The post 10 Tips to Help Babies and Toddlers Happily Play appeared first on Character Ink.

Thirty years ago, Ray’s mentor said, “Sit down with Donna every week and ask her, ‘What change do you think we need to make? What do you need for me to do?'”

He continued, “After you do this for a long time, it will give Donna peace, and she will feel secure that you really care about your family and how to improve it.

He said, “Then one day, you will ask her ‘What do you need for me to do for you?’ and she will say ‘Nothing at all. What can I do for you?'”

Well, that time of my saying “nothing at all” has never happened yet in over thirty years! 😉

But he was right about part of it: the peace and security that come from knowing for over thirty years that my husband wants good things for our family as badly as I do is incomprehensible.

A change a week times fifty weeks a year times thirty-plus years–equals a lot of change. Granted, we didn’t do this every single week of our lives. But even if we made a change a month for thirty years….

Twelve months times thirty years equals 360 positive changes. That is 360 opportunities to make our family stronger. It is 360 times to solve problems. It is 360 situations to improve.

It is 360 painless times to say, “We can do this. We can make changes in this area, and we can make this month better in our home than last month!”

You see memes on Facebook and other places all the time that read something like one of the following:

1. Just do it! The time is going to pass whether you do it (a fitness activity, usually) or not, so you may as well have a good change being made as the time passes!

2. Make the change (again, usually fitness-related). Sixty days from now (or whatever), you will look back if you do it, and be glad you did. If you didn’t do it, you won’t look back and be glad you didn’t!

And so it is with family changes. We all have things to work on in our homes. We need to tweak the schedule so that things run more smoothly. We need to discipline a child differently so that the child’s behavior is changed. We need to remove so much fun or add more fun in. We need to drop things for our lives to have time to spend on/with a certain child at a certain time. We need to take our focus off of one thing and put it on another until a skill is learned. And on and on and on.

However, those many changes can feel overwhelming when we look at them all at once. (I used to make “Master Changes Lists,” so I know what I’m talking about here!)

But what if we didn’t have a “Master Changes List,” but instead we just looked at this week, this moment in time, and we decided to do one thing to improve our family….and what if we really carried out the steps necessary to make the change? And what if once we got that change down pat, we took on another problem area and solved it–and again really did what it took to make it better?

Now that doesn’t feel overwhelming at all–and not only does it not feel overwhelming, but it also feels good–and doable.

We are talking on the Facebook page about how my husband and I kept going–NOT GIVING UP week after week, month after month for thirty years of parenting so far. This is one of the things that kept us going–knowing that we had the ability to change things that were not working in our homes–but also knowing that we didn’t have to do everything all at once.

You can do this! You can have the family life that you want. You can discipline your children properly and in love. You can raise children who have the character of Christ—not perfect, mind you, but virtues in their lives that you know the Lord wants for them. You can have fun in your home, have organization, and develop deep relationships with your children…

…one change at a time…facing one thing today and another thing in another week or month…because even a change a month times twelve months a year equals a lot of change…

The post A Change a Week—or a Change a Month appeared first on Character Ink.

So now that you are convinced that “delighting in the dailies” will help you accomplish your goals, how do you get them started (and keep them going) during the initial stages—when there isn’t a lot of fruit to show for your efforts, and you are convinced some day that you should just forget making dinner and go play solitaire or buy some sort of farm equipment (on the computer…lol)?

Here are some tips for learning to truly “delight in the dailies” and make those dailies a long-term reality in your home:

1. Start out with a few of the very most important dailies—and make these things happen every day for a couple of weeks.

(See “Delighting in the Dailies—Part I of II” here.)

Don’t make a huge dailies list and wake up on Monday morning assuming that the magic list will all happen on that day. At times, my “dailies” (not including the children’s daily chores) could be thirty tasks long. If you are not used to doing certain things every day, this can be very overwhelming.

There are two ways to start tackling your dailies (which will eventually lead to your delighting in them):

a. Start with the four or five most important dailies for yourself and one or two per child and tackle these. Attach them to something that you already do every day (get up in the morning, eat breakfast, eat lunch, etc.). And start carrying them out over and over again. Once this is going well, add more. See my post about making a change a week or a change a month here.

b. Start with the first thing in the morning—and do your morning dailies only (for everyone in the family). (You might do others, but focus on making sure the morning ones are done consistently.) I often give the advice that when you want to change the way your days are going, start with the first hour of the day. Get this hour looking exactly like you want it to look (constantly!). Then move on to the next hour, etc. I personally like this approach because I love to make my day great by getting my morning started right.

2. Find someone who “delights in her dailies” and get a vision for this way of life from her.

Believe it or not, I actually knew several moms (either in person or through seminars/conventions) who were “delighting in their dailies” as many as thirty years ago! And this prompted me to make this a way of life. I could see the fruit of their daily disciplines, and I wanted that in my home as well. A well-run home is a beautiful thing, and we older moms need to teach and help younger moms learn these vital skills.

3. Believe in the daily approach to life.

Additionally, as an incremental type of teacher, I knew that “precept upon precept” and “line upon line” was the way that my children would master their subjects—and that incremental learning comes through dailies. I also knew from past experience that skipping things that needed done all the time in favor of things that either didn’t HAVE to be done or things that needed done less frequently didn’t work.

I had to believe in this approach in order to really carry it out. If you are waning in your ability to carry this out, make a list of all of the benefits to doing the dailies on your list (i.e. new reader will blossom through daily reading aloud to Mom, no more five o’clock scrambles for dinner, etc.). Pull this list out to help you “believe” when your faith is weak (and, once again, Farmville is calling!).

4. Notice the fruit (the real fruit!).

After a very short while, you will notice that something (or more than one thing) you have developed as a daily in your life is REALLY benefiting your family. Note this! If your struggling mathematician suddenly knows his x8’s because math drill became a daily for him, you have some juicy fruit! If your husband happily puts on his clean dress shirts in the morning (instead of the former morning clothing scramble!), then you have fruit. If you don’t dread four o’clock any more but actually sit down and read online articles for a while until sweet angels wake up from their naps, you have an entire fruit bowl! Notice it. Enjoy it. And realize that this fruit is there because you learned to delight in your dailies.

5. Believe that these dailies are truly the most important parts of your ministry to your family right now.

Anybody can swoop in and be a hero once or do something big here and there—and those have the potential to be ministries to your family too. However, when we understand and truly believe that what we do when we get up first thing in the morning is truly a ministry to our family, we will look at our dalies differently.

I know there are entire books written about the ministry of magic of motherhood. And they are right. But we have to do more than believe it in theory. We have to have it deep within us that when we consistently cook with our ten year old every day for lunch, we are doing God’s work. We have to breathe it in, take it in, and know it at that moment. When we lie down at the end of the day, we have to feel, believe, and KNOW that we have fulfilled an amazing calling on our life that day—because we did our dailies, God’s task list for us at this time in our lives.

6. Realize that you have accomplished a great thing.

Have you ever heard about the research for mastery in life? Some studies show that it takes repeating an action ten thousand times to become accomplished in it. Just look at each time that you do something (plan the next meal, do a reading lesson with a child, reach out to your preteen’s heart) as a step towards mastery. It really works. You will become so good at the things that you do over and over and over again!

It is rare to find a “work-at-home” mom who can juggle really well. How many times have you personally heard someone say that she could never do what you are doing—that she couldn’t spend all day with her kids or that she wouldn’t have the motivation that you have or that she can’t get organized without the structure of employment? What we are trying to do here—manage a home well, educate our children, and spend all day every day with kids—is not easy to do. If you continue to improve yourself as a home manager and a homeschooler, year after year, you will get more and more accomplished—and you will soon realize that you have done something very rare and very great.

7. But don’t get smug! 🙂

After delighting in your dailies for a while, and continuing to add more and more important dailies into your life, you will be amazed at the skills you have. Bask in that. It is such a great feeling to delight in your dailies. Such an awesome peace that comes with knowing that you are doing—day in and day out—what you are supposed to be doing. Actually, this feeling alone is enough to keep you going. (While I don’t advocate in living on feelings, there is a calm and peace that comes with doing what you are supposed to be doing—and THAT is a great feeling!) So enjoy it…but don’t be smug! Soon there will be someone else who wants you to help her learn to “delight in her dailies”—and you will be just the gal to do it!

In the meantime, here are some places to learn more about my beloved “Dailies”:

1) Short blog post: Dishes, Trash, Laundry Twice a Day

2) Short blog post on “after the Dailies”: Timely Tasks & ABC Weeklies

3) Video With Outline: Following Through on the Dailies

4) Video With Outline–How I Found My Dailies

Hope these help! Blessings to you as you seek to prioritize your life, school, and home!

The post Delighting in the Dailies—Part II of II appeared first on Character Ink.

If you have heard us speak or read any of our blogs, you have probably heard my stories about how I used to be a “closet lady.” That is, I always cleaned out closets, organized toy cubes, shelved books in order, and made one hundred freezer meals in one day—instead of doing the dishes, laundry, trash, and other “dailies.”

It took me a while as a young mother to get to the point where I could set all of my projects aside—all of the more “creative,” fun, and cool things–in order to do the things that I needed to every day….the dailies.

But once I did, my life was forever changed. You see, it is the daily ins and outs that truly make us successful in homeschooling (and in life!).

Stop and think for a moment about successful businesses. Every day a successful business has multiple lists of things that are done by various departments every single day.   They have checks and balances in place to ensure that these dailies are done consistently. The people responsible for these dailies don’t branch out and do grandiose tasks or launch new projects. The daily people do the dailies—because without the dailies no great idea or new product really matters.

While homeschooling mamas do not usually have someone to take care of the dailies for us so that we can do the “grandiose” (if you do, power to you!), we still need to do those dailies in order to be successful.

What constitutes a daily? For me, a daily was anything in the home that needed done every day—either by me or by someone else. At various times, this could include any or all of the following: dishes, trash, and laundry (see my posts about never getting behind on these again!); morning decisions for evening meal (with some preps if needed); morning routines by all; reading with a new reader; writing with a new writer; Bible memory recitations; morning read alouds; two chore sessions; and more.

Some days, throughout my thirty years of homeschooling, my dailies felt heavy and overwhelming (and never-ending because they truly are!); however, more often than not, they made me feel successful. It didn’t matter what else I got done on any given day. It didn’t matter how many projects were left undone. It didn’t matter how accomplished I was (or wasn’t!) in other areas. Because I did something that is extremely difficult: I did my dailies.

And guess what? Not only did I do them, day in and day out. But I also got good at them! Talk about feeling super successful.

I got up, nearly every morning(!), and did what I needed to do in order to manage a large family, homeschool several children, live a Christian life, and keep a wonderful marriage going strong. Sometimes I even did other things—but, like I mentioned above, it didn’t matter if I didn’t.

Dailies are the building blocks to success. They are the things that feed a family, keep a home in order, build strong readers, instill Christian virtues in our kids, and more. They yield amazing results—over a period of time—without our even realizing that they are doing so.

After a while, I learned to Delight in These Dailies (due to the feeling of achievement and the success they brought about in our home). After a while longer, I taught my children to Delight in the Dailies (which have led to their success as adults today!). And now I am teaching you! 🙂

How do you learn to delight in the dailies when you are first starting to make these tasks priorities in your life? Stay with me! Next week, I will give you some tips in how to Delight in the Dailies!

In the meantime, here are some places to learn more about my beloved “Dailies”:

1) Short blog post: Dishes, Trash, Laundry Twice a Day

2) Short blog post on “after the Dailies”: Timely Tasks & ABC Weeklies

3) Video With Outline: Following Through on the Dailies

4) Video With Outline–How I Found My Dailies

Hope these help! Blessings to you as you seek to prioritize your life, school, and home!

The post Delighting in the Dailies–Part I of II appeared first on Character Ink.

One of our favorite ways to stay close to our kids was always spending one-on-one time with them. Yes, we had seven children in fourteen years. Yes, we were busy. Yes, my husband worked long hours.

But just about nothing got in the way of staying close to our kids. It was that important. (And it still is today with our adult children ages seventeen to thirty-two!)

Carving out one-on-one time with our kids in a busy household is not easy. Everything is vying for our time and attention. However, one way that we found to do this was to “make a date.” That is, make appointments and actual schedule that time so that (1) the child knew it was coming and (2) we knew that it was already planned and the child knew about it—so we were less likely to cancel. (Somehow, saying that we are going to have more time together just doesn’t work that well!)

We did this in a number of ways—half birthday dinners with Mom and Dad, Wonderful Wednesdays, “sit closest to Mom days,” and many more…all of which give me great joy in their memories.

Recently we have added a downloadable product to our store to help families set up these “appointments” with their kids. They are called “Keep Close Coupons.” The title alone tells your child that time with him or her is important—it is purposeful. That you want time with your child and that you want to be close to him.

I have tips in the Keep Close Coupon front matter describing how to use these coupons, so I thought I would share them here in a blog post as well. These tips apply whether you buy our coupons or create your own. 🙂

(For more on building strong relationships with your kids, see our podcast episode, Ten Tips for Staying Close During Intense Training Times With Tweens and Teens.)

Thoughts about these coupons

(1) There are a lot of coupons for special things floating around, but we like these because their name tells the why behind them. We are going to do this or that because we want to keep close.

(2) Don’t pass them out constantly—and possibly not even once a week. (Other coupons, like affirmation ones, are good for weekly or lunch box types of coupons.)

(3) These should be used to communicate to the child that you want to do something special together so that you can be close to each other.

(4) Try to do low to no cost things so that it doesn’t become a thing where your child always has to DO something in order to be with you. (See ideas below.)

(5) Alternate with just Mom; just Dad; and Mom and Dad together with the child.

(6) The activities together do not have to be long. (Again, see ideas below.) They can be as short as an hour long card game or a walk in the neighborhood.

(7) While you don’t want these to get expensive, if you have pre-teens and teens, do plan to incorporate some food-related outings! It can be simple like an ice cream cone from McDonalds, but our experience has been that tweens and teens love to eat!

(8) Be sure that your times together are not always so activity-driven that you can’t talk and just be together. For example, while going to the movies might be fun, it would be better to go to the park and take a picnic snack and walk around the lake so that you can really connect.

(9) Take notes about what your child likes, what outings or times together meant a lot to him before, etc. Our oldest son thrived on my husband meeting him in the driveway to shoot baskets at ten every night after Ray had put the littles to bed. Some things are more special to some kids than other things are.

(10) If you are giving these to teens, you might not want to put a date on the coupon. While it is easier to schedule with an elementary child (Saturday morning breakfast sandwich at the park), teens’ schedules are often challenging to work around. You want to give him the what then determine a time together that works. (These should not feel like obligations to the teens—like time that you are taking away from other things.)

The post Keeping Kids Close appeared first on Character Ink.

Welcome to another Wondering Wednesday A/V. Today’s episode is a V—video!

In this video, I show parents how to use our new “Consequence Pies” ebook/download (one of last month’s freebies!). However, if you do not have the Consequence Pies product, stay with me!

The methodology in this download (available here at our store) can be used with or without the product, and I explain that protocol in this video! (Plus, you could make your own pies easily after watching the video.)

The idea behind the Consequence Pies is to take control of negative routine behaviors (as opposed to one of the Four D’s—check out that product here) that are developing or that have developed by putting the outcome back in your child’s hands—while giving grace and “chances” as needed.

Watch the first part closely—there are things that must be done on the parents’ part before using this approach: training, rewarding, follow through, and more. But once all of that is done, it is time for the child to decide “yes, I am going to do my homework every day before computer time” or “yes, I am going to take out the trash like I am supposed to every day”—or suffer consequences (that he chooses ahead of time) for not following through on that routine behavior that I have been taught.

Consequence Pies can be used to help your children learn to develop character in routine behaviors in the areas of responsibility, thoroughness, diligence, prioritizing, resourcefulness, cleanliness, organization, follow through, and more. They make character training black and white (as opposed to the gray method of “I told you no tv until your extra reading is done” or “Why do you always forget to take the trash down?”).

Furthermore,this protocol puts the choice to follow through on the positive behavior (or not to follow through) back onto the child. He marks the pie pieces if he decides not to comply. No questions. No grayness. Lastly, it offers grace and “chances” as the child is learning the behavior.
 

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The post Video: Using The Consequence Pies appeared first on Character Ink.

We all want to raise children who love learning—and if they love homeschooling, too, well, that’s even better. I wanted my kids to love learning and homeschooling so much twenty-five years ago that I wouldn’t teach a child to read unless he could learn within a few weeks with no tears. (Otherwise, we put it on the back burner for a couple more months.) I was serious about this love for learning stuff!

However, in an effort to be sure our kids enjoy homeschooling, we often run into something that makes it hard for us parents to enjoy it—and something that actually handicaps our children in the future. This concept is one of indulgent homeschooling vs fun homeschooling.

Just like our children “don’t like” this or “don’t want” that or “have to have” this or “can’t be happy without” this–and thus, are often not happy with the “normal” things of life–so it is with our children in homeschooling.

Before I come off sounding like an ogre, I want to assure you that we had a fun homeschool. If you were to ask our children (seven of them ages seventeen through thirty-three) if our homeschool was fun, you would hear answers like the following:

“Oh yeah! Dad used to use these huge red pressboard bricks to teach Bible stories. We would build the temple, Zacchaeus’ tree, and even Jesus’ boat!”

“Fun? How many kids do you know who got to sleep at the top of the jungle gym at Science Central overnight—WITH their parents!”

“I can’t imagine more fun than having your mom read to you for two hours every morning and two hours every afternoon. School was definitely fun at our house!”

“It was a blast! When Mom and Dad got us new books and other fun things from the homeschool convention, they would wake us up at midnight when they got home and show us everything and start reading them to us!”

However, one reason that our children found homeschooling fun was because everything didn’t always have to be fun. Just like an indulgent child can’t be happy unless she gets to have a friend overnight, order pizza, and buy new make up to do make-overs often, a homeschooled child will not think school is fun if he has to have fun all the time. I call this the fun factor in homeschooling.

So, strange as it may seem, my first suggestion to making school fun and helping your kids love learning and love homeschooling is to not try to make everything fun.

Our kids knew fun times were coming. They knew that Mom and Dad loved learning and loved homeschooling and would make things fun at times. They knew that we had something fun up our sleeves to pull out any time.

But they also knew that school was their occupation–and it was often just plain hard work sometimes. And it needed to be done. Day in and day out. Just like Dad went to his job and worked his tail off–so Mom and the kids do the same at home.

Our mantra was “daytime is for learning and working and evenings are for fun and family.” (Obviously, we did fun things during the day too—see partial list above….but they knew that they couldn’t just do anything they wanted during the day. They needed to be learning, working, growing. It was their occupation. (And yes, we did have play time for youngers; breaks; etc.!)

We didn’t need to have bells and whistles all the time because they began to love normal (just like their parents did—hint hint–modeling!). They always knew the expectations, and they knew that every day they had to get up and follow a routine for learning, growing, becoming, and maturing.

They learned the joy of following a loose (block) school schedule, setting goals and meeting them, completing tasks, and of gaining knowledge.

They knew that there were many things we do just because they are the right things to do. Every subject, every day doesn’t have to be fun. Chores don’t always have to be games and contests–or rewarded (though sometimes they were!).

Independent lists were there to keep them on track. They were their to-do lists every day.

Chores were a part of our day because chores make a home run smoothly—and give us more time in the evenings for fun family activities.

We taught our children a contentment in homeschooling–in our way of life—that made the fun even more fun, the special even more special, and the extraordinary even more extraordinary.

The Fun Factor in Homeschooling–the fun begins when the normal is good too.

The post The Fun Factor in Homeschooling appeared first on Character Ink.

We had some definite advantages to raising children and homeschooling during “the stone age”! 🙂 For one thing, we didn’t have many choices of activities, so it was much easier to stay home and build good study habits, household work schedules, and family time. (Obviously, it can still be done today, but we were forced to stay home more in general.) Secondly, we were blissfully unaware of the demanding academics of today. We didn’t know that our kids needed to know everything that is now required to graduate and go to college. We didn’t do labs, advanced math, and other more strenuous academic pursuits with our first born at all. (I’m not saying this was good–I’m just saying it gave us more of a precious commodity that everyone longs for today–time.)

This “stay-at-home, do-your-work, learn-to-get-along-with-the-friends-you-have-here (siblings!)” way of living was actually pretty sweet. We had long, wonderful days together, and I will carry those warm memories with me throughout the rest of my life. (Sorry, I tend to wax nostalgic over days gone by quite often lately!)

With those long days at home came some things I am forever grateful for–in addition to the closeness of our kids and warm memories. The time and necessity of developing habits.

Time to develop them because we were often home all together doing school and household things twelve hours a day while Ray was at work. Necessity because we were often home all together doing school and household things twelve hours a day while Ray was at work. 🙂

Now that I’m all grown up and an entrepreneur working from home, helping parents, sharing health, teaching other students besides my own, and still mentoring grown children (and babysitting grandkids each week), I am so aware of the power of habits in my own life.

With seven children grown, ages 19 to 35, many still in various levels of college and post grad school as well as some with their own businesses and growing families, I am aware (and grateful) fo the time and necessity that we had to help build habits into their lives.

(Want my take on applying all of my productivity tips to homeschooling and entrepreneurship? Check out my productivity video series at Donna Reish blog.)

Below are some links to books I use and love. I am an affiliate for Amazon.com. If you click on the links below I will earn a small commission. Thank you for your support of this blog!

One of my favorite books on the topic of habit building is The Power of Habit

But for time saving purposes, I recommend an amazing TedX talk on this subject. It emphasizes the importance of teaching habit, self-control, and self-regulation to our children. I think you will benefit greatly from it whether you are a parent, homeschooler, or educator. Take a look here:

Here are some resources/posts that can help you in building habits in your children in the new year!

Attaching Important Things To Your Schedule

Love-Hate Relationships With Homeschooling Schedules

How to Build Chores Into Your Daily Schedule

Age Appropriate Printable Chore Posters

Independent Work Lists for Junior High and High School

How to Use Independent Work Lists for Elementary Children

Video: Using Check Lists for Student’s Independent Work

The post The Importance of Building Habits Into Our Children appeared first on Character Ink.

Three A’s…..Three Simple Words. But they make all the difference in the world to parenting in general, and fathering specifically.

This late Father’s Day message that my husband and I wrote many years ago is not to discourage single moms—but to help Dads who are in the home to realize the important task they have before them in parenting.

The statistics of children without fathers playing active roles in their lives are gloom ones. According to “The Father Connection,” by Josh McDowell:

1. …the absence of a father is a stronger factor than poverty in contributing to juvenile delinquency…according the National Institute of Mental Health’s analysis of US census figures.

2. ..crime rates are highest among adults who as children had been raised solely by women…according to a group of Yale behavior scientists’ study of delinquency in forty-eight cultures around the world.

3. …the father’s presence and conversation (especially at dinnertime) stimulate a child to perform better in school according to Dr. Martin Deutsch in an article for “Time” magazine.

4. …the lack of a close relationship with their fathers has been linked to anorexia nervosa eating disorder in a study of teenage girls suffering from it.

5. “young, white teenage girls living in fatherless families were 60 percent more likely to have premarital intercourse than those living in two-parent homes..” according to Johns Hopkins University researchers.

6. ..a child’s (1) low motivation for achievement; (2) inability to defer immediate gratification for later rewards; (3) low self esteem; and (4) susceptibility to group influence and to juvenile delinquency.. have all been found to be significantly contributed to by an absent father, according to Dr. Armand Nicoli’s research for a White House paper.

If you are a Christian mom raising children alone, you will need (and will receive) extra grace to do what you are doing, for sure. However, if you are a Christian father reading this and simply not doing what you need to do to raise your children in a godly home, I pray that you will turn that around, seek out help and accountability, and be what your children need in a father.

There are three A’s that I have found in raising seven children ages 10 through 34 over the past three decades—three A’s that can lead to being an A+ dad for your children. (Pardon the “schoolish” expression; I’m not kidding when I say that everything becomes school around the Reishes!)

1. Availability

So many of the statistics above point to this factor. Dads, we just need to be available. We need to say no to the good in order to do the best. We need to look at our children’s at home years for what they are—eighteen years or so in which other things must be put on the back burner (if needed) in order to be available for our kids. Here are some ways that I have found to make myself more available for my wife and kids:

a. For little ones—large amounts of time are not needed here—just short snatches and a lot of them—a few minutes after work; stories and kisses at bedtime; start traditions with your children that cause them to realize that you are available for them.

b. Middlers—you be the driver whenever possible and talk, talk, talk. Let them know that you are driving them to their event because the few minutes that you would have in the car with them is worth more to you than something else. (If you started talking when they were “little ones,” talking with you will become second nature to them.)

c. Olders—shooting hoops in the driveway most nights when my son was sixteen to eighteen gave us an opportunity to talk that might otherwise have not been found; make time for these older kids. When my older kids were little, I had a few minutes with each one before bed that we called our “Malachi time”—based on Malachi 4:6 in which the hearts of the father are turned to the children and vice versa. Establishing “Malachi time” twenty years ago has given me relationships with my young adult daughters that I quite possibly would not have had if I hadn’t sought them out when they were toddlers—and continued to be available to them throughout their growing up years.
(Check out our Keep Kids Close coupons to plan times to be together and to make yourself available to your kids!)

2. Awareness

We fathers need to be much more aware of what is going on in our children’s lives than we do. My wife can read our children like a book. She will often say, “We need to talk to ____ about how he is feeling about ___. I can tell something is a little bit off there and I think he is hurting.” How does she know these things? I have purposed to become a student of my children, so to speak. To be aware of their feelings, their friends, their interests, their influences, their needs, their spiritual condition, and much more. Awareness begins with questions. Asking questions about those areas in which you need to be more aware can lead to many insights that you might otherwise miss. (Also, ask your wife—she’ll know for sure!)
(Check out our freebie, Kids’ Faves, to be aware of what your kids love!)

3. Activity

Our kids make choices everyday to hang with peers, go to certain events, etc. or spend time with their families. Oftentimes, we have not made ourselves available, so our kids pick friends and outsiders by default. However, we have found that if we want our kids to want to be with us and want to stay home more (thus, affording us more opportunities to influence them in godly ways), we need to provide activities for them that are fun, healthy, family-oriented, and more. In the past ten years, when our older children and middlers were teens, we have purposely spent more money on “activity” with them than we did on other things that many of our peers enjoy. We might not have the nicest vehicles in the neighborhood, and we have a small, extremely modest home; however, our kids know that being with us is the “happening” place. That we will “do” things with them—go to movies, play basketball, swim, attend plays, visit museums, go out for dinner, take walks, and more. As we partake of activities with our children, we have more and more opportunities to see into their hearts and influence it for good.

Obviously, there are many more factors that bring about the A+ father—but some of those do not start with A! However, if we would get up tomorrow and purpose to apply these three A’s to our fatherhood, I think we would all reap a harvest of closeness, opportunities for spiritual training, mentoring, and more.

Which “A” do you need to focus on? How can you make this happen in your home? Let us know how we can help you be an A+ dad!

Love and hope,

Donna and Ray!

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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!

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