Last summer one of my daughters began having trouble falling asleep at night. This is a noteworthy occurrence at our house because we have always been blessed in that both girls are good sleepers. She began stressing about lying there trying to go to sleep, but being unable to do so.

I tried everything I could think of – nightlight on, nightlight off; music on, music off; lying on the bed with her for a few minutes; letting her read in bed; staying up a little later – you get the idea. I asked friends and family for suggestions, but came up empty.

Finally, I called my pediatrician, who happens to be the father of five, and asked for help. His suggestion? Put a fan in her room and turn it on medium speed. He said that would drown out any noises, or lack thereof, she may unconsciously be listening for and the sound of the fan would also be soothing. Why didn’t I think of that??

Guess what – it worked like a charm! Almost nine months later and she’s sleeping well. I do occasionally worry that she’ll become dependent on that white noise for falling asleep. I guess she’ll be dragging the thing with her when she goes off to college, but for now – having that fan running every night works for me!

Check out Works for Me Wednesday at We Are That Family for other great tips!

We have been discussing fine motor skills for the past two weeks here on Teaching Tuesday. {You can read those posts here and here.}

Today I’d like to give a list of self-care skills that we can teach our children. Each child’s ability will vary, so there is not necessarily a set age at which a skill should be mastered. However, when you think your child is ready to try something new, it’s a good idea to spend just a few minutes a day working on it. Both child and mom can get frustrated if too much time is spent focusing on mastering a skill too quickly.

• • Putting on clothes

• • Snapping

• • Putting on shoes

• • Opening/closing doors (house and car)

• • Buttoning

• • Brushing teeth

• • Zipping

• • Locking/unlocking a door (house and car)

• • Opening/closing lids

• • Brushing and combing hair

• • Buckling/unbuckling a seat belt

• • Bathing

• • Tying

• Pouring (from one container into another)

As we’ve discussed before, the more fun you can make learning, the better it is. There are dolls you can buy that have parts to help your child learn snapping, zipping and buttoning, but your own or your child’s clothes work just as well. Your child can practice pouring by playing with cups and pitchers in the bathtub or kitchen sink.

I’ll go ahead and admit that my six-year-old is not yet tying shoes. In my defense, there’s not one pair of shoes with shoelaces in her closet. Most of her shoes have Velcro closure or are slip-ons; there is one pair of boots that zip up. I do realize that’s not an excuse and plan to tackle tying shoes with her soon. On the other hand, she has almost mastered riding her bike without training wheels!

If you have stories about teaching your children self-care skills, or other ideas to add to the list, please feel free to comment. Check back in next Tuesday as we address beginning numbers skills!

Will the perfect parent reading this please raise your hand?

While we all want to be the best moms and dads possible, most of us freely admit to making mistakes in our parenting.  For those times when we know we’ve blown it, how thankful we can be that God made young children so willing to forgive us when we come to them in love and ask for it!

1. Attempting to parent my children in my own strength without asking God for His help. I could probably avoid the other mistakes if I could remedy this one each day. Situations arise for which I have no answer, but if my first response is to ask God for His wisdom, I can be sure I’ll head down the right path.

2. Assuming I know what happened in a particular situation before getting all the facts. This is the good old case of jumping to conclusions! This was closely related to our latest incident and I hope this has taught me to be slower to react, to give as much thought as needed to the problem, and gather as much information as possible.

3. Taking my frustrations over an unrelated difficulty out on my children. This usually means I’m being short-tempered with them and not responding properly to their needs. Because my mind is preoccupied with other things, I don’t take time to deal with my children as lovingly and gently as I should.

4. Talking about my girls to other people in front of them. I believe this starts when they’re infants; just innocent, casual conversation with other moms about our kids. However, as they get older and actually listen in, it can become something that makes our children uncomfortable. I was surprised when our older daughter had her feelings hurt because of things I was saying about her. They weren’t negative or embarrassing, but she did not like me discussing her with other moms. I am striving to do better in this area.

5. Putting other tasks ahead of spending time with my girls. I need to take time whenever possible to be with them, even if that means putting off other chores. Key times for us are when they come home from school and bedtime; that’s when they seem to have a lot to communicate and I don’t want to miss that. I also want to take time just to do things they want to do, even if it’s as simple as sitting on the couch and reading a book together.

So now you know some of the mistakes I’ve made (glad I don’t have to share them all!) and areas in which I’m trying to get better. I hope by God’s grace to continue to grow in this area of child rearing.

In last week’s Teaching Tuesday, I listed some fun ways to begin developing our children’s fine motor skills. If you missed that, you can read it here. Today we continue talking about fine motor skills, but zero in on those skills we more commonly relate to school tasks.

Cutting. I have been a huge fan of the Fiskars blunt tip scissors for children who are just learning to cut. To have them get the feel of holding scissors correctly, something such as cutting playdough or snipping pieces of yarn may be helpful. One of the first things I taught my girls to do with scissors was cut paper. (Money saving tip: I often used junk mail, especially letters that had printing only on one side, as practice paper for them). I began by just drawing a straight line down the center of the paper and having my child attempt to cut the paper in half. You can progress to cutting wavy and curved lines and cutting off corners of the paper. From there, it’s on to cutting out large shapes and, very importantly, teaching the responsibility of using scissors. Not sure I accomplished this early on as both girls cut their own hair at least once!

Gluing. I believe one of the hardest parts of teaching our kids to glue is controlling how much glue is needed for a project. It is easiest to use glue sticks, but I also tried to get my girls accustomed to using white glue. It’s fun to draw the large outline of a shape, have them trace it with the glue, and let them paste cereal, cotton, buttons or yarn along the line. As they get more advanced, you can find cut and paste worksheets in which they cut out a shape and glue it onto the corresponding space on the paper.

Pre-writing skills. You can begin teaching this skill by tracing. Start by using their finger to trace letters on paper, in sand, or with finger paint. They can even use their finger to “write” the letter in the air. When you’re ready to progress to pencils or crayons (we usually saved markers for more of a special treat when mine were younger), you can start with the largest size and move to a smaller one as they gain more control. There are many printable worksheets available online or you can purchase workbooks that have shapes, letters and numbers to trace. Large dot-to-dot pictures are a fun way to work on pencil control.

Do you have others ways to teach children these skills? If so, please share in the comments section. Coming up next Tuesday: working with our children on self-care skills. Please join us!

This edition of Teaching Tuesday is about letters. I would encourage you to introduce letters to your child at an early age, but NOT in a formal sense. There are many ways to incorporate the ABC’s into your day and have them become part of your play. Here are a few ideas that I used with our girls when they were very young.

When it comes to being a Mom, it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the daily struggles and forget to focus on the big picture. God has given us the precious gift of children and we have only a certain amount of time to prepare them for life.

I was recently reminded by a post at Life as Mom how important it is to set goals for myself as a Mom and then find practical ways to work toward reaching those goals. Here are my initial thoughts as I considered the kind of Mom I want to be.

I want to be a Godly mom who is supportive of her daughters through

• prayer;
• time spent together doing fun and serious activities, realizing how quickly time goes by;
• providing every opportunity for them to reach their God-given potential; and
• open, positive communication about what’s going on in their lives.

I started with prayer because I have come to realize (what I have known all along) that only God can work in a person’s heart and spirit and help them to become all that He would have them to be. There are so many areas in which I can pray for my girls: health, friendships, right attitudes, finding God’s will for their lives, future spouse. I also need to pray for myself that I will continually give them over to God and allow Him to work and lead in their lives.

As for time spent together, I believe that takes planning and preparation. I want to find activities that we can do together as a family. For example, I have scheduled us to attend a free kids’ cooking class next month. A few weeks ago, we attended a Charlotte’s Web play, then went out for dessert afterwards. However, not everything has to be a “big event.” It could be something as simple as a family game night or a picnic in the backyard.

Another area I am exploring now that the girls are a little bit older is finding a volunteer opportunity that we can all participate in – a way to help others by working together. I want to keep in mind that they won’t be this age for long and I want to make the most of it.

With each girl, I am trying to keep my eyes open to potential gifts and talents they may have. One of them is currently going through a writing phase – “journaling” and writing little stories. Whether it’s musical or athletic ability, drama or art, I want to allow them to explore areas of interest to them and support them in it, even if it’s not something in which I’m particularly interested. The goal is to help them develop talents that can be used to serve the Lord and others throughout their lives.

Finally, I strongly desire to keep the lines of communication open. I think a large part of this is just being available – in the car, at meals, at bedtime. I’m hoping that being able to listen now to whatever they have to say and being interested in what’s going on in their lives will bode well for those coming teenage years.

As the weeks go by, I hope to keep these thoughts in the forefront of my mind that I might seek to meet the goals I have set and accomplish the purpose God has for me as a mother.

I’ll be up front with you here….I promise not to have a theme for every day of the week. I’m a relatively scheduled, organized person, but that makes even me a little crazy. However, with my background in education, Teaching Tuesday was just too good to pass up. So, every Tuesday I’ll do a post on a teaching idea or tip that I’ve used or heard about.

Since I’m just beginning my blog, I have to start with the most basic concept of all. Read to your child. Start as early as possible and don’t stop. This one came naturally for me because I love to read. I know my Mom read stacks and stacks of books to us as children. I read to both of my girls while they were in the womb.

Once they were born, we established a habit of reading two books (or stories) before naptime each day and another book, along with a story from a Bible storybook, at bedtime. Many days we read more than that, but at least I knew we had those times scheduled for reading even if the rest of our day was too hectic to fit it in.

We’ve moved past naptime now (except for me some days!), but we continue our bedtime reading every night. The neat thing is that I’m getting to re-read some of my childhood favorites. What a joy to see my girls as enthralled with them as I was!

In later posts, I’ll talk about some of our favorite books at different age levels and give you a glimpse into what we’re reading now. Do you have a special reading time with your child/ren? If so, please share in the comments section below.