Parenting style

"Think long and hard about the way you invest your children's time. Time is treasure. And where your time investment is, there you will find the heart of a child. Invest the majority of his time in entertainment, and his heart will be turned to love of pleasure. Invest his time in peers rather then family, and his heart will be with the peers more than his family. There is a time and place for all good things in balance, but wise parents will steward the treasure of time, and in so doing, shepherd their children's hearts." Doug Phillips

A friend of mine put this on her FB Wall and I thought this perfectly described Jon & my parenting ideas....

When we first started out as parents, with just one child ( I can barely remember those days lol) I stayed home with Steve for almost 2 years and we just took hm everywhere with us.  He was an easy kid plus I didn't want to owe any favors to have to return babysitting HAHAHAHA!  Remember I've never been much of a kid person unless they are MY kids!   Then when I went back to work and he started preschool, we worked our schedules around him as best we could.  I'd try to get to work as early as possible & lots of time not take a lunch so I could pick him up early.  Jon would go in at 12 and work till 8pm so he didn't have to take Steve until late morning.  So we worked things out so he spent the most time with us and the less time in preschool.  I think because we felt our time was limited with him, we spent as much time as possible with him. 

We never got into Boys Scouts, or even our church's scouting program too much.  We didn't do team sports things with him, he was more like us, he didn't like team sports so we didn't push it.  We really focused on the three of us.  Then after Sam was born, we were even more of a unit, we had to travel alot for Sam to go to different doctors and we just always took Steve with us.  Even tho things were crazy for us, we invested the life we had into them. 

As our family grew, we began to understand more of what we had been doing somewhat unconsciously.  We then,  began to consciously make sure that our family time came first, not just in our lives as parents, but also in the lives of our kids.  Which meant, we purposely chose how we spent our time and we guarded it. 

When a child is always involved in other things like sports, clubs, friends, whatever, their hearts can become so focused on that, to the exclusion of the most important thing which is the child's family.  Up until the last 50 years or so, the family unit was honored, kids stayed close to home, they didn't have the distractions that families have today.  We've sought to create that type of family   Unfortunately even the church is somewhat guilty of splitting the family up, with babies going in one direction, kids in another, teens in another, woman in another, men in another....that makes me uncomfortable . We worship together as a family, that happened somewhat accidentally as I wrote in another blog.  Our children's pastor went off to be a missionary to Spain & then no one else ever worked out.  We began seeing the benefit of our children sitting in church and decided that was probably the best way for our family.  It's worked for all of church history until the last few years when the church world decided to start splitting up the family into various age groups. 

We took Sam and Steve us to Ukraine with us and my biggest regret is we didn't take Shad.  He has a scholarship through Step Up For Students for our private school and we were afraid we'd be gone too long and he'd lose it, as he can only miss so many days.  Now he may have lost it for this year, we hope not but we will have to wait until we get home to see what can be worked out.  We could have sent Steve and Shad home when all this happened but we've learned that it is important for families to share memories, even harder memories, in order to bond.  We've always traveled "as a tribe" (except for Shad staying home when we went to Ukraine)  It's harder sometimes to do things, especially the more kids you have, but honestly it is worth it to invest your time in your kids.  They may see the good, bad & ugly but it's reality and it's  what prepares your child for life!

So our focus has always been spending time together, making memories together, even in the mundane things and the big things.  We treasure our time together and think it has helped to center our older boys.  We all do a few things individually, on an occasional basis but the focus stays on the family time. 

We even purpose to spend time together when we are home.  We make a point to eat supper together every night NO tv!  We also usually watch a tv show or dvd together at night.  Even while we are here, we are doing that.  We bought some DVDs, a few Madea's and "In the Heat of the Night" series, so we have something to watch at night. 

One thing I do regret is EVER buying any video game systems!!!!  IF we were doing things over, we'd probably never would have bought any!!  So if you have little kids, I'd advise you to think long and hard about it!  I think it sucks the brains out of kids!  After much working/talking we got it down to only ONE game system, an Xbox 360.  So we don't do Gameboys or anything like that.  If we go out, I want the kids to learn to sit & talk with the family, not spend time away in their minds & attention.  We also wouldn't allow them to text at the table either.  I truly HATE all things electronic, most kids can't seem to regulate their time or keep any type of balance. 

So I encourage you, spend time with your kids & have them spend time with you.  Cultivate them, otherwise you will lose their hearts.  We have worked hard at it.  It has been a bit of a struggle at times but we have preserved and it's been a good thing.  We all enjoy each other.  I believe we all find our time together as our "centering" time.  The kids may not put  it like that but I think it helps them be more stable.  Certainly, even with our little ones, they seem to be glad to be together.  It's worth it, especially in hard times, it's good to look back at the memories....it helps make us a "unit"

I don't believe that crap "it takes a village to raise a child"  BALONEY!  It takes a FAMILY to raise a child!!  I didn't go through my awful pregnancies or our crazy adoptions for anyone else to raise these kids!!  I have seen the "village" and I don't want them raising my kids!