggestions, puffs of smoke, toys.  They are designed by a vicious, devouring enemy of your soul…who is an expert both at 1) packaging, and 2) knowing the soft spots in human armor.  Make no mistake: having practiced for centuries, he is a bull’s-eye warrior.  All temptations are mincingly, progressively and relentlessly offered to you with only one end in mind…to take you down, shipwreck you and leave you crashed at the side of the road of life.  In the heat of a temptation, don’t forget this.

So, when a temptation hits, here is your ammunition:
Be alarmed, instantly.  Counter the first thought with Scripture, just like your Messiah did.  Guns and bullets don’t work here.  Shout and yell Scriptures if you must.  Speedily see to it that you gain victory over it mentally and spiritually.

Remember that this new temptation of a guy is basically a scoundrel at the core, just like the rest of us; he is no better than your current spouse, or YOU.  In his own temptations, the Lord never lost sight of the true nature of his tempter (the ultimate scoundrel) working through human agents.

Resist long and hard.  Have you sweat blood yet, resisting ANY temptation?  If not, you can resist some more.

If need be, take drastic action: change churches, go home a different route, stop going to THAT grocery store, or resign from the committee.  End or minimize all contact.  Determine to shorten the conversations to functional ones.  Avoid the lingering in the hallway or after the game.

Have a hefty respect for the STRENGTH of a temptation.  You may find yourself no match for it.  There are places in the heart that are so extremely complex they can be beyond understanding, and maybe even a smidgeon beyond managing.  Every human being has the potential to lose it.  Escape…don’t hang around to test your mettle.  You may find that your wings are clipped.

Immediately move TOWARD your SPOUSE with some definite, specific, loving ACTION.  Increase your expression of your love for your current difficult spouse.  (They all are difficult, as are YOU!)  If you’ll do this, you’ll find that mangy temptation tucks its tail between its legs, blushes, and scurries away.  Do it over and over, if you must.  Erosion is the name of the enemy’s game.

Temptation is designed to be tempting, or it wouldn’t be temptation!  Develop some moth savvy and don’t fly so near those flames.  Don’t come out singed and think you’re doin’ great.  One slip could wreck your family tree.

Devotions:  Holy children
Strive to raise a holy child, not just an academic or talented child.  Wean him off from you onto his Creator at every turn in the road.  Teach him how to depend upon God, sing to God, cry out to God, love God.  Teach him to read his OWN Bible, write down his OWN verse, pray his OWN prayer.  Long to place your child in better arms than yours…just like Hannah did with her Samuel.

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