Inspiring families to find their happy place.

25 Ways to Just Be with your Children

January 24, 2012 by 236 Comments
winter AA collage

winter AA collage

Interested in more ideas to connect and engage with your children? Check out The Playful Family, an e-book loaded with new playful rituals to incorporate into your busy day.

It’s not easy being a parent. No matter if you work outside the home, inside the home. No matter if you have one, two, three or fifteen children. No matter if you have a small house in a big city or a big house in a small city. No matter if you have money or very little money.

Raising children is hard work — at least it is if you are doing it right.

It’s really no wonder parents are spending more time than ever checking in on Facebook, smart phones, or doing project after project after project. It helps to have something to do rather than sit around and dwell on all the stuff we want to be able to do or used to be able to do but no longer can. This self-medicating with social media is harmful — as Rachel at Hands Free Mama has said so eloquently this week on her blog.

25 Ways to Just Be With Your Children

And yet our children don’t care how fancy we are as parents, or how many messages we get in an hour about our blog. The smaller they are the more they need us. The bigger they are, the more they need us. Sometimes, the more they need us, the more we want to slink away and find some blanket to crawl under. But it doesn’t have to feel that way.

Breaks for parents are absolutely essential. Absolutely.

There is a time and place for media and screens and technology. And there is a time and place for NO media and NO screens. It’s about being conscious, as a parent and a human being, about when and how we are turning to the computer or TV for simply boredom or laziness or seriously trying to avoid our lives.

To truly be awake to this life — these fleeting 18 years — we have but one choice to make each day: embrace our blessings and honor those around us. Practicing mindful choices each day is something that we have to model for our children or else they, too, will end up staring at screens all too much in their own life (like that picture above!).

My own image of my children on their Leap Pads the first day they received them.

There are many ways that you can just be with your children that are not hard work, that are not challenging or tiresome. By just being there, you may discover that your child will reach out to you simply because you are suddenly available. The magic in this list is that it’s just simply being together and playing together for a solid half hour or so but it offers up the most beneficial memories we can offer to children. Here are some of our family’s favorites:

  • Turn off the TV/computer/phones for one hour. (In our house, we limit daily screen time to a total of one hour except on movie nights).
  • Have a work hour — they do homework and you work on a hobby like art or reading while sitting at the same table.
  • Just listen to music. At our house, we call this a dance party.
  • Light a candle for your children — one each.
  • Surprise them with a celebration for trying hard on a test or homework and eat store bought cookies and milk.
  • Sit on the couch while they play and read magazines. They will sit next to you eventually and ask, ”Whatcha reading?”
  • Grab two balls and challenge everyone to find something fun to do with them outside.
  • Snuggle under a blanket or put a puzzle together.
  • Whip up a nice bowl of ice cream and laugh while you eat it.
  • Watch TV with them if they insist on watching.
  • Ask them open-ended questions about their day.
  • Tell them something surprising about your day.
  • Draw together, taking turns adding new lines on the same paper.
  • Take a drive, taking turns picking the direction and sitting in silence as the unfamiliar landscape passes you by.
  • Look at their baby photos.
  • Tell them a funny story from their younger days.
  • Tell them a funny story from your own childhood.
  • In fact, tell them any story you can think of telling.
  • Ask them to teach you how to do something. This is big. Very big.
  • Ask them questions about their favorite things.
  • Help them clean their room or the basement or the garage. Whatever. Lend a hand.
  • Ask them for help with a problem.
  • Hold a family meeting to just catch up.
  • Announce that there will be no cleaning for just one day.
  • Give them a coupon for a hug to use anytime they need it.

What kinds of things do you like to do with our family to just relax and be together with little expectations? Are you trying to encourage a Playful Family?

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Filed Under: Peaceful Living, Playful Living Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Instill a Sense of Wonder, Curiosity

January 22, 2012 by 21 Comments

I’m almost sad to write it, but I was that student who slinked down in her seat, afraid the teacher might call on me. I was the kid that never raised her hand. I was the kid that was so insecure that I thought when I had a question, I was a bad person, a dumb kid, a stupid girl.

I thought not knowing was a really, really bad thing. And, even when I knew the answer, I often doubted myself and never tried to give the answer.

I’m not sure how that happened.

And the end of this story is kind of comical, really. By the time I graduated high school, all I wanted to do was ask questions — as a journalist. Then I became a journalist. I did that for more than a decade — learning a valuable lesson in life.

We must question. We must seek. We must explore. We must critique. It is not enough to just be fed answers. It is not enough to assume what we are told is correct.

Besides teaching our girls to be the kindest human beings possible, I want them to be questioners, seekers and explorers.

I never want them to feel shame for not knowing an answer.

So when I read about creating an “I Wonder” board in the book, “The Rhythm of the Family,” by Amanda Soule, I pretty much immediately made one for our family. The thing about parents and kids’ questions is that we don’t always have the answers and, therefore, we tend to brush their questions aside, making light of them. And yet they are so essential to staying awake and being mindful of what our children need from us at any given moment. This board takes those questions and highlights them as being so important. To me, this board says, “I care about what is important to you right now. While I do not have the answer, I value that you are curious.”

Now, I’m creative — witty, even — but I am not crafy. That’s why this blog doesn’t take the avenue of many others in terms of crafts to do with kids. We do them, but they are not my area of expertise. This blog will never have many projects that use a glue gun or sewing machine. This blog will always have projects that use your mind, your imagination and your heart. But, sometimes, crafts are necessary. At least the easy ones.

To make your own “I wonder” board simply take a bulletin board, cover it with fabric like this. Attach a few ribbons, if you wish, and then start adding questions. That may even be more than you need, really. You could do this a million ways — such as an I Wonder jar, or an I wonder journal. Whatever you need to do to make it easy and achievable for the whole family. We keep our board in our dining room/art room combo next to our hot chocolate bar for convenience.

This project was easy and I cannot stress enough how awesome our I Wonder board has been in our lives as a family. At various times in our day, the girls — or I — end up asking a question. A question that we really are curious about or a question that is just silly or a question that is plain old something we should know but do not!  

All questions that anyone has goes on the board no matter how ridiculous. All. I’ve even wondered why our noses run so much when it’s cold outside …

Questioning what happens around us is essential. It is remarkable how often we don’t double check or question or doubt how things are, how things have always been and whether what we’ve been led to believe is even true.

Seek. Explore. Question. These are the things we value in our family.

These are the things our Wonder board promotes.

Now that the questions are adding up, we’ll be finding time to research some of them. Others, we’ll just relish in the unknown.

Because we don’t always have the answers in life, do we? And that is perfectly, wildly, most amazingly wonderful. Isn’t it??

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Filed Under: Creativity, Playful Living Tagged With: , , ,

Honor Family Links {show love edition}

January 19, 2012 by 4 Comments

This weekend can be simple. It truly can be. Call in sick. Don’t show up. Forget to go to that thing you were expecting to go to and say you’re sorry later. It’s better than saying sorry to the kids because of yet another weekend that rushed past without a fun moment in it — like sleeping in. Do the minimal for everyone but you and the ones you love.

Rather than rush, rush, rush let’s find ways to show love to our own family. Here are some links that inspired me this week.

Here are 10 easy and inexpensive ways to show love to your child from Little Wonders Days.

And here are 10 more easy and inexpensive ways to show love to your child from the same. Always good reminders.

Here are 4 more ideas for family night, too from a cute little blog title that’s new to me. I love the indoor snowball fight idea and will definitely be adding that to our list to do.

And, if this post isn’t enough, go to The Wise One and she’ll really explain it best.

Happy Weekend!

Photo credit: 5 Dollar Dinners’ Tree Pancakes, which can easily be made into a winter scene rather than Christmas.

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Filed Under: Abundant Mamas, Peaceful Living Tagged With: , , ,

A Sunshiney Day

January 17, 2012 by 1 Comment
“I saw the most beautiful sun, Mama,” she said from the backseat.
Curious, I search the sky. It is early. I can see my breath as we speak. The cold drive to school is usually nothing but gray. Gray everywhere. But in recent weeks. Oh, this week.  The sunrise has greeted us with the lovelist pink skies.

“I can’t see it now, Mama. I’ll tell you when I find it.”

Her twin sister, now also very eager, starts scanning the sky. “Where is it? Where is it?”

I drive on as we all search the glittery sky.

Just a regular day. Driving to kindergarten, to work, to the ordinary day before us.

As we head into the city, wondering if we’ll see this elusive sun, screams radiate from the backseat waking me better than coffee.

There, bigger than anything, is a ball of orange that seems to fill half the horizon with its fiery, bright and stunning orange. A glowing ember of red circled around it like a hug, like eternity, like a mother. There, amazingly amazing.

She noticed this.

“It’s like the sun woke up and said it’s going to be a beautiful day,” her sister said.

Yes, yes. Yes!

Now each morning we search for the sun on the way to school, the sun that seems to peek up just in time to wish us a happy, sunshiney day. The sun that warms the earth, and our hearts.

This tradition, this way of life — to notice, to appreciate the earth — this is what this is all about.

This post is my contribution to Extraordinary Ordinary’s Just Write project. Be sure to visit some of the other Just Write posts.

(photo credit: NY Longbow)

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Filed Under: Intentional Parenting Tagged With: , , ,
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