Do you ever look at the direction your family is taking and realize that somehow you have taken a short cut and are now on a path of life that you not only do not recognize, but do not even like? Well, I was at the point a few weeks ago. I wrote about it and received comments from loved ones and friends that all was well and that I just needed to give myself a break and my kids a break. But I knew that that wasn't the answer. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. Our family had developed some habits that started to turn us into a family I no longer recognized or wanted to be a part of. The kids were on electronics too much. I was on electronics too much. There was no direction or order in our lives. Every day seemed like a new bundle of chaos. Instead of coming together it seemed like we were coming apart. Sure, on the outside things looked just fine. The house got picked up and the school work got done, but if you dug any deeper you could see that all was not well. We were venturing outside what Bob and I wanted to set as a president for our family's goals and life.
I take my role as a mother very seriously. I truly believe it is the most important job that I will ever, ever have. I am passionate about being a mother. And to be quite honest, I am good at mothering my children. Certainly not perfect, but definitely very good. I am constantly trying to be a better mother because it is so important to me to be the best that I can be for my children. Sometimes that comes across as being down on myself, but really I am not. I have to be critical of myself sometimes in order to improve. I need to be as real with myself as possible and that includes both praising myself for what I do well, but it also means evaluating what I am not doing well and trying to improve upon that. Anyone who wants to excel at anything needs to examine and reexamine how they are performing in their role. They constantly try new things in order to improve their performance. They check out different resources and ideas. They use what works for them and throw away any ideas that aren't applicable. This is how I approach being a mother. Because my kids are constantly changing and growing, so too, must I constantly grow and change in order to be the best mom that they deserve. Sometimes life gets off track, like it had for us, and things need to be reviewed in order to be made right again. Because I believe so strongly in the importance of the way our family lives I am willing to invest a huge amount of time into making it exactly the way I know it is meant to be. Even if this means putting the brakes on every other commitment we have until I figure out and get things back on track. And is just what I did.
I am big, huge, enormous believer that: how we spend our moments is how we spend our lives.
I did not like the way our family was spending our moments. And so I decided to change that.
Two weeks ago I told the kids that they could have the week off from school and in their place I went to school instead. Mama school. I immersed myself in as many books as I could read in a weeks time. I took notes, highlighted some books, reread other parts of books until certain messages were embossed into my brain. Page after page I both read and wrote until I finally had a clear understanding of where I wanted our family to go, why, and how I was going to accomplish this. I meant business and everyone in the house knew it. They could sense that change was on the horizon. I think that the kids thought just their world was going to change, but in reality my world was about to change too. Almost all of my kids attitudes come from me. I am with them 95% of their day and am their #1 influence by nature of the way we have set up our family life. In order to change how we live as a family I had to take a good look at my own attitudes and behaviors. It was here that I knew I had some work to do in order for the changes that I wanted to implement to stick. I had to have a positive attitude about what was going to take place in our family's life. I had to believe in the changes enough that I could get all four of my kids to buy into this new system. I had to accept that this system would not go smoothly at first, but if I stuck with it over time all of my hard work would pay off.
And so far it has. When I first presented all of my ideas to the kids they were overwhelmed with the new concepts we were going to introduce. Andy thought his life was going to be over. Elizabeth huffed and puffed about how much she did not like it even though she had not even implemented anything yet. Sarah and Josh (my two super organized kiddos) thought there was a lot that was going to change and they weren't sure that they were going to like everything, but they knew that these ideas would make us super organized and so they were more on board with giving everything a try. (I am pretty sure Bob loved the whole system, but was skeptical that it could actually be implemented successfully.)
What I did (and I will be sharing the details of this book with you over the next few posts) is:
1.) I created a family management notebook.
These aren't uncommon and are actually something a lot of homemakers use, but until recently I hadn't. I started to use one a few years ago, but I didn't do a good job back then of having it fit the confines of our life and so the idea went by the way side. I now have a notebook that completely and utterly fits into our family's life. It covers: food, family time, fitness (mine), self, and housekeeping. This book is what runs our family. It is an amazing tool that I wish I had thought to really implement years ago because it would have made our family's life so much easier to run and enjoy. Stay with me, I know that some of you may be thinking, "How in the world can a notebook bring about so much change in one family's life?". Once I show you what is inside you will completely understand. In the next few posts (if you can bear with me) I will show you the ins and outs of this notebook (you'll also have to deal with my poor picture taking skills as I am not very good at taking quality photos). You will see why this is working for me and how it has completely changed our family's life.
2.) Set up weekly family meetings.
3.) Implemented 'date nights' with each of our children individually.
4.) Began morning and evening routines.
5.) Created a 'person of the day'.
6.) Set aside time daily for family reading time. (Our current book is: Robinson Crusoe)
7.) Set aside a quiet hour each day when everyone has some alone time to do an activity by themselves in their room. (Me included!)
8.) Implemented family time after dinner. Each evening the person of the day picks an activity for the 5/6 of us to do together. (Go for a walk, play a game, color, etc..) (Bob is at work, so he cannot participate during the week.)
In the meantime I will leave you with this:
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Part 1 - Why?
Part 2: The Notebook
Part 3 - Housekeeping
Part 4: Family Meet, Chore Pack, & Recipe Box
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