A Mom Just Like You.....My Journey through Life with 8 Children....
• Jan. 13, 2007 - Team Work!!!
Hello Dear Sisters
It is good to be back! I am sorry I did not come back as soon as I had planned but we had an amazingly trying year in 2006 and it ended with a huge shock to us all. My dear mother in love passed away unexpectedly at the young of 60. Thank God she knew the Lord and we know she is much happier in heaven with Him then she could of ever been here on earth. But we all miss her terribly yet it sure is a huge reminder of just how short life can truly be, here on earth, and we just truly never know when our moment will come that the Lord may call us home! Her passing happened suddenly and unexpectedly, 5 days before Thanksgiving and we had already had a very full year of trying events up to that point. That time of year is always a very busy time for us as it is and when you add my mother in loves sudden passing to the already busy days it just added to our whirlwind of events and emotions. Starting from Thanksgiving time, every year, our full month of happenings start off with our day of Thanksgiving followed by the celebration of 4 birthdays that take place between Thanksgiving to Dec 9th and of course that is all followed by Christmas and then New Years. We are believing that 2007 will be a new and wonderful year for us full of God‘s love and mercy. An update on our oldest is that he is back from the military, long story short God had/has other plans for him.
So much has happened over this past year, dear sisters, that maybe when time permits I will try to sit and share all the events of this passing year with you all. But in the meantime I wanted to get this post out to you all since I promised it 1 ½ months ago. Thank you to all of you sweet dear and precious sisters who posted comments and sent me emails telling me how much I was missed and that you were praying for me! It is because of all you wonderful dear sweet ones that I looked forward to getting back to blogging and once again sharing my heart with all of you ! Thank you for all the love, support and prayers you gave to me during this past year for your sweetness truly helped me through some hard times ladies. The power of your prayers, and words of encouragement were like music unto my weary soul during those stormy times. God is so good how He uses sweet willing souls as His vessels to tell us just how much we are loved and that He is still right there beside us even when it may seem like we are all alone! Thank you for being willing vessels unto the Lord dear sisters as He used you to minister to me in a time of need!
Now the reason that I am writing this post is because of the encouragement of a dear sister and friend of mine (hi Paula). We were instant messaging one day and I was telling her how my children were just finishing up their jobs and I mentioned to her how the younger ones were each teamed up with an older one. She suggested that I share on my blog how I got them to do that, so here I am sharing about teamwork and how to encourage it into your children’s lives from a very young age. Now for those of you who have been reading my blog for quite some time you may remember that I have previously posted on the topic of getting our children to work. But for those of you who are new to reading my blog do feel free to search the archives for the following posts, the first one being “Getting It All Done With Many Little Ones” and “Teaching Them To Work“. This current post will have the addition of how to encourage your children to work together as a team from an early young age.
My husband and I have planted the seed of working into our children’s hearts and minds from when they were little newborn babies. When we would go to get our newborn babies out of their cribs we would say “time to clean up and make your bed” as we would fold or hang up their blankets and put their baby dolls, rattles and cloth books in the corner of the crib. Taking the time to plant these simple little concepts into our precious little ones hearts and minds was our way of preparing and encouraging a willingness to clean long before they were able to accomplish or even understand the tasks they would one day be doing on their own. Whenever our little ones were in their play area we would do the same thing, before lifting them out of the area we would announce, “time to clean up” and one of us or one of our older children would proceed to clean up the toys as we sang a “clean up” song to the little one. As the child approached an age where they were old enough to take the toys out of the toy bin on their own, when it came time to clean up the toys we began to approach the clean up process somewhat differently than what we had been doing up to that point. Initially we would start off the cleaning by cheerfully singing a “clean up” song in which the child was already imitating and starting to cheerfully sing along with us. But the imitating didn’t stop at the song dear ones, because for every toy we picked up and put back into the toy bin the child cheerfully imitated what they knew needed to be done and continued doing so until all the toys were cleaned up and put back into the toy bin where they belonged. With each passing day we began helping the little one less and less until we got to the point where we would just have to cheerfully say, “time to clean up” and the child would cheerfully do so all on their own until the task was completed. They quickly learned that this was required of them in order for them to come out of their play area. It was an early lesson in one of our rules, when you make a mess, you clean it up for nobody is going to do it for you. Now please remember dear mothers be careful not to make your child’s task of cleaning up their toy area an overwhelming one by giving your child too many toys to play with at once. You want to make their first learning experiences of cleaning to be ones of confidence something they were able to accomplish with ease all on their own. If they associate their first experiences with cleaning as a dreadful huge and overwhelming task it will only leave a bad memory of failure instead a fulfilling memory of confidence and accomplishment. Think about how any of us would feel dear mothers if we were to look around us and what we saw was this huge gigantic mess before us. Even if we were the ones that made that big mess, LOL, it doesn’t change how discouraging and overwhelming it would be knowing that we were the ones that had to get it cleaned up. So please dear mothers be sure not to do this to your precious little ones. Help make that first cleaning experience one that helps build self confidence into our precious ones at that early age. When we do this, it will for the most part, help them grow to believe that no task is too big for them. Now there are times that I may hear my younger children say “I cannot do this job it is too hard for me” and when I hear this I will get down on my knees smile and remind them “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me“ Philippians 4:13. I also remind my children that they have many siblings that can assist them in their task and all they need to do is ask them for help, this dear mothers encourages team work. It is so precious to watch your children go to another sibling for help and then watch them work as a team to accomplish the task that the one child thought would be impossible to complete. I try to always remind my children that we need each other because what might seem impossible for one becomes completely possible with some teamwork and each other.
Another way we encourage team work in our home is as follows. All of our children dear mothers have seen us and have been part of our teaching and training the little ones to work in the manner I just spoke of not to mention they were all taught the same concept from when they were babies themselves. Because of that example all our children have learned to do this same thing with their younger siblings whenever they are asked to get one of the babies from their nap or from their play time they completely mimic the actions of what I have just explained to you. This dear sisters is because our children have witnessed, from my husband and myself, the example of what we want to see take place in our home. This will not only teach our children to be good trainers of their own children later on, when they have a family of their own, but it also encourages team work between the children now from and they also learn to work together in harmony early on. It also helps encourage the older ones to lead and guide the little ones in their tasks and to be a model for the little ones to follow when doing a job. This means we always ensure that there is someone older for the younger ones to model their work after whether it be my husband, myself or one of the older children. By arranging this it always allows for someone to be monitoring the task and making sure it is being done right. When the older children are in charge of leading the task I have seen it encourages leadership skills in them and allows for team playing amongst themselves and their siblings. By keep an older child and a younger one together as a team this also helps prevent any temptation towards the desire to be silly or foolish during a time of work between the older children. This does not mean we never allow our older children to work together for that is not the case dear mothers. We do however, choose wisely, the times our older children will work together as a team and because this is more rare than not we have found that the older children tend to appreciate and treasure those times of working together instead of taking them for granted and being foolish, does that make sense dear ones. You will find there will be much less goofing going on during a job when you pair up an 11 yr old with a 4 yr old then you might find if you paired up an 11 yr old with a 9 yr old. We have found in our family that this encourages a heart of maturity when our older ones stand as leaders before the younger ones when they are assigned a task. Does that make sense my dear mothers? When we encourage a heart for work, a heart for leadership and a heart for teamwork in our children from when they are very young it encourages that seed to grow within them. That seed will continue keep growing and maturing dear ones and you will soon see the fruits of your efforts. These efforts will soon pay dividends to all involved for everyone wins in the end! Your children will thank you for teaching them to be hard workers and for also teaching them how to work as a team. Something I have always told my older children is if you want to work yourself out of a job be sure to teach your younger siblings how to do a job right so that someday they can take over the task themselves and then one day they will be the lead teaching their younger siblings how to do the job the same job they learned from you. So go give it a try dear mothers! Encourage that teamwork into the hearts and minds of your children and watch the great benefits reaped from taking the time to do so! Be blessed!
Dearest Lord thank you for all the examples you modeled for us while you were walking here upon the earth amongst us. Thank you for still always being with us today and encouraging us through your Word and through others. Help give these dear mothers the inspiration and encouragement to help them encourage teamwork into the hearts and lives of their children. If there are any mothers feeling discouraged right now Lord I ask you embrace them with your love and peace and help them know they can do all things through you! I pray that you will be with them Lord and that you remind them that they can come to you for encouragement at any given moment. You are our rock dear Lord help us to remember all things are possible through you! Thank you dear Father for loving us today and always!
In your precious name I pray Jesus Amen! |
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• Jan. 14, 2007 - Great blog