Put It To Music

I'm all about songs.  They are easy to learn.  I know numerous Scripture verses because they have been put to song and lots of other useful facts.  Didn't we all learn the alphabet that way?

My son is 3 now, and I wanted him to learn some information about himself in case he ever needs it.  Rather than just trying to get him to memorize facts, I decided to put it into a song to make it easier.

You don't need to be too creative to do it.  Just use a familiar tune.  Mine is, in fact, to the same tune as the alphabet song, or "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."  The lines don't even rhyme, but they fit.  Here are the words (leaving out personal details that I don't necessarily want to reveal to everyone who may come across this blog).

Cooper __________ is my name.
__ __ __ __ __ __ (Our last name has a somewhat unusual spelling, so I spelled it out.)
My dad is Don, and my mom is Jill.
I live at _______ (house number)
____________________ (street number and city).
____________________ (phone number).
My mom has a cell phone too:
___________________ (cell number)
My dad has a cell as well:
___________________ (Dad's cell number)
My zip code in Tennessee
is _______________ (zip code)

I've just sung it to him a few times, and he pretty much knows it.  I heard him singing it last night when he was laying in bed.  After all, who doesn't want to learn a song that's all about them?

The Yelling Mommy

There is a trend running the social media circuit right now of not yelling at your kids.  

“Take the 365-day challenge!  Have your children hold you accountable!”  Seriously??

Sorry, this one isn’t for me.  As if the “no spanking” trend isn’t bad enough.

I just can’t see myself sweetly saying, “Cooper, honey, don’t run into the street when a car is coming.”  Or for the fourth time, “Don’t dump your milk on the floor, Darling.”  Or, “That’s okay that you just threw a block and hit me in the head.  I’m sure you didn’t mean to.”

Or, with this challenge, if I do forget and yell accidentally, he can say, “Mommy, you’re not supposed to yell.”  Then I’m the bad guy and he’s the victim, even though he just ate a cookie after I told him he couldn’t have one, or came up to me and deliberately turned my computer off while I was using it.

God gave us the ability to raise our voices.  It’s a very effective tool for getting our children's attention and showing them that we mean business.  It works for me, anyway.

This is not to say that I enjoy yelling at my son, but sometimes the situation warrants it.  It’s a tool I save for when I need it.  I can’t say I never use it when I shouldn’t.  Sometimes I get frustrated more easily than I should and take it out on him.  We all make mistakes as parents, but I believe that yelling when I maybe shouldn’t have is a small one.  I can always apologize, with minimal consequences.

So, if you’re taking on this no-yelling challenge, then good for you!  I wish you the best.  May peace and quiet prevail in your home.  And may your children turn out perfect.  Mine may be scarred for life, but I have a hard time believing it will be because I yelled at him every now and then.

The Marble Jar

I realized a few months ago that Cooper was taking longer and longer to obey us when we told him to do something.  It wasn't defiance, really, just a bad habit he was getting into, which we were more or less reinforcing by repeating the same thing over and over, counting to three, etc.

It needed to improve.  If he was ever running into the path of an oncoming car, I wouldn't have time to count to three when I told him to stop.  Plus, it was irritating.

I couldn't really start punishing him for it all of a sudden.  So a friend gave me an idea: use positive reinforcement.

So, I created "The Marble Jar," a very inexpensive little project, which has been very effective.  I took a jar (in this case an old, plastic peanut butter jar) and got enough marbles to fill it, and then dumped them into a plastic bag.

I waited for him to do something the first time I asked him, no matter how small.  When he did it, I gave him a marble and explained what we were going to do.  I told him that when the jar got full, we would do something special.  It didn't take him long to catch on.

I never bribe him with it.  I never threaten him or take marbles back out of the jar.  I just make a point to recognize when he obeys me the first time and give him a marble.  Now he often informs me when he thinks he deserves one, but I make the ultimate decisions about it.

So now the jar is almost full.  And Cooper wants to go to the Wilson County Fair, a local fair that we went to last year and he still remembers.  So we are trying to get all the marbles moved to the jar by Saturday so we can go, and maybe get a few treats while we're there.  He's working hard for it.

Will we start over when the jar is full?  I haven't decided yet.  We have definitely made great strides in his obedience.  It is so refreshing to tell him to go sit down at the table for dinner and have him do it right away.  At some point, though, it needs to become second nature, not something that gets rewarded every time.  Maybe we will try it for a time without the jar, and if we need a refresher, we will get it back out.

At any rate, I think this is a great tool for teaching kids to obey.  It's a win-win for everyone.

Ewwwwww!

My son, who will be 3 in October, will eat anything.  Maybe he was just born that way, and I don’t know that it will last forever, but I hope it will.

My husband and I are both picky eaters, and I struggle with my weight, so I really put a lot of thought and a fair amount of research into doing the best I could for my son, even before he was born, to help him not have to deal with these issues.

Here are some suggestions, not necessarily scientific, but they have worked for me.  Everyone may not agree with or be able to follow all of them, but some of them may be helpful.

1.  Eat a variety of healthy foods while you are pregnant.  Easier said than done, I know, especially if you have a constant craving for purple Kool-Aid or something equally bad, as I did for most of my pregnancy, or are unable to keep anything down.  But the healthier you are able to eat, the better off you and your baby will be, and the healthier tastes your child will develop.  After all, anything you eat goes to nourish him or her.

2.  Breastfeed for at least a year, if possible, and eat healthy during that time.  Again, everything that goes into your body is nourishing your child if you are nursing him.  I firmly believe this is the healthiest start to give an infant if you are able to do it, and while being nourished, he is developing a taste for the healthy foods you are eating.

3.  Don’t start your child out on junk food.  I have often wondered why parents give their young children cookies and candy when the child doesn’t even know enough to want them.  Yes, it IS fun to watch their eyes get big when they taste something so good, or watch them smear icing all over their face as they get their first taste of cake.  Cooper’s first birthday was his first real taste of sugar, but he has had it in very limited amounts since then.  And he doesn’t know the difference.  I was proud of myself when, at his two-year checkup, a nurse in his pediatrician’s office gave him a lollipop (without asking me) when he got a shot, and he didn’t know what to do with it.  He thought it was a toy.

4.  Demonstrate good attitudes about healthy food.  Never use the term “I don’t like ___________” (tomatoes, for example), in front of your child, and try to prevent others from doing it.  Don’t even let the child know that not liking a food is an option.   Be a good role model.   Eat healthy in front of your child.  If you’re going to eat junk food, don’t let your child see you doing it.  It seems sort of dishonest, but you are doing your child a favor (and you will be doing yourself a favor if you don’t eat it).

5.  Don’t make your child a separate meal from what you’re having.  Our standard is that Cooper gets one serving of everything we’re having.  He doesn’t have to eat it all if he doesn’t want to, but he can’t have seconds on anything if he doesn’t eat the first serving of everything.  If your child is hungry enough, he will eat.  Don’t substitute junk food for healthy food just to get him to eat something.  Trust me, he won’t die if he misses a meal.

6.  Allow your child to self-regulate.  We’re all born with a regulator that tells us how much we need to eat, and most of us are almost immediately taught not to use it.  Formula-fed babies are usually encouraged to drink their whole bottle, whether they want it or not.  Children are taught early on to eat everything on their plate.  What if they’re not hungry?  Is it a good lesson that they have to keep eating after they’re full, even if they don’t want to? 

Junk foods and sweets are another thing that confuse our self-regulators.  They may not cause the feelings of fullness that healthy foods cause, so we are able to eat more of them , or they may cause unnatural cravings.  If you are full, you would probably turn up your nose at a plate of green beans, but a big slice of chocolate cake, now that’s another story. 

7.  Don’t make desserts a regular part of meals.  They should be for special occasions.  They shouldn’t be used as an incentive for your child to eat everything on his plate.

8.  Have a garden.  When he is old enough, let your child help you plant, water and pick the fruits and vegetables you grow.   Vegetables never taste better than when they are freshly picked and are never more exciting to eat than when you have grown them yourself.

9.  Avoid processed foods as much as possible.  What are processed foods?  Mostly foods on the inner shelves of the grocery store.  Those on the outer perimeter are usually the “real” foods (fruits, veggies, dairy, meats, nuts, whole grains, etc.).  Another definition is any food that has things you can’t pronounce on the label, but that’s not foolproof, because you may be able to pronounce “high fructose corn syrup,” but it’s REALLY bad for you.  Don’t be fooled by words like “enriched” or “fortified” either.  That basically means they have removed the real nutrients and replaced them with fake ones.

Or use the common sense approach.  Are Oreos really good for you?  Do they really fuel your body?  I think we all know the answer to that, deep down inside.

God designed our bodies, and He designed food to fuel them.  In our fallen world, man has distorted food so much that our bodies hardly even recognize them as food.  A fruit roll-up hardly compares to an apple for nutritional value.  Potato chips or French fries don’t bear much resemblance to an actual potato.  However, these foods may taste good, and if you let your child develop a taste for them, he may not want to go back to the real thing.

Artificial sweeteners aren’t necessarily the answer.  True, they don’t directly contribute to weight gain, but they can still instill the same cravings and bad habits as sugar does, and they are chemicals that our bodies weren’t designed to digest.

I’m not saying my child can’t go to birthday parties and eat cake.  Or that I will never make a batch of homemade cookies or let him have a Coke when we go to the movies.  I will.  As he gets older, he will become more aware of these things and feel deprived if his friends are eating them and he can’t.  But for now, while he is young and doesn’t even know these things exist, why should I push them on him when I can be using this time to help him develop a taste for healthy food and get him started on a path of good health for life?

Enjoying Today

From the time I became a mom, everyone has told me, “enjoy the moment.  They grow up fast.”  I think as an older mom, I tend to take that a little more seriously than I might have when I was younger, because I had to wait so long for Cooper, and because I have lived long enough to see for myself how time flies.

And there are moments I do treasure.  Many of them are already gone, but they still happen on a regular basis, like rocking him to sleep at night.  Now, when I sing, sometimes he sings with me.  Mommy and Cooper sitting in a rocking chair in his dark room, singing hymns together.

We went for a walk at the park the other day.  I thought he would want to walk alone and explore things as I walked, but he ran up behind me and put his little hand in mine and walked with me.  And I treasured that moment, for I'm sure the day will come when he thinks he is too old to hold my hand, or maybe to even be seen walking with me.

The other night we went outside after dinner as a family to enjoy a beautiful evening.  Don and I sat in our swing, and Cooper climbed up between us.  As we all sat, enjoying the evening, Cooper began to sing softly, “I have decided to follow Jesus.”  Don and I just sat and listened, and I prayed that the day would someday come when Cooper would make that commitment in his heart.

There are the moments I peek in on him sleeping, or see his joy when I give him news he wants to hear.  There is the enchantment of watching him experience something for the first time, or learn to do something new.  Nothing feels better than seeing his face light up when I come to pick him up from the nursery or come home to him when I’ve been gone a while, especially if it’s accompanied by him running to me with open arms, saying, “Momeeeeeeeee!”

Every day we have with our children is a gift, not to be taken for granted.  Some days it’s more easily recognizable than others, but I encourage you to savor the time you have with your little ones.  They may never come again.