Tag: Kids

The Timekeeper

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I’m not sure what moms did before we understood there were hours and minutes keeping track of the day. How on earth did one monitor sharing, playdates and events?? Now, I realize that our ancient forebears probably didn’t have scheduled swim lessons at the community pool or playdates with specific families at the local playground. But sharing, sharing has always been something to deal with. I’m not sure how many times I say or I hear my kids say, “In how many minutes?” when it comes to sharing. Sometimes we even go so far as to set a timer, just to make sure all is fair.

A big part of my time as a mom is being the timekeeper for the family. How many minutes until dinner? How many minutes until playgroup? How many more minutes until we can go home? Why don’t we have a playdate today? What time is that meeting again? Is the commissary closed yet? Watch out, Clare only took an hour long nap today and she is grouchy this evening.

So much time is spent keeping track of time.

We recently decided to take our oldest two out of gymnastics. They had been involved for about a year and loved to go, but it was taking up a lot of time and becoming increasingly difficult for Clare to stay on the sidelines. Plus, there weren’t any times when both John and Rosie could be in class at the same time, so two mornings a week were filled automatically with gymnastics.

The Timekeeper. kktaliaferro.wordpress.com #DailyGraces
Pocket Watch by Romina Campos (2008) via Flickr, CC. Altered by Kate Taliaferro 2016.

We are a few weeks into the new schedule and I have to say it was the right move. I am less stressed out about getting things done in the mornings, especially on Thursdays when we were trying to cram homeschool plus gymnastics all before 11am. The weather is beautiful right now so we are spending more time outside in the mornings and the kids are getting just as much exercise, if not more, by being home and playing. Plus, we now have so much more time for simple, unstructured play.

Watching my kids simply play has been so wonderful. I can see their imaginations working as they come up with different renditions of how to rescue Rapunzel or Snow White or how they intertwine the characters from a book we are reading and a tv show they watched. I love when they are able to problem-solve together and celebrate one another’s achievements.

Now to be completely transparent, not all unstructured play is picturesque. They are still kids and still fight, still talk over one another, still don’t always want to share and definitely all must be first. But that’s ok, it’s all part of growing up.

As an adult, I am seeing in my children’s need for unstructured play a similar need in myself. Even though I don’t necessarily need “playtime”, having time that isn’t scheduled is so important. Sometimes it is ok to just sit and listen to the wind in the bushes in front of my house or watch the hummingbirds hover by their feeder just beyond the front window. Some days I need to just crochet or knit for its own sake, not not because I want to finish the project faster. I try not to “schedule” too much time for writing, rather waiting for inspiration to strike and then writing that day when I can, carrying it over to the next when I don’t finish. To be free to create means first I must have the freedom, a.k.a. the time.

Time is a precious thing. We can all think of days that we wish we had spent differently. Lately, I have started to build some safeguards into my day to help me make sure I accomplish a few things every day. The most important for me is to pray.

I pray everyday, but I do not necessarily have structured prayer every day. Something that I have done to help me remember to pray throughout the day is to set alarms on my phone which are simple reminders to pray (took this idea from my mom – thanks Mom!). At 1:30pm every day my alarm goes off and reminds me to slow down and pray 2 consecration prayers, one is my consecration to Jesus through Mary and the other is a consecration to Merciful Love. (I will be posting about both of these consecrations in the coming weeks, stay tuned!). And at 3pm, an alarm goes off so that I can pray the 3 o’clock hour prayer of Divine Mercy. Just last night I realized that I still have the Angelus memorized from my high school days praying it in our school chapel with a few students and our theology professor so I might start either a noon or 9am alarm. Personally, I need alarms or I forget (I tried and miserably failed).

So I am the timekeeper, both of my own life and my family’s life. When I am doing a good job, it is a blessing. When we get over committed and stretched thin, I resent it. So, as a challenge to me and to you, how well are you managing your time? Are you resentful of how your day is filled or do you enjoy a balance between work, rest and play? What can you do (it might be to say “no” to something) to achieve a better balance?

Peace and blessings

Kate

 

Reflection

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I think one of the scariest things that has happened to me as a parent is hearing my voice mimicked back to me by my children. My son, who is 4, is a particularly excellent parrot. It is not uncommon to hear him shout through the house lines memorized from his favorite books, movies or TV shows. It’s especially fun to hear him tie different storylines together, weaving such complicated web that only he can decipher. Consider this recent tale:

“Rapunzel! Merida is stuck in the seaweed. We have to call the Octonauts to save her. Calling all Octonauts. Captain, we have to save Merida. On my honor as an Octonaut, we will save her. Peso! We have to figure out how to get her out. Can you do it? Yes Captain. OK, let’s go!”

It was so funny! I’m glad I was in the kitchen listening in so that he didn’t get self-conscious.

As cute and sweet as these kids can be, sometimes I wish they weren’t always listening. Like the other evening when John said that dinner “was gross.” He must have heard me me the previous day when I said that a rotten clementine was gross. Or when Rosie says “Mommy, you don’t get to talk like that. I don’t like that voice!” which she frequently hears from my husband and I when she starts to have an attitude about cleaning up the toys.

Speech may be one of the most important things that we teach our children. They learn it from us, in my experience, by listening to what adults say and how we say it. Kids are brutally honest and their speech pattern holds us accountable to our own. A child is more likely to say “please” and “thank you” if they hear these works spoken to them and around them, not just because they are told to say them.

When John was quite young, I went to a play group. There was a mom there who had a few older children and her youngest was about 1 and a half I would say. I noticed how every time she had to tell her daughter “No” she said “No thank you.” Even when we were leaving and her daughter ran into the parking lot, as her mom ran after her she was shouting “That’s a No Thank You!” I realized that this mom had trained her speech to always say “No Thank You”, modeling for her daughter a more polite speech pattern. When I retold the story to Ben, we both decided to make the same change. So, we are the “No Thank You” family.  We also try to be very aware of saying “Excuse me” to the kids, trying not to interrupt them, and always saying “Please.”

As parents, we are charged with raising up our children to live, work and contribute to society. Part of being a parent is recognizing that we still have room to grow and sometimes we make mistakes. Fortunate for us, we are all children of a forgiving and merciful God, who we call Father. As His children, still learning who we are and what His will for our lives is, we can look to His example, just as our children look to us. Scripture tells us that God spoke and creation came into being. God spoke, imbuing all of the Earth with His Word. If this wasn’t example enough, God sent His Word to live among us, to be with us, to die for us, and to bring us safely home to heaven once again. When we turn our gaze, or to continue with the speech example, our ears, to the Word of God, we are better able to mimic or reflect the speech of the Father.

 

Surviving Monotony

Published on by Kate1 Comment

Part of parenthood is coming to terms with your child’s fascination and obsession with monotony. Anyone who has heard the question “Why?” more than 5 times in a 60 second window understands. Anyone who has had to read the same story 10 times in a single day can empathize. Anyone who has had to listen to the same music in the car for days on end feels my pain.

It’s rather incredible how kids can get the same, if not more, enjoyment out of an activity that they have just engaged in no less than 30 seconds prior. The sheer wonder and pleasure they get from that book, song or slide is baffling. But I have to admit, I’m a little jealous of it.

If I read the same book over and over, I would get bored. Hearing the same music over and over again just makes me lower the volume. Adults seem to value change much more than monotony, which is exactly the opposite of children.

Children, above all, thrive on repetition. I’m currently reading G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy (free on Kindle – nice!). It is a really interesting read. Basically, it’s about his person journey of thought to Christianity. In one section, he talks about how adults shy away from monotony. In his estimation, we falsely believe that when something is monotonous, it is dead – think of a clock, consistently ticking with no variety, no change. “People feel that if the universe was personal, it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance.”

Chesterton offers an alternate way of viewing monotony. He suggests we look at children and their love of monotony. “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.”

It’s so true! It’s exhausting , almost painful, to read Goodnight Moon after the 8th time. The words start to run together, you try to skip a page but your child knows the story too well and catches you and you start to doze by the time the quiet old lady/rabbit whispers hush.

Chesterton challenges his readers to consider someone else who perhaps enjoys monotony. For Chesterton, the world was full of wonderful miracles and as he grew, he began to wonder if perhaps these miracles were more than just happy coincidence, what if they were “repeated exercises of some will.” He says “I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.” Or, in other words, God.

What if

God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them….The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

I love this outlook. For those of you who believe in a personal, loving, creative God, this about sums it up. God creates from pure love and joy, exulting in monotony while at the same time creating each person, each tree, each flower uniquely and individually.

So yes, monotony can be grating on the nerves. Rather than letting it irritate us, we can use it as an opportunity to be grateful. We can look at the sunrise and instead of seeing something automatic, pause to revel in it’s brilliance. Instead of dreading the music on repeat, we can appreciate of gift of hearing. We can speed our way through Green Eggs and Ham, or we can let our children’s delight become our own as they shout with glee “I DO NOT LIKE GREEN EGGS AND HAM!”

Do you struggle with monotony? How can you turn something that is monotonous into an opportunity for appreciation or gratitude instead of a moment of frustration and a strong desire to escape?