One Mommy's Memos

As I was snapping photos of my daughter and my husband enjoying the snow, I noticed the kids lined up on the elementary school grounds in the background. I'm grateful my daughter was able to have some one-on-one with her daddy--this one-on-one teaching and exploring seems priceless compared to the alternative of being herded around by one adult who is responsible for 25-30 other kids.... I'm just saying.

"Mommy, why did he have a heart attack?" my 4-year-old asked me of an acquaintance we were praying for. In truth, I did not know the exact answer for that particular person. But I do know the answer for many, if not most, people who have heart attacks. And rather than brushing her off or giving a meaningless answer, I told her the truth. "When we eat foods that are bad for us, it makes it so that our bodies don't work well. People have heart attacks because they eat a lot of unhealthy foods. When we eat good foods, our bodies work well. And when we don't, our bodies stop working." Her followup questions showed understanding. "Like french fries? And candy? Those make my body not work well." "Exactly!" If we want our bodies to work well, we have to eat good, healthful foods." Honestly, I had a twinge feeling that I was brainwashing her. Somehow, I have allowed society to make me feel like anytime I teach anything but the popular ...

One of my favorite things is walking into the room to find my 2-year-old son plopped down on the ground "reading" a book. He looks at each page intently before turning to the next. And when he finishes that book, he grabs another from the shelf and repeats the process, sometime for more than 10 minutes. My 4-year-old daughter loves to "read" too, but she mostly prefers to be read to. Of all the things we have done wrong as parents, one thing we feel like we did right was putting a book case of children's book in the room where we spend most of our time, within easy reach of our children. My husband was telling me about a book he read that talks about setting yourself up for success. It tells about a woman who really wanted to go far in her profession, which required her to read academic journals at home in the evening. However, somehow she ended up watching TV every night instead. The book suggested the reason why wasn't merely a matter of a l...