The Mom Crowd

It is so incredibly easy to get bogged down in the traditions of Christmas, all the shopping, decorating, festivities, etc, and to forget the real meaning behind the holiday.  While I’m not a Santa-fanatic, we still get gifts from Santa for our kids and let them participate in the “fun” of it, however our focus on Christmas is Christ.

I was thinking of ways to keep my children’s focus on Jesus instead of the presents and Santa and came up with a few ideas I thought I’d share.

Teach about Jesus year-round and not just at Christmas - The more your children hear about the goodness and mercies of Jesus all year, the easier it will be for them to understand the importance of Christmas.  Daily read books and the Bible with them and encourage them to pray.  Amanda gave some great tips on teaching your children to pray yesterday.

Remember to put YOUR focus on Christ and not the traditions – Your children will see what you put the most importance on and will follow your lead.  If you are more worried about presents, they will be too.  The same goes for Santa Claus, if your family chooses to participate in that tradition.  If you are constantly saying “Santa is coming”, your children will get the impression that Santa is the reason for Christmas.

Encourage your children to have the giving spirit - Remind your children that we give gifts on Christmas in honor of Jesus.  Just like the three wise kings who brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus to show Him their love, we give gifts to those we love.  Make it more about the giving than the getting.  A great way to teach this is to have your child pick something out for another child who will be receiving gifts as part of a ministry.  Your child will get to learn that giving makes them happier than getting.

Read your children the Christmas Story – Reading straight from the Bible is always a good thing with your kids!  You are speaking truth and love over them when you do and you are ministering and preparing their hearts for their future relationship with Jesus.  Matthew 1:18-2:23 and Luke 1:26-38 and Luke 2:1-29 tell the story.  There are also many books that are more on toddler and preschooler levels that tell the story without all the “grown-up” and potentially scary details.  We currently have The Story of Christmas by Patricia A. Pingry and our kids love it.

Decorate your house with more Christian items than “holiday” decorations – We currently have two nativity sets out that our children love to look at and talk about.  We also made a construction paper nativity that takes up an entire wall.  I did the major cutting out and my 4 year old drew faces on Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and the Angel.  He also glued the pieces together and helped me hang everything on the wall.  We also have the scriptures from Luke telling of the birth of Jesus printed out and on the wall above the nativity.  Having a toy nativity, like the one Fisher-Price has in their Little People brand, is a great way for kids to learn and interact with the story.

How do you keep the Christ in Christmas with your kids?

Photo Courtesy of Loci Lenar

Teaching your child how to pray is one of the best life skills you can teach them. I realized a few months after my daughter could start putting sentences together that I could teach her how to pray. She also goes to a Mother’s Day Out program at my church and she prays at school. It occurred to me that she didn’t pray at home.

I believe prayer is real and God hears our hearts. He wants to speak to us. I want to teach my daughter that she can always pray and that God is accessible anywhere. This is a life lesson that I don’t want to fall short on teaching her. I am also excited that later on I get to teach her how to hear God too.

This fall we began praying with my daughter as part of the bedtime process. Here are some tips that can help you with praying with your children.

1. Keep the prayer simple. We pray the same prayer every night. We sit together, close our eyes, and each of us clasps our own hands together and pray. This is what we pray, “Dear Jesus, thank you for today. Bless Mommy, Daddy, and Brother. Help me sleep well. I love you, Jesus. Amen!” It is fun, because sometimes my daughter will include others in the list of blessing. She doesn’t always say the whole thing out loud, but we ask her to say “I love you, Jesus. Amen.” We made up this prayer, but you can make up your own too! Just keep it simple.

2. Sing a song. I have some friends that know prayers that are like songs. It is is seriously adorable to hear them sing their prayers. You can sing ‘Jesus Loves Me’ or other songs like this one.

God is Great
- With these additional lines, it is sung to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star“:

God is good and God is great.
And we thank him for our food.

By his hands we all are fed.
Thank you, Lord, for our daily bread.
God is great and God is good,
And we thank him for our food.

3. Make a routine. The best way to remember to pray with your kids is to include it in a routine every day. It can be done before they eat a meal or in a bedtime routine.  Here is an example of a meal time prayer:

Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you God for everything.

4. Pray for someone when they get an Ouchie. You can teach your child how to pray for their friends when their friend gets hurt or doesn’t feel well. I have seen a friend’s child do this and it warms my heart to see that child learn compassion. The prayer can be something as simple as “Dear Jesus, please heal my friend. Amen.”

5. Be an example. Pray in front of your kids! Let them see you reading your Bible and praying. Include everyone in the family when praying with your child. In our bedtime routine I may read the bedtime book, but Daddy always comes in for the prayer time. We all pray out loud together. You can also model it by having Daddy pray for Mommy or the other way around. They may not seem that they are paying attention, but it certainly sets the tone that prayer is a normal part of life.

How have you taught your children to pray? Do you have it in a routine? What sing-songy prayer do your children pray?

As our daughter’s second birthday approaches at the end of this week, I keep thinking how much she needs to get rid of that little baby thing… the binky!  Neither of my kids took a pacifier as babies, they preferred Mommy and I was ok with that.  Our oldest transitioned well after weaning, but my daughter, weaned at 17 months, had a much harder time.  I thought that offering her a pacifier might help the transition, but now I wish I had never started down that path.  What I thought would be a helper during naptime and bedtime has turned into a constant obsession with the “beep beep”. 

I thought about using the “Paci Fairy”, but as smart as she is, I think it might be a little over her head at barely two.  I thought about just throwing them away, but that just seems incredibly cruel.  So, now the goal is to keep them up and out of sight during waking hours and only bring them out for sleep times.  Basically, it’s like weaning from the breast all over again, just without the physical pain for me.  Hopefully in the next month, we’ll be totally binky-free. 

This is just what we chose to do, but here are a few other prevalent ideas out there for saying “bye-bye” to the binky:

Binky/Paci Fairy - Have your toddler collect all their pacifiers in a bag and hang them in a tree or put them in the mailbox before they go to bed.  Explain to them that the fairy comes and gets all the old pacifiers so that the new babies can have them and in return the fairy leaves a special toy.  (Personally, I’ve only had one friend have success with this one, but her little one was almost three years old when she tried it.)

Cold Turkey - Like every other definition of cold turkey, this method involves just taking the pacifiers away all together with no prize or reward. 

Pacifier to Toy Swap - This is an interesting method that involves having your toddler gather all of their pacifiers and taking them to a toy store to use their pacifiers as money for wanted items.  Let your toddler pay for their toys with a bag of pacifiers while you slip the cashier the cash.  (Similar to the Paci Fairy, except it’s a direct exchange that the child has some control over.  This could be very useful for independant children.)

Weaning - Basically, this was my method of choice.  Slowly offering or allowing the pacifier less and less until it is no longer wanted or needed.  This may be the slowest method, but makes it a little less traumatic for the toddler.

How did you say bye-bye to the binky in your house?  Did you try any of these methods without success?  Any advice for us novices?

Photo Courtesy of timsamoff

In the last 24 hours I have been invited to 2 different cookie parties happening this month. I don’t think that they will be my last two either. This is the first Christmas that my first child will understand a few Christmas traditions and I am so excited!  I am sure she will be elated to know that Christmas cookies are a yearly tradition.

Here are 5 ideas for Christmas Cookie Parties if you are thinking of throwing a party.

Cookie Exchange Party

A cookie exchange party can happen in the evening for a girl’s night out or during the days with kids and chaos.  My friend Tashi is hosting a Christmas cookie exchange this year and here are her rules that you could follow as well.

1. Bring 7 dozen of your best and yummiest cookies.
2. Bring 12 copies of your recipe.
3. Bring 1 dozen of your cookies arranged nicely in a basket or platter.
4. Bring a container to take home your new cookies.
5. If you don’t have time to bake or have ruined your recipe but still want to attend, just go to your local bakery and pick up 7 dozen yummy cookies.

Cookie Decorating Party

A cookie decorating party is completely fun for the kids and adults during the day time. Everyone can have fun while making a mess and eating delicious cookies.

My friend Jennifer C. is hosting a cookie decorating party and she will be providing the cookies and frosting. If the weather cooperates the party will be happening in the back yard. The guests only need to bring 3 things: (1) their kiddos (who aren’t in school), (2) some sprinkles to share, and (3) a take home container.

I am sure you can ask other moms chip in to bring cookies and ask someone else to bring frosting if you don’t want to provide all of the elements.

Cookie Bake Day

My family has had a cookie bake day almost every year. All the women get together and bake cookies in the same kitchen together. There is always a line for the oven, we are on top of each other, and making a mess on every counter space available, but it is so much fun! At the end of the day we have massive amounts of cookies and we trade what we made. It’s really fun being together and being silly.

Baked Ornament “Cookies”

Perhaps you aren’t looking to gain a few extra pounds this December and would prefer a non-edible party – you can always hang your cookies on the tree instead! I have never made these myself, but I really want to this year. It seems like it would be fun do with my kids and other kids as well. Here is a link to make Christmas Dough Ornament Crafts.

Cheer up homeless shelters and hospitals with your cookies!

After you have a cookie party you can package them up to give to a local hospital or shelter. You can get the kids involved and tell them who the cookies are for. They could even write a note or draw a picture to go with the cookies. You can even take it a step further and collect children’s books to give away along with the cookies. There are homeless shelters with children too. I am sure they would love cookies! A step further would be to gather your friends, family, or church, and provide a cookie decorating party for the children at the shelter. Here in San Antonio, The Strong Foundation, helps homeless families get back on their feet. Check with your local shelter’s volunteer coordinator to see if you can help.

Have you ever hosted a cookie party or participated in one? What is your favorite Christmas cookie?

Over the last few months, I have been participating in a study at my church of the book Shepherding a Child’s Heart.  This book has been eye opening to me and I thought I’d share my personal feelings and thoughts about it with all of you. 

The basis of the book is raising your children in a godly biblical way.  So often in our society we are caught up in the pop psychology of child raising that we stray so far away from how we are supposed to raise them.  I personally have tried many of the “tried and true” methods, including a ton of SuperNanny’s tricks and none of them have worked with our son.  Why?  Because they don’t get to the heart… they just focus on getting your child to do what you want them to do.  The main purpose of this book is to get you to focus on the heart and the attitude of the heart, to teach your child that God has placed you as the authority in their life to protect and guide them and that you serve as their authority under God. Once you teach the heart to love and to serve, the behavior changes.  It’s not only teaching your child’s heart, but it teaches your heart along the way. 

Tripp explains the two biblical methods of discipline are the rod (spanking) and communication.  He goes into great depth in explaining the appropriate way to spank and how not spanking puts your child in peril spiritually.  It was difficult for me to read this because my husband and I had decided not to spank because we had seen how upset we got with our son and felt like we didn’t want to spank in anger.  Godly discipline is NEVER done in anger, but in love.  Doing it in love prevents abuse and actually leads you to a stronger relationship with your child.  Since implementing this type of discipline, we have seen how differently we address our child’s behavior and how he is learning that we love him and that is why we aren’t letting “this one go”.  It’s a hard way to parent, but it’s the right way.

Tripp also goes into great detail about why the typical methods of discipline don’t really work and why as our children get older, they will rebel.  It’s really eye-opening!  It’s no wonder children are so rebellious these days and why so many are doing things that we never would have thought of at such a young age.  Parents are taking the easy way out. 

The only negative I have to say about this book is that there isn’t a lot of practical application examples.  However, through the Shepherding the Heart Ministries, a variety of tools with examples that are very helpful are offered.  Ginger Plowmann offers a  great supplemental resource in her Wise Words for Wise Moms chart that gives scripture references in dealing with specific issues.  The book does have review and thought provoking questions at the end of each chapter which are helpful in getting you to really understand the concepts.

All in all, this is a fantastic book written by a father, teacher, counselor and pastor.  With years and years of personal experience, his insight is clear and heartfelt.  He lets you know the struggles his family has had with certain things and he gives examples of how raising your child biblically makes all the difference in the end.  I highly recommend this book to anyone. 

Ephesians 6:4  “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

Have you read this book?  Would you recommend it to other parents?