Successful Homemaking with Toddlers: Is it Possible? Part 7
If you missed the beginning posts in this series, you can go back and read them here.After planning time in your schedule to invest in your children and planning time to work with your children, I encourage you to also:
Plan time in your schedule for your children to entertain themselves close beside you. Except for naptimes and quiet time, one of things we try to do at our home is to have our children always within our eyesight. They are either working with me or working on something nearby.
I think it is helpful to teach children from a young age to entertain themselves for short stretches of time while you cook or clean or work on projects with older children. After Kathrynne helps me with some of the cooking and cleaning in the morning, then she usually also has time where she entertains herself.
We rotate what she does during this time but it is often things like: sitting on the couch and reading books, building with Legos, coloring, cutting scrap paper with child-safe scissors, riding her trike in the kitchen, playing with water and measuring cups at the kitchen sink and pretending to wash the dishes, or playing with alphabet magnets on the refrigerator.
I often sit Kaitlynn on the floor with some books or blocks, or sit her in her high chair with a snack or a few toys. She and Kathrynne are still learning to play together without someone getting hurt so I’ve found it is normally better to separate them into different areas close by where I am.
The playpen is a wonderful tool I often use for Kaitlynn since she is quite adventuresome. I can set it up close by where I’ll be working and give her some toys and she will usually play quietly by herself for 30 minutes or so.
Growing up, when my mom was teaching school to us older children, she planned different things for the younger children to do and changed them every so often, to keep things from becoming mundane. One thing she did with my youngest brother was a "box-a-day" system: she put together a tub of different toys for each day of the week and during a specified time of the day, he got to pull out the box of the day and play with it in his playpen. It kept him occupied for close to an hour while Mom did school with us and because he only saw the toys in that box once per week, it was like unwrapping a big box of new toys everyday!
In addition to planning time in your schedule for your children to entertain themselves, I also highly recommend that every family with young children consider implementing an afternoon quiet time of some sort.
At our home, every afternoon we have two hours of quiet time. This is when the girls go down in their beds. Kaitlynn takes a nap and Kathrynne either naps or plays quietly in her room, reads books, or listens to a CD--usually a combination of all of these things. This gives everyone a reprieve from the usual bustling of our home, it gives the girls an opportunity to rest, and it also allows me to have an opportunity to rest, read, or work on projects.
For those of you feeling like you could never have your children work independently close beside you or you could never have an afternoon quiet time, let me encourage you that these things don't happen overnight. Instead, they must be taught.
While I'm far from any experienced parenting expert, I wanted to offer just a few words of encouragement to you young moms on the subject of training your children:
Training takes time and work and patience and practice. Every day is an opportunity for us, as mothers, to instruct our children in Godliness, to lavish them with love, and to help our children practice obedience. We shouldn't expect obedience from our children; we must graciously guide them in the Truth and teach them to obey.
At our home this means lots of practice. And more practice! We practice saying "thank you" and "please", obeying the first time, and coming when called. We talk about what is expected and why we expect it. We communicate with our children and to our children in words that they can understand what our heart's desire is for them--that they will learn to obey us so that someday they will love the Lord their God with all their hearts and seek to honor Him in all they do, say, and think.
It's only because of training and practice that Kathrynne will play quietly while I read, or sit and have tea with me, or go to bed cheerfully, or come when she's called. None of those things happened naturally, and just like all the rest of us, Kathrynne is far from perfect, but the effort we have put into training her has gradually begun to pay off. And it brings great joy to our hearts to see her blossoming into a respectful, cheerful child who is a delight to be around.
My encouragement for all of you young moms to not lose hope! Don't try to work on everything at once--that's just setting yourselves up for frustration and failure. Instead, pick one area to work on and focus on that. Try taking things in bite-size pieces, set small goals, and lovingly instill obedience and respect in your children. Start out slowly, be consistent, and you will soon reap the benefits.
Graphic from AllPosters.com
Labels: Home Management and Organization
posted by Crystal Paine at 10:25 AM
14 Comments:
Thank you for your encouraging post.
Crystal,
I love this series, as it's something I'm struggling with right now with my newly-turned-two-year-old daughter.
My main question for you is HOW do you train your daughters to play quietly while you're doing something else? I know it doesn't happen overnight, but here it's not happening much at all, no matter how hard I try to get her to play independently. She always wants me to be playing with her. If I'm doing something else then she cries and carries on. Then what? My mom has suggested giving her a time out if she can't stop crying and find something to play, but I honestly don't think she would understand that right now. I'm at my wits end, as very little is getting done around here when she's awake.
I'd love your advice on the practical HOW.
Thank you!
Wendy
I love this series! If you kept on writing it forever, I would keep reading it. I love the idea of seven toyboxes: I may try that. Thanks for all of your great thoughts and ideas.
Well now that I'm on my 4th preschooler, I've just been invited to join on a preschool game swap. We have 20 women making 21 sets each of a preschool activity that can be done without supervision. We'll meet tomorrow night and swap activities so that every lady leaves with 20 different activities. Like a cookie exchange. The extra set is being given to a missionary family.
My total cost has been $25. I made a game called alpha spoons. So I needed 52 spoons per bag. It's a matching game. The cheapest way to buy spoons was Sam's club. $10 for six hundred. But it would have cost me much more to make one of each game myself. Now we have 20 new activities for when school really gets moving again. I wish I had known of this idea sooner!
How do you actually do the training? My daughter is 2 1/2 and has to have me right with her all the time. She will not play with anything by herself- no matter how interesting. I must add we adopted her at age 18 months and she is very clingy with me and hates to be left alone. Thankfully she takes a 1 1/2 hour nap every afternoon.
I like the daily box of toys idea- she get a lot of toys from Grandma.
I would like to hear how people discipline toddlers. We are having a hard time with our almost 3 yr old daughter who is very high-spirited and never sits still for a moment- always go- go go. She also has cerebral palsy which makes some physical tasks difficult for her. We try to use time outs for her but how do you get her to stay in the "naughty spot"- she would get back up like 100 times!
You must be busy today to not have any comments up yet. ;) I'm certain I'm not really first.
I have a question... I love the things you said about not expecting obedience, etc, but to train our children to be obedient, come when we call, obey the first time etc. We are working on these things... would you share some of the details of how you have trained Kathrynne in all the areas you mentioned? I'm certain that would be a huge help and encouragement to me as well as others!
I'm working on getting together some learning/skill-building activities for my daughter to work on while I am nursing the new baby in the future. I'm reading an EXCELLENT book called Mommy, Teach Me, by Barbara Curtis that has all kinds of neat ideas for simple things preschoolers can do, quietly, and independently.
My daughter enjoys coloring, playing tea party, or painting with water colors just about every day. My kids also love to be outside, but it's challenging for me since we don't have fenced yards and it requires a lot of supervision.
I often get the older children (ages 5 and 3) to "read" to the toddler (age 1). They love to be mommy's helpers and it keeps everyone occupied in a meaningful task.
I wholeheartedly agree with having children work beside you. I am currently in the middle of a series of articles about this on my own blog: from-my-life.blogspot.com. Come see me!
Play Dough is a great tool for keeping kids entertianed. I don't make my own, but you can and then it doesn't matter if it gets eaten. :)You can use your own measuring spoons, rolling pins and such or there are tons of tools made just for play dough and they are cheap. If you have boys, dump trucks and cereal like Cheerios are great. My boys, and even my girls, would have a whole "dirt" moving factory going on the kitchen table and it can last for quite a while. Then the cereal just goes in a baggie or container until next time. Oatmeal works well also. Back when my kids were little I cut pictures out of old magazines and catalogs and laminated them to construction paper then used ring binders and made books for them. They really loved them and you can cut the paper to whatever size works best for you. They are great in the car. Little people where a hit in our house also. The girls would make "the neiborhood" in there bedroom and play family for a long time. These are just a few things that we did. If "self entertainment" isn't a regular practice at your house but you would like to start, it may be best to ease into it. You may find that the kids don't sit for an hour and entertain themselves, but you could start with 15 minutes and slowly work your way up. The timer is a great help doint it at the same time everyday is also a help. I find that my kids really do better with structure. They know what to expect and when to expect it. These are just a few things that worked at our house.
I love this series! It has been a nice refresher and encouragement for me to know that what I am doing with my little ones isn't something totally off the wall.
I do not think I could survive homeschooling five children if it were not for the mandatory quiet time after lunch that I have trained my kids to do.
I have been writing a series about homeschooling with little ones. I think I am going to revamp my latest post in the series so that I can include a link to your posts on your series because I am realizing that a lot of what I said is based on doing what you have stated here. :)
Thanks again for your thoughts!
I wanted to add my daughter won't color, or play with play dough or anything like that on her own. Since she has CP fine motor activities are difficult for her- if I sit and "make" her do it she will scribble- but it's not fun for her. I wish I could find something that would engage her to play independently- she is almost age 3. She wants me to constantly be with her. She will play tea set or pretend cooking but only if I am right there along with her.
She will also "help" me with some housework- but nothing is actually getting done and we make more of a mess than anything.
For those of you who asked HOW we practically walk out the training in our home--
At this point, I've decided not to discuss specific child-training methods on my blog. There are a myriad of thoughts on this subject and I don't feel qualified to speak specifics to your unique situation. We are still very new in this child-training journey and have much left to learn.
I will, however, encourage each of you to go to your husband and to God's Word for help in this. I also recommend "Shepherding a Child's Heart" and "The Mother at Home" as two helpful resources. In addition, a few friends I highly respect, recommend the book, "Don't Make Me Count to Three." I still have it on my night-stand waiting to be read so I can't give my personal endorsement of it, but that is definitely another to check out.
As always, I encourage you to not look to model your parenting after the methods of another person, instead seek to model your parenting after what you find in God's Word. None of us will do it perfectly, but we can constantly be seeking God's grace, strength, wisdom, and help for this huge job He's entrusted us with.
God bless you all!
I read a book called Raising the Spirited Child- it helped me get a good insight on my daughter's personality- which others might label "strong-willed". I much prefer the term "spirited". Anyway she does really poorly with transitions- so that's always something we have to work on. Structure and routine and repetition is very helpful for her.
We never ever vary getting up time, lunch time, nap time, bed time. It means we miss out on a lot of evening activities. But it is just not worth it to me to have a grumpy 2 year old. So she goes to bed at 8pm every night no matter what. And gets up at 7am every morning- like clockwork!
Post a Comment
<< Home