Life on Purpose: Parenting (Part 1)

Today I am home alone (heehee!). Barrett is at work, the boys are with their other set of parents, and I have glorious quiet time to myself. Not only have I been cleaning the house (pretty much a daily thing here), but I have also extensively picked up and then cleaned out the boys' rooms and closets. Scary, I tell you! While wandering through Isaiah's closet I found: missing socks, pants, shoes, an acorn, old batteries, tons of paper (the kid likes to cut "designs" in paper and make art!), stickers, dried up Play-Doh, and crayons and markers everywhere! Matt's closet was no less scary with sports gear, candy, random Legos, and any number of paper airplanes (his latest hobby!). As I de-cluttered, I tried to put things where they were handy and made sense, most used items still readily available, and the junk needed to go. I tend to be a pretty deep thinker, and quiet time is readily available for making plans!  As I cleaned, I thought about our lives, and our need to keep the important things close at hand and to get rid of the things that clutter up our lives.

I have been lucky enough to be in an online group that is the first 100 readers of a new parenting book. We got a free copy (possibly a t-shirt too), and we discuss the book online with the author and give our thoughts and insight. Kind of cool. I am really enjoying the book. It is called The Passionate Mom for those interested, by Susan Merrill, and is available for pre-sale on Amazon. I will review it later here on my blog. Anyhow...I am learning many things about my parenting style, and the things that are important to me and growing my young boys into amazing men.

The thing that continues to hit me the hardest? The need to have a plan. It may seem really ironic, because I am a huge planner type person, but I guess I thought that great parenting would just come natural and happen by accident? I don't know, it seems silly to me now. This truth came crashing down on both Barrett and I the other day while spending time with the kids. Disclaimer: my boys are pretty well-behaved, but second disclaimer: they are little boys, and third disclaimer: they are very impressionable. Some of their behaviors were a little iffy and some downright rude. We were surprised. Why are these boys acting this way? Who is teaching them these bad behaviors? And then it hit: Who is teaching them good behaviors? You see, this cannot be left to chance! If we leave it to chance and just correct for the bad behaviors, how are the boys supposed to learn the good ones? It seems awfully like teaching them to use the process of elimination (a good strategy for test-taking), a bad strategy for life.

They won't be little for long...

Thankfully, my husband is a planner type person too, so we have been devising a plan. We must parent on purpose! What does this even look like? Well, you start backwards, I think. You think of the things that matter the most that your children need to have when they leave you and enter that big world out there. We have those goals already...after a "planning session" together, and they are a list of traits of Family Principles.
Ours look like this (they should be unique to each family):

• Know God.
• Serve Others.
• Seek Knowledge.
• Be Confident.
• Think Critically.
• Be Connected.
• Be Self-Sufficient.

Now we have been thinking about how to make each of these principles a bit more real, as in how are they applied? And we have been devising two lists. There is a list of things our family does and a list of things we do not do. I know everyone say's not to use negative rules (like using the word don't), but honestly we decided with smaller kids we need to be explicit. These are the behaviors we expect and these are the ones that none of us should do...and will have consequences to. What would your list look like?

For more on Parenting on Purpose and Living on Purpose, and what we have decided to use in our home (feel free to borrow, modify and share ideas!), see Part 2.