Parenting: Take a break

I have an  email subscription to a website for parents that sends me a parenting tip each week. I thought I would share this one with you because I think time outs can be a little over used and for a lot of kids aren't very effective, at least not at the day care I work at.  I really liked the idea of taking a break rather than using a time out as a means to discipline all the time. Let me know what you think. I have more to share on the idea of training your child's heart from a great book I have read about it by the same guy who uses "The Break" in his household. The website is called biblicalparenting.org if you are interested in subscribing! Happy parenting! Ha Ha Ha!

Parenting Tip

October 25, 2010

Teach Children to Take a Break
When you begin to see a bad attitude or hear that manipulative whining voice, have your child take a Break. With young children, as young as two or three years old, have them sit in a particular place, a chair, a carpet square, the hallway, or a bottom step. For older children, you might send them to the parent's room or to another quiet place.

We believe that the Break is much more helpful than Time Out. The instructions given are simple and clear. "You need to go take a Break. Come back and see me when you've calmed down and are ready to talk about this nicely."
Two differences are important. The child knows that the objective in taking a Break is a changed heart and also the child helps determine the length of time spent in the break place, coming back only when ready for a debriefing.

These two differences between Time Out and the Break change the posture of the parent. With Time Out, the parent is the policeman, keeping the child in the chair until the sentence for misbehavior has been served. With the Break, the parent is eagerly waiting for the child to return so that they can debrief and more forward.

The Break helps parents address heart issues with children and can become a primary discipline technique. It actually comes from the Bible in the teaching about discipline in God's family, the Church (Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5, and 2 Corinthians 2). The idea is basically this: If you can't abide by the principles that make this family work, then you can't enjoy the benefits of family life. The two go hand in hand.

This parenting tip was taken from the book, Home Improvement, The Parenting Book You Can Read to Your Kids, by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN.


If this tip was sent to you by a friend and you'd like to continue to receive tips yourself, you can sign up at www.biblicalparenting.org.

A house is just a house and money is just money

I do not write this post to make anyone have pity on our situation so if it comes off that way I apologize now because sometimes these types of blogs may give off the impression that my life is worse off than everyone else. We are in a tough spot right now and since this is my blog I feel the freedom to write about it and since it is apart of our life to update you about it as well.
We have a house, not the house we live in now but a house we still currently own that we built back about 2006. We moved in, I think, the winter of 06, it may have been 05, but it was so long ago I can't remember the exact date. We loved that house. It was our dream house and it wasn't even that big. Three bedroom, two full bath, wood burning fireplace, cathedral ceilings, big garage, living, dining and kitchen open concept and the best part... it was all on 6 acres of land. Most of it was wooded but we had about 2 acres that we mowed. The next best part...it was private, back off the road about 700 ft. behind two other houses. We could pee in the front yard or walk around the house butt naked and no one would know. The perfect place to live. I loved having my own place to decorate, to make my own. The first several years of marriage we lived in an apartment. It never felt like home to me because I knew so many other people lived in it before me and many more would do the same after we moved out. We then moved to a friends house with the intention that we would help him fix it up while we lived in it for free. That was a sweet deal, but again, never felt like home.
Then when we finally finished building OUR house.

We had our very own place to care for. We soon learned that owning a house was a lot more work than we ever thought it would be. Lots of things to work on, spend money on... It felt like a never ending project, but we still really loved living there regardless of the high costs to keep it up.
We then felt God moving us to a place we never thought we would be, but before going we were going to take a long walk in the woods for 6 months. Most of you know about our hike across the AT. Within two months after putting up a for sale sign we were unable to sell but found a couple who wanted to sign a lease option (basically, they rent for a year then buy the house). They never fulfilled their contract with us and moved out after 14 months of living there. Again we had to put the house up for sale and before our next months mortgage was due another couple came along and wanted to sign the same type of contract, with the intention of buying in a year.  Praise God for his provision so we didn't have to pay the mortgage! Sadly enough they have also backed out of the lease and have moved out leaving us with a mortgage, insurance bill, property tax, and electric bill of which we have NO money to pay for. We now find ourselves in a pickle of decisions to make. How to pay for the mortgage each month? Whether or not to take the couple to court and sue them for what they owe us since they are still under contract with us until next April? Is the house ever going to sell?
Pray Pray Pray that God will sell our house so we can finally be free of a burden that we so loved when we could afford to live there.
The feelings I am left with the last couple of days is that a house is just house. It is not something we can take with us to heaven. It is just a place that God provides for us to find comfort, safety, peace, and happiness while we are here on this earth. Money is just money. God is so much bigger than money and American people seem to worry more about money than we do about our own souls or more important others souls. It is a tough spot to be in because we got ourselves in this pickle of a problem in the first place.
So we go on living and trusting that God will provide a miracle for us before too long. Last night I was reading Haggai last night before bed and here is what it says...

"Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: "Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house is in ruins (talking about the temple)? Now this is what the Lord Almighty says,"Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."

This is what the Lord Almighty says:" Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored says the Lord. "You expected much but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why? declares the Lord. "Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house."  

I took these words and brought them into my reality that I have spent more time thinking about my house more than the house of God(his kingdom of people) which is in ruins. Sure I don't want to go bankrupt and loose everything. I honestly don't think that will happen, but I don't want to waste more brains cells thinking about how terrible our situation is rather than using my time to build up the kingdom of God. I can't say that I will ever want to build or even own a house ever again. If God was to call us to move again I don't need the stress of having to sell another home, or be stuck with the financial burden when my money could go towards helping people who don't have clean water or food and are dying everyday because of it. Too much time and money is wasted on a home, sometimes even one that we don't even own. I want to use my time and money to bless others. If you own a house I think God is okay with that. I think he wants us to be blessed so long as we are blessing others with what we have.  Always remember that one day your house on earth will just be blown away and the time and money we put into it will all be gone in a flash. Eternal life is not built up in the place we live now, but in the place will be.  "Home is where the Heart is"

Is your heart where your earthly home is, or your eternal home is?

God free us from our earthly house so we can build up your heavenly house for others!

A few summer favorites

Two different kinds of "FALL"

The wonderful things about fall...

•  cooler temps
• changing colors
• hot tea and hot apple cider
• smell of harvest
• apple picking
• carving pumpkins
• making pumpkin bread
• chilly mornings
• sitting around a campfire
• taking a nap out on a blanket in the sun
• Sunday afternoon football games

I am sure I am forgetting many other wonderful things about this time of year. How about you? What is your favorite part?
I am sitting at the dining room table wishing that I wasn't suffering from my first fall cold. Jake and I both caught a cold this week while at Day Care. I feel worse for him because I know how bad I feel and he doesn't know how to blow his nose or tell me where he hurts. I RARELY ever get sick and if I do it is usually not until February, so I am pretty bummed that I managed to get sick. I knew the risk I was taking if I worked at a Day Care with all the runny noses, coughing and sneezing that goes on in places like this but I honestly didn't think I would be sick after less than a month of working there. Well, at least it is only a cold and will pass in a couple of days.
Joe on the other hand has a little more to complain about. My hero took a bad crash on his bike a little over two weeks ago in the woods on the expert section of a single track mountain biking trail. The section he was in had redesigned that section and added some more jumps so he was unfamiliar with the difficulty of one particular jump and gave it a go which could potentially cost us in a large sum of hospital bills. He flew over his handle bars head first and when he was in mid air turned his body to his left side(he is predominately left handed) and his head and left shoulder took the brunt of the fall. He was knocked out cold for several seconds. The guy who was with him is a good friend of ours from the camp and he said he thought Joe was dead because his body went limp once he hit the ground.  When Joe came too he was in and out for about 30 min before he could remember what had happened and where he was etc. He thought his shoulder was either broken or dislocated and the pain was so intense he did what goes does best in those situations, crack jokes!
When my prince returned to me he was in a sling and x-rays showed that his shoulder and clavicle were separated, which basically means the ligament that holds them together was torn really bad. He is still suffering pain from that and will be following up with an orthopedic surgeon this week to check on his healing progress. So far no surgery is needed but it will take several months for it to be back to his normal self again. He did also have to have a CT scan and the results came back negative(hence the huge medical bill in which we hope insurance will cover). Those things are expensive! Well my daring husband won't be riding his bike for a while but I am sure this won't slow him down any.  I am just glad to have him in one piece and glad he isn't paralyzed!