When we watch diligence webinars or attend diligence workshops, we have a tendency to think in terms of how we can teach our kids to be more diligent.

I have written and spoke about this extensively….check out…..

• Children & Chores: Creating A Balance of Independent Work Vs. Working With You
• Wondering Wednesday: Children & Chores
• Age-Appropriate Chore Posters [download]
• Independent Work Lists [download]

But just like everything else that we want to help our children develop, diligence must first be in us!

I have spent the past three decades trying to become more efficient, more organized, more productive….and, yes, more diligent.

I have learned some benchmarks to test my own diligence. I have also learned some tricks to become more diligent—just a few here and there!

Guess what? The better we get at working in our homes…the more diligent we become….the more thorough and organized we are….the better our homes run.

True story.

So check out my video below and consider what diligence changes you can make this summer!

Save

The post How to Become an Amazingly Diligent Mom! appeared first on Character Ink.

I love being a mother! I have loved every stage of it–from being pregnant to having a son turn thirty-three this year! My husband and I have been working a lot on the slides and handouts for our parenting seminar (“Raising Kids With Character”) and for homeschooling conventions, so all of this prep has led me to this blog post. 

We mothers need all of the help and support that we can get in order to do our jobs. When I look at my mothering, I realize that the greatest support and help that I have had throughout the years has come from my husband. I don’t say this lightly or as a cliche’. I truly mean this.

Here are six ways that my husband has helped me to be a better mother, ways in which he has invested in my life and the life of our family that have resulted in my having the time, confidence, strength, inspiration, and vision to do what I do every day.


1. Giving great value to what I do

When I had five kids ten and under, the days were long and hard. I remember feeling like a failure many evenings when Ray walked through the door. At that time, he would take me by the hand, lead me to couch, and ask me questions that gave worth to my day: “Did you read the Bible to the kids today? Did you rock the baby? Did you do story time? Did you meet the kids’ needs? Did you spend time with the kids?”

When I answered yes to these things, he would say, “Then you did exactly what you were supposed to do today. The other things don’t matter.”

Suddenly, the dishes in the sink and the unfinished lesson plans seemed insignificant. He had truly brought worth to my day, to my efforts, to my life.

This is one small example of how my husband, year after year, has given great value and worth to what I do. How he has always made my job as a mother, a homeschooler, and even a homemaker feel important and worthy. And this has made me a better mother.

2. Seeing needs and meeting them

My husband’s primary love language is serving. I have always felt especially blessed to be married to someone who has “servant” as his native tongue. As a servant, he has never been able to just see things around the house or with the kids that need done and leave them. He believes, and has taught our children to believe, that if you “see a need, you should meet it.”

In practical terms, this means that dishes, trash, laundry, picking up, cooking, bathing, putting kids to bed, tutoring kids at night, etc., were always jobs that Ray picked up the slack on. 

I can remember when company would be at our house on Sunday night, and as they left, we always started scurrying around to clean the house, etc. One night a guest suggested that since it was Sunday, we could just leave the work for Monday. Ray quickly answered that “the ox is in the ditch.”

 After the company left, Ray explained to the kids: “The ox in the ditch means that it is okay to work on Sunday if the ox is in the ditch, and you need to pull it out. When the house is a mess on Sunday night, and we leave it like that for Mommy on Monday morning, we are leaving the ox in the ditch.”

By seeing needs and meeting them, besides teaching our children a spiritual truth, Ray has also helped me have time for important heart training, homeschooling, and outreaches that I would not have had time for. And this has made me a better mother.

3. Helping me not to over-schedule

This one has been met with limited success (but not for lack of Ray trying!). I can remember fifteen years ago when I had six kids in school and more work than I felt I could humanly handle, Ray sat down with me with little sticky notes and a large piece of tag board. Before “Managers of Their Home” and other scheduling programs were even popular, Ray was laying out my day on sticky notes in thirty minute increments!

He tried then, and continues to try, to tame my overzealous tendencies. He laid blank sticky notes throughout the day in strategic locations–telling me that I HAD to put in thirty minutes of flex time here and there. I always tried to put too much into each day and was often frustrated that things didn’t go as well in any given day as I had hoped it would, based on my tight schedule with little flex time.

There are countless other times in which Ray has tried to help me not to over-schedule. When I listened to him, my schedule went more smoothly. Bless his heart, he is still trying to reign me in schedule-wise. 🙂 And this has made me a better mother.



4. Focusing more on relationship than role


So many husbands, in trying to lead their family according to their interpretation of Scripture, spend a great deal of time focusing on everybody’s “roles.” This often results in a hierarchy-emphasis that does not lead to the husband as the servant leader, but only as the leader.

Ray is confident in his role as head of our family. He doesn’t need to remind his family of it. He doesn’t need to focus his attention on his headship. He doesn’t need to flex his leadership muscle.

Instead, he has always focused on relationship–his relationship with me, his relationship with his children. He focuses on meeting our needs rather than on guarding his position. And guess what? His attention on relationship and meeting our needs continues to cause us to respect his role.

An attention to relationships has resulted in greater heart-reaching and heart training of our children than I could have ever imagined–both by Ray and by me. And this has made me a better mother.




5. Loving me as Christ loved the church


Ray has always taken the analogy of “loving his wife as Christ loved the church” seriously. As he sees it, when a husband loves his wife as Christ loved the church, he will give everything for her. He will not seek for his own gain or his own needs. He will instead love selflessly.

In practical terms, this means that he gives me his time and attention. It means date nights, one-on-one time, long discussions, and lots of ballroom dancing. Obviously, we haven’t always been able to have evenings out, and we certainly didn’t ballroom dance while we had a houseful of little kids, but he has always sought to love his wife selflessly. And this has made me a better mother.

6. Being available

One of Ray’s favorite “parenting stories” that he shares in our seminar is that of Absalom, who, the Bible tells us, “stole the hearts of the people of Israel.” Scripture doesn’t say that he did anything fantastic to win the people. It only says that every day he stood by the gate and heard the people’s complaints and needs. 

In Ray’s words, “Absalom was available.” We both believe that if we want to win our children’s hearts; if we want to be their primary influencers; if we want to be the ones they come to when they are facing difficulties, we must make ourselves available to them, much like Absalom did to the people of Israel.

Even when Ray worked sixty hours a week in the automotive industry (fifteen years ago, before he took a “normal” job to be available more to our family), he still “waited at the gate” every day–making himself available to me and the kids. And this has made me a better mother.


Six key things that have had significant impacts on my parenting. For me, these things, day in and day out and year in and year out, have truly helped me to be a better mother. And I am grateful for each and every one of them. So grateful.

The post Six Ways My Husband Makes Me a Better Mother appeared first on Character Ink.

When I was in elementary school, I had a friend who came from a big family. When we were in sixth grade, I believe there were already eight children in the family—and my friend was the oldest. When I went to her house to stay overnight, three things stood out to me: how her parents made them recite and pray before bed (they were devout Catholics whose children memorized catechisms and the Lord’s Prayer, etc.); how hard her mother worked—from first thing in the morning until she tucked the kids in; and that her mother made homemade bread all the time.

Fast forward several years later, and I had another friend whom I would stay overnight with in junior high. This mother had a home business (beautician in a shop attached to their house), and she, too, was a diligent mother, but that isn’t what stood out the most to me. The thing I remember most about this mother is that she sang all the time. She would be washing someone’s hair in her shop, and I would hear her humming away; however, when she was in the house doing chores, she would sing at the top of her lungs—beautiful, melodious, life-giving songs.

From these early experiences, I formed a picture in my mind of the kind of mother I wanted to be—a spiritual-teaching, hard-working, bread-baking, beautifully-singing mother. I wanted to be part Mrs. Leugers and part Mrs. Kessler.

And I admit it. I started out mothering that way—minus the “beautifully singing” part—however, I did sing all the time around the house, beautiful or not. These images stayed with me forever, and occasionally they would pop in my mind—remember the kind of mom you wanted to be?

I rarely bake bread these days since we only have a couple of kids at home and my writing and teaching are demanding of my time; however, I do remind myself often that when I was but a child, I knew what kind of mom I wanted to be. I go back to those ideals and look at my current situation: how am I measuring up?

Maybe you have mental snapshots of what kind of parent you dreamed of being when you were a little boy or girl. Or maybe your grandiose parenting ideals stemmed from when you held your first baby in your arms—and vowed in your heart to love him, impart God’s truths to him, be patient with him, play with him, teach him right from wrong, and much more. Whatever your “parenting dream” may have been—it’s never too late to go back and be what you wanted to be—to follow your mom or dad heart.

The post Be the Kind of Mom You Have Always Dreamed of Being appeared first on Character Ink.