Us!

OK, I give up. I can get an image in the little box next door but I can't get one in here. When I try this is what happens. Maybe it just might work, and it worked. What did I do? Well I just ticked the box. Oh, silly me.

Anyway, there you have it. The latest family portrait. Good looking crowd aren't we? I am the handsome one holding the baby.

Now, I have an announcement. I am no longer to call Mrs Boss Lady, Mrs Boss Lady. Stephanie shall hence forth be known as Mrs Manager. As in house manager. Oh, you don't know what I am talking about? Well, go here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs%2031;&version=51;

That's my wife. So, Mrs Manager it shall be and happily at that. Tonight I must work. But today I have had fun. Michele to playgroup this morning. And it was refreshing to find another person there who has the same philosophy so far as raising children as we do.

What's the second most important thing in raising children? Why I am glad you asked. Training. You didn't hear? Training. There I told you again. The first is affection. Lots of loves and hugs and kisses and tickles and all that stuff. The stuff that drives Mrs Manager bonkers coz of all the noise.

The second is "training". And that doesn't mean you having a sore hand and the child having a blue bum! That's child abuse. So is the worse one. That is telling your child they are useless and will never amount to anything or even worse in my mind is when people tell their child to get out of their sight. That's real bad. That's mental abuse. The scares from physical abuse heal over time and are forgotten. The scares from mental abuse never heal. They are implanted in some dark recess of the mind to re-appear at the most inopportune time.

Training means to repeat the same task over and over again until the child gets it. Example:

We want Cathy to keep her legs down when we change a diaper. So, we gently hold her leg and place it down at the same time we say "Leg down." And she does. Come to Dad or mum, hold your arms out to the child and say the words at the same time. Over and over again, every time we pick Cathy up we do this. It is a game and she responds to it. Picking up her toys, we hold her when we do this. Eventually she will do it on her own. Hopefully it will be a natural transition from us doing it to her doing it.

We did the whole come to Mum thingy with Michele when she first started to crawl. Stephanie would be a metre or so away from Michele and would call Michele to come and when she did then Stephanie would make huge fuss of her. Over a period of time she extended the distance. It became so natural. We have done this in other areas of life as well. I just wish we had done more of it. It would have saved us a lot of heart ache later on. Would you believe our biggest headaches with Michele have been in the areas of reactionary parenting as opposed to areas where we have trained her. Oh, that we had known then what we know now! Mr Pearl was such a big help to us. Oh, that God had lead us to him sooner. Never mind we are there now and that is all that matters.