Parenting with Love

Parenting is many things.  It is a fun, challenging, memorable, difficult, and fulfilling blessing in our lives.   It’s definitely something you can’t fully understand unless you experience it for yourself.   Essentially it is an act of love.  Every day we are serving, loving, and caring for our little boy regardless of whether the day is smooth sailing or a little rocky.  Love is essential when parenting and caring for little children. 

Like everyone, we want to do the best we can in raising Jacob and in creating a loving and special home. 

At times, we don’t always feel like we know what we’re doing.  But we try our best and try to build on what works and learn from what doesn’t seem to work well. 

I really enjoy seeing how Jacob learns and grows from every little thing.  He is constantly watching and listening.  He can be talking to himself and playing with a toy in the other room and later talk about something he overheard Rob and I talking about while he was in the other room.   

I saw a quote on a friend’s FB the other day that said:  “The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.”  Peggy O’Mara   I think that is so true.  Not only does this pertain to what we say directly to them, but what they may overhear us saying about them.  We would hate to overhear someone talking about the things we do wrong.  We already know what we struggle with.  I think kids are the same.  They don’t want to constantly overhear their parent talking about they things they struggle with.  They want to overhear someone talking about what a great person they are and what they are great at. 

There are many things that Rob and I hope our children will learn and do in life.  But some of the main things we hope is that they become good and kind people.   We also hope that they will not only be kind to others, but to themselves.    We hope they will be confident in who they are and have feelings of good self worth. 

One thing we do to try to instill this in Jacob is to teach him the gospel of Jesus Christ.  We pray, read the scriptures, and sing songs every day so he can feel of God’s love for him.  It is amazing to me how quickly children can learn things.  We read the scriptures with Jacob and at times we think he isn’t really listening, or we wonder if he’s getting anything out of it.  One time when we were reading the Book of Mormon, we were in the part where Isaiah was quoted.  And we were just getting through it as best we could, I couldn’t hope that Jacob would understand it, because I don’t understand a lot of it.  Anyhow, I was reading some of the strange names:  King Uzziah, Pekah, and Remaliah were listed.  And Jacob just started laughing and repeating their names.  He said their names constantly for weeks.  It was so funny.   There are pretty unique names.  Before that time I had never even noticed them.  He taught me that he was listening and that maybe even reading the difficult portions of Isaiah can be enlightening and fun.  Two of the songs we often sing for Jacob before he goes to sleep are, “I am a child of God” and “My Heavenly Father loves me”.   

My Heavenly Father loves me:

Whenever I hear the song of a bird, or look at the blue blue sky.

Whenever I feel the rain on my face, or the wind as it rushes by.

Whenever I touch a velvet rose or walk by our lilac tree.

I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world,  Heavenly Father created for me.

He gave me my eyes that I might see the color of butterfly wings

He gave me my ears that I might hear the magical sound of things.

He gave me my life, my mind, my heart, I thank him reverently.

For all His creations of which I’m a part,

Yes, I know Heavenly Father loves me.

He now knows those songs by heart and sometimes when he is he will just start singing them to himself.  He often starts to sing “whenever I touch a velvet rose….” When we are out on walks and he sees a colorful flower.  He then touches it and will usually give me a petal or two as a manifestation of his love for me.  I love it.  And I love it when I hear him stating out loud to himself, “My Heavenly Father loves me.”  Yes, Jacob, He does.

Ok, so you may think, this is all fine and well, but what about on the hard days or in difficult moments.  What do you do then?  Good question.  We learn from our mistakes.  We try to be loving, respectful and kind, but sometimes we are impatient and raise our voice a bit.  But we have learned the latter approach doesn’t work out well for anyone.  We try to teach Jacob to apologize when he makes mistakes, and we also tell Jacob sorry when we don’t behave as we should.  If we have to correct Jacob, we also try to show forth an increase of love afterwards so he won’t have any doubt that he is loved.  

A few months ago I started reading the book:  Christlike Parenting: Taking the Pain out of Parenting by Dr. Glen Latham.  It is really good and has helped me understand how I can continue to improve in my efforts to be a kind and Christlike person and parent. 

Ultimately, we can’t make or force our kids to become or act how we might think they should.  They get to decide.  As parents we get to teach them, be there for them, and love them no matter what.  And I believe, if we do that, they will feel of our love and will have happy and fulfilling lives. 

Rob and I love being parents.  We have a lot of the fun as a family.  We also have challenging moments and try to get through them as best we can.  We love our son.   We hope he always knows this and feels this.  He is one of our greatest blessings and joys in life.