What do we want for our children?

What do we want for our children? A detailed answer to that question is of course extremely complex and there's no way I (nor most good parents) can answer it in one blog entry. Yet we do have a basic ideas that drive every decision we make as parents.
First what we want most of all is that our children have a saving knowledge of and relationship to Jesus Christ. The purpose for all of man kind is to know God thorough Jesus by His word the Bible and to make Him known. That is the core motivation in which we want our children to live their lives, regardless of what path they take. By living for Christ through the Holy Spirit God will continuously reveal His will and their calling for their lives. And by that they will also be sanctified to become more Christ like everyday.
That being said, we also want our children to know that they are indeed free to pursue the dreams God has put in their heart. Not in some distant future after they earned a diploma or when they reach some arbitrary age limit. We want them to know that they can reach for those dreams now! As a family we don't follow daily schedules. We do have routines, since that is part of basic human nature, but each day unfolds on it's own. Of course living in this world there are times when certain things have to be planned, such as play dates, doctor's appointments, business matter like festivals, etc. And we as a family have no problems fulfilling those obligations or making those appointments and then going about our lives. It's never a big deal. No schedule has to be rearranged and appointment books don't have to be reorganised. Those moments come and go and so do our days.
That doesn't mean that we don't have long term goals. We make sure that are children are well aware of the plans we have for our family and we consider their thoughts and opinions in much of the decision making. The final say is Nick's since he is the head of our family, but it always is a decision based on the input of all of us.
By living free from rigid schedules of any sort our children are able to pursue their loves and passions. They might need help from us to find the tools and supplies they require to complete whatever project they are working on. Sometimes we can answer their questions, but many times we can't so we seek the answers together. Often they don't require anything from us at all other than moral support and they can achieve their goals by themselves.
Interestingly enough "lazy" is not a word that has ever come to mind of when thinking of my kidskids. As a matter of fact when they work very hard when pursuing an interest. Rosie spends hours a day perfecting her anime art. Even when she's experienced frustrations, she pushes on and is getting better every day. Isabella pushed through her dance rehearsals, by choice of her own and not by our prompting at all, even though she came back very tired from the demanding routines every week after every practice, because her goal was to preform on stage. And she did! When Nicky is taking something apart or figuring out how something works he sits intently working on figuring things out and he doesn't give up until he's done. Ooh, and our Eva who so far has been our biggest risk taker. At 14 months there is no obstacle she has not mastered that she wanted to master! No chair is too tall, no stair is too high, no play ground too big. We constantly have to have an eye on her, even if she doesn't know it because her motto is "No Fear". Eva is the first and only child that we've ever had to take to the ER for stitches, and that was despite the fact that both Nick and I were in the same room right by her when she had her accident. She also loves to doodle and pretends to "read". Those are just a few recent examples. I can go on for pages and pages if I consider all that my children have achieved with out the need of us forcing them to or telling them what we think they should do at their ages. Lazy, nope, not our kids.
As for responsibility, my kids are amongst the most responsible people I know. Normal life has naturally provided them many opportunities to learn responsibility. First of all they see it modeled those those around them including, but certainly not limited, to us their parents. They've experienced the care of several children from pregnancy to birth and beyond by living with me their mother. They've seen their dad work almost every day of their lives, rain or shine, in sickness and in health. They see citizens of the world driving responsibly on the road, payng for merchandise they desire at the store, workers of all sorts doing theirs jobs dutifully, witnessed many acts of kindness by stranger to strangers, the list goes on indefinitely.
They see us, their parents, committed to each other in marriage through Christ for better or worse and our children have no fear, like sadly many other children do, that our marriage will fall apart because they've witnessed us go through tough times in our marriage, and yet not once did we ever chose to escape but instead we persevered through God's grace and our marriage has become stronger for it.
At home we all work together as a family to maintain a clean and safe place to live. No need for assigned chores or punishments and tears for undone work. The kids have been told by us time and time again that we are a family as as a family we must be united in keeping our home a joyful place to live and part of that includes chores. Sure, sometimes there are objections, but that is OK. I hate chores too! However they push though the unpleasant moment and the work gets done.
So what do we want for our children? We want them to know that when a life is lived for the Lord it can be lived free!

We spent the day yesterday hanging out at home. We read lots of books and made no-sew stuffed animals out of felt and used Isabella's stuffing machine to stuff them. Rosie made the patterns and she did a great job! The kids also spent time on the computer playing "Toon Town" and keeping up their various towns and pets on Facebook.

Today we went to the the park with some friends for a few hours. Then Rosie's BFF came home with us for a sleep over.

The Lord is good!

Lord, give me a tough hide and a soft heart! Let not the arrows of the enemy jab me so deep that I become confused no good to you.
In Jesus' name.

I finally got a copy of John Holt's book "Teach Your Own" from the library. I'm so excited to read it, yay! For the past couple of weeks I've been reading "When Children Fail" also by Holt and it echoes everything I always suspected was wrong with the way children are "educated" in schools. I see myself and my own experiences in many of the children Holt refers to. Anyways, I just wish I could speed read because I would love to devour all that info and insight right now!

As for our happenings today, in the morning the kids (Bella, Nicky, Eva) and I went to the Phoenix library. It was still closed when we got there so we walked across the street to the mall and the kids played at the indoor playground until the library opened. After the library, which the kids love by the way, we went to the dollar store to stock up on art supplies and some small board games. The days have been rainy and our budget is tight so I'm having to get more creative than usual about coming up with activities to offer the kids here at home, that is besides books, science experiments and the computer, though they really don't complain about that. I just like to have those things available if they are interested. On the way home while I was trying to have a conversation with Nicky and Bella, Nicky said "Mom, I'm reading my firetruck book. No more talking please!". I just about busted out laughing, though I didn't because he was so serious and I didn't want to embarrass him. At home Nicky and I played one of the dollar games I had just bought and it was a rhyming words game. Rosie spent the day in bed with the lap top engrossed with a new on-line game she just discovered (thanks to her BFF who plays it too) called "Toon Town". Her grandma Licha payed for her to have a monthly subscription so she spent hours on it. We just let her enjoy it. I know my girl and she will get bored soon enough. The only break she took was when I showed her the art book I got her from the library. It shows various forms of art through out history and it explains to children certain details and facts about each piece. We looked through it together and Rosie liked it very much. Isabella also went for a cold swim before dinner. Oh, my baby the polar bear!
This afternoon we received a wonderful surprise over the mail from our dear friend Angy. She's a nurse and she went to Haiti to help and to share the gospel with earthquake victims with a team from the Nazarene Church. She sent us hand crochet doily and doll dresses, a hand made toy, and a hand made gecko decoration all made my Haitian people. It was such a beautiful collection of artifacts and we all felt so blessed by her to have received those gifts!
Afterward, Isabella and Nicky wanted to bake a cheese cake so I went to cooks.com and got the simplest recipe I could find for me and the kids to make. Well, it turned out to be super delicious! Even daddy Nick said it was the best cheesecake he's ever had, and he is not a sweets type of guy.
Right now the girls are at AWANA and baby is sleeping, and all is good ;-). Thanks be to God for another blessed day!!!

My responce to a comment from a rude and vulgar "evolutionist" on a pro-creation fan page on Facebook.

I won't write his comment on here because of his vulgarity, but basically he insulted those of us who believe in creation instead of evolution. Here is my response:

As far as faith goes people who believe in evolution put many Christians to shame because you believe what you are told by your teachers and your media blindly with out question. Just because you once saw a cute little drawing of a monkey turning into a human on a text book, POOF, you became a believer. Wow! Congratulations.
Wish I had your amazing faith! I had to research both sides of the issue before deciding that evolution is a bunch of crap and creation is the only logical explanation based on real evidence.

Little moment

Today I witnessed a little moment in Eva's life that I believe is one of the amazing gifts that come from being able to stay home with my babies!
While Eva was playing in the living room she caught a glimpse of the reflection on the big screen TV (it was turned off) and abruptly stopped what she was doing. She stared at it intently for several seconds. I thought she was looking at her own reflection or mine so I began to wave thinking she might like that. Suddenly she turns and begins to walk toward the kitchen. Then she just stopped and stared at it. That is when I realised that it was not mine or her reflection she noticed, but it was the kitchen's which faces the TV. What intrigued me was the look on her face. It seemed as if she had just discovered some new world! She went back to the TV and looked at the reflexion again and then turned and looked at the kitchen once more. I wondered what was on her mind at that moment but I can only assume. This was of course not the first time she looked at a reflection. She sees mirrors in the house everyday. I think she just was not expecting to find a duplicate of the kitchen on the TV screen.
That might be a trivial little moment for someone else, but for me it was fascinating and part of the many reasons I feel so blessed to be able to be here at home to witness such moments of wonder and discovery in my children's lives!

Discipline, discipleship and peaceful parenting vs. spanking

Around the beginning of the year Nick and I decided to not spank the kids anymore. After much prayer, discussion and lots of reading we realised that there were better ways of disciplining the kids. I've always felt that spanking was wrong, but conventional wisdom says that spanking is good and I, like many people, grew up being told that "I spank you because I love you". I don't doubt the sincerity behind those words, however it always seemed to me to be contradictory that in order to teach a child to do good that a parent must physically harm his or her child. Then while researching unschooling I found many articles that talked about non-spanking ways of disciplining children. I even found many Christian based articles on non-violent parenting which made me feel relieved that indeed the Bible does support a more gentle and peaceful way to parent instead of the pro-spanking stance that many Christians have and preach. After a few months of not spanking I began to forget what I had learned. About 2 weeks ago I started spanking Nicky again. To my own dismay I had once again given in to my old impatience and impulse instead of following the conviction and wisdom that the Lord had given me. I started to feel guilt and the memory of the joy my kids had when I first announced to them that we would not spank them anymore haunted me because that day I saw how much pain, not only physical but emotional as well, it had caused my children when I or my husband spanked them. So a couple of days ago I went back to reread the articles on peaceful Christian parenting and I even found some new ones and today I recommitted myself to not spank. One of the things I read that helped me was that the Bible tell us to discipline our children with love and grace like God disciplines us. He allows us to live out the consequences of our actions but He never purposely causes pain in our lives just out of frustration or anger (by "us" I mean his children in Christ). Even as we live out the consequences of our bad choices He is always there offering comfort, love and grace not pain and humiliation. Also, I read more about how Jesus himself treated and interacted with children. While his disciples saw kids as burdens and hassles to be done away with Jesus welcomed them openly into his arms and then told the people that in order to enter into His Kingdom that one must become like a child.
Another article mentioned that the same Latin root word as discipline is the root word for diciple or discipleship. Therefore when we discipline our children we shouldn't think that we must try to control their behavior the way one can train an animal to behave in certain ways under the motivation of reward and punishment. No, we should see disciplining in the same way as disciplship.
We first need to "practice what we preach" because as it is commonly known kids learn to do as they see not as we say. Most importantly we parents need to have the mindset that when one is discipling one is teaching the disciple better ways of living and equipping them with the tools to do so. In my opinion spanking doesn't work with discipleship. It simply offers an unnatural and painful consequence that for the moment might deter a certain behavior, but it doesn't offer better solutions to the problem nor does it encourage a child to become more Christ like.
So that is the lesson I'm learning right now. I'm seeking better tools that my hubby and I can use to dicipline (disciple) our children in the ways of the Lord. One thing I know for sure is that we both must start by becoming better deciples of Christ and His word the Bible.