I am the wife of a soldier, and the mother of two little ones (ages 3 and 1). I am passionate about my God, my family, and my country. I chose the title for my blog because I started it around the time that we found out my husband would be going to Iraq. I am so proud of his service to our country. Also I am constantly striveing to become more like christ. Hence the title "passionate patriot conforming to 'His' image.
I will be ordering some more Thoene books to read
Apr. 1, 2008~ Planning is only half the battle! ~
I know it has been a while since I have posted. Sorry!
I don't know about anyone else, but I am a planner. I love to make plans, I love to make up organized schedules and lists, and I love to reorganize things. I get so excited about all the things I am going to do. The problem is that I fall so short in the follow through. I am the type of person that likes to jump in with both feet only to get tired of swimming a few feet in. I am trying so hard to change that.
Recently I got the book "Laying down the rails. A Charlotte Mason Habits handbook." by Sonya Shafer. It is a really good book. I have realized all the bad habits that I have let cultivate in my children. The problem is that the habits I am trying to instill in my children, are habits that were never instilled in me. So what do you do when you are trying to instill habits in your children that you need to instill in yourself? It is a long road ahead of me, and as I have already said, I am not known for fallow through.
We have been trying though. I do like what it said about one habit at a time. So I wrote a list of the things I need to train in myself and my children, and picked one. I am so happy to say that we have stuck to it for a whole month now. Woo! Hoo!
I also requested the free gift from "No Greater Joy" Ministries. I just finished the book "To train up a child". I so wish I had heard of this book earlier. I kept reading through this book and thought he could have been talking about me. Man, I saw all my parenting flaws. It was not pretty. I am so thankful for that book as well. See I grew up with discipline, but I don't remember the training. I kept pushing off the discipline, because I thought it wasn't fair to discipline them without a warning first. So I kept giving them chances. After all the chances, they had already developed a habit of bad behavior. When they talked about training the child before they have a chance to exhibit the bad behavior, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. Do you ever have "duh!" moments. I also had been letting things slide lately, because I felt so guilty with their daddy not being here for them. Last week I started training them, and using the wonderful wisdom found in that book. This last week has gone so wonderful. I am happier, my kids are happier. It is great.
Now if only I can keep it up. I am taking small baby steps. We have stepped back from our reading lessons, which I can do, since my oldest is only 4, and have been focusing on character and habit training. I started thinking that it is more important than school right now. There are so many flaws to fix in them and in me. The Academic comes second to character and habit formation. I am seeing progress, and it is so exciting. I have a goal, and I have a game plan. I just pray that the Lord will give me the strength to implement the plan and endure till the end.
