I hadn't meant to let a whole week slip by before blogging. It's just the having one's house spotless and immaculate that has kept me busy.  LOL.  Anyone who knows my gang knows how tricky that is!  Yesterday we had two showings.  I'll be so relieved when this is behind us and we can relax about messes again!  God was so good though.  I felt prompted before we left the house to have it "ready" just in case we got a request to see the house while we were gone to the city pool.  So I scurried around perfecting everything real quick.  When we pulled out of the driveway there was a "looker" in her car with her three kids chatting to my agent on the phone about seeing the house right away!  Wow...I was so glad I'd listened to that inner prompting.  It must have been the Lord.  Isn't that neat?   

     Some of you have asked me about the Pearl seminar recently.  I'll share a bit here about what he said in response to my question about children visiting other friends and having peer time.  My question arose from the increasing tendency for the children to want to go off to friends' houses.  I've felt hesitant, wondering if much peer time is a good thing.  I've heard speakers/writers assert that peer time is unnecessary, bad and only family should suffice.  But we know these families.  They're pretty nice folks and have pretty good kids.  So I asked Mike his opinion.  He first asserted that he didn't maintain that kids should be isolated from peers.  He felt that it was good for them to learn to cope in social situations.  They ought to learn how to work through things with others, be a friend, be in a tempting situation and even get picked on.  He asserted, however, that positive relationship time with YOU (ie: the mom or dad) should be higher, more, and consequently stronger than that time with peers.  This is so that in the long & short run, the parent's values are weightier than the peer's values.  He also added the provision that if this social time is unsupervised, it should only be with folks in whom you have implicit trust in their spiritual grounding, etc.  So in effect, social time is to be rationed, so to speak, judiciously.  Not unending play-times all day every day. 

     I liked his answer.  But it is a challenge to implement.  Take today, for example.  After having friends over for Bible study this morning, the children began requesting friend time at lunch.  I said no.  "I haven't had time with you yet today!  Let's do something together!"  This wasn't met with cheers.  But, at least they didn't groan. 

"Well, can we play Seafarers of Catan?"  my ten year old replied eagerly.  "You bet!"  I said.  (Even though I know this game will last all of precious nap time and require my utmost in diplomacy for arbitrating conflict between two competetive boys!  And I would have loved to curl up on my bed with a book.)      

     The game was fun.  And it was competetive.  I had to put out fires of frustration and quell dogging of the opponents.  There were some good character tips in our debrief of the three way tie (wink wink--I really won..)  This was just how I put into practice his advice.  It makes sense.  Parents who let peers (especially unhealthy peers) have the bulk of their children's time, wonder what happened when they lose their children's hearts.  I don't want to be in that boat down the road.  The trouble is that it takes OUR time to be unselfish.  To give our own time.  To play the games, take them out to work with us, to homeschool, to get in the pool and splash...not just be a sideline parent.  It's hard (for me) not to be lazy.  Here's to putting your heart into it! 

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Posted by chickadee

was that written for me? because that's exactly what i need to do, quit being so selfish, too tired to read a book, to busy to play a game with them. thanks for the reminder.

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Posted by quietcajun

I agree with what Mike said... I have been rationing the amount of time and I watch more when the children are with friends....

everytime I slack I pay. For instance, the children were in our own back yard and the neighbor boy came over and was visiting with them.

I could see them, but wasn't listening. About 10 minutes later the children all came to me horrified by what the boy had been telling them. He is about my oldest dd's age (14) and was commenting to her brothers about how "hot" she is and specifying which body parts of hers he was noticing.

I cannot type here what else was said b/c it was very inappropriate.

1.) I need to be more aware.

2.) they do not need alone time with children who I know are ungodly.

3.) I am glad they promptly came to me rather than sneaking around or listening or laughing at his remarks.

4.) they told them they did not like what he was saying and he has not been here since.

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Posted by nsremom

OOOH. What a good line. I have some dear h.s. friends that always want to have my kids over. (2 blocks away.) But, I'm going to remember the line, "I haven't had any time with you today!" Good mommy moment.

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Posted by redmom

And, you're right, so hard to do. I admire your taking time to play with the kids. I definitely need to do more of that.

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Posted by WaitingontheLord

Thanks for sharing that! It really does take a selfless parent to accomplish this! That's going to be hard - but so worth it in the end!

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Posted by dawilli

Excellent, excellent post... I am very blessed in that we don't have neighbors! so there is not a lot of asking to play with other friends... there is a family form our church in town, and every so often our kids will end up over there or theirs over here for a game night or something. Butu I like the reasoning behind his answer, that's good food for thought. And you're right- difficult to really implement... I'd much rather sit and knit, or sit and read, or even sit with a good old movie while my children play... I'm learning to engage much more, it's been a bit of a tough journey, good parenting doesn't come naturally... selfish tendencies come naturally... stinking flesh... someday we'll be perfect, right?

Have a good one, thanks for getting me thinking,
ali

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