The Response of Love

A loving Response Tends to Dissipate Anger.

A woman in my community said this in a talk last Sunday and it really sunk in with me verbally and visually. I hate anger. It comes on so quickly for me like a large cloud of smoke exploding out of a fire. You can see it, smell it, taste it. It is overwhelming and can consume all in it's path. To dissipate means to scatter in various directions; disperse; dispel.  A loving response to my own anger scatters that smoke in all directions until it is spread so thin that I can barely feel it. It may still be present in me but I can see through it, see the underlying cause.

Recently when my son (age 6) starts to see that I am getting irritated he reacts in love to try to help me. Sometimes, of course, he notices that I am getting mad and just tries to avoid an argument by doing what it is he should be doing, sometimes he responds in annoyance back to me but some beautiful times he will run to me and say, "hug!! Hug! Hug!" He clings to me for a second until I embrace him back and he can literally feel the tension leaving my body. What a gift this response is!

The response of love helps me to forgive myself for losing my cool when I was trying so hard to maintain it. The response of love makes me want to apologize and be better. The response of love lets me know that I am forgiven and cared for. The response of love lets me know that I am not expected to be perfect in order to be deserving of love. The response of love reminds me that when I make mistakes, there are arms there willing and waiting to catch me. The response of love tells me that I am a good person. The response of love gives me hope and urges me to keep trying. The loving response breathes of forgiveness, acceptance, understanding. The response of love is empowering!

I have blessed my children with my short-fused temper....and this is not really a blessing. It now becomes my duty to help them recognize when they are losing their cool, help them learn to calm down and how to cope with their emotions when they become angry. It becomes my job to maintain peace in our home and help them find peace in their own hearts. It is my responsibility to help myself maintain anger so that I can teach them that it is possible. I can show them that I understand and that everyone loses their temper sometimes. I want to use a loving response to empower them rather than deflate them with feeling of guilt and disappointment. I want to remind me them that they are good people and that I still see them for all that they are and all that they can be. I want to teach them clearly that they are not the mistakes they make- they are people that can overcome their mistakes. I want to remind them that they are loved when they need to feel love the most.

This is easier said than done as one person's anger or bad choices often leads to your own impatience, right? I try to remember these words in those times:

A loving response tends to dissipate anger.

Isn't that what we want? To watch that ugly anger scatter and float away?

This is a great article: Helping Your Child With Anger

It addresses what is normal, why and how children express anger and some do's and don'ts for helping them.

To get a bit personal, I grew up in a situation where there was abandonment and abuse and my siblings and I all have some sort of issue with anger. Anger was not handled in a healthy way in our environment. I feel like one sibling in particular was made to feel as if there was something wrong with them for their unhealthy reactions to anger. I think about this sibling often when I watch my son in particular (he is very sensitive and his tender feelings often lead to a quick temper.) What this sibling needed and deserved was love and reassurance along with firm boundaries and mature guidance. I can't change the past but I can move forward in my own family offering those things that can help my own children.

What I love about helping my children with a loving response to anger is that I cannot reach out to them with love, hope and reassurance without feeling all of those things spill into my own life and struggles. Extending love and understanding to others brings us all hope and healing.

Children and Emotional Neglect

This fabulous article is one that I would recommend to every parent I know:

How to Not Emotionally Neglect Your Child

Go read it. Now.

It was informative, specific and empowering- inspiring change in your own parenting style without driving by guilt. We may indeed be practicing habits that leave our children emotionally neglected at times but that is most likely because the same was done to us and it is never too late to change and affect our children positively.

This spoke straight to my mother heart.

Allow me to highlight some important points:

The Three Goals of the Emotionally Attuned Parent:

1. Your child feels a part of something. He knows he’s not alone. You’re always on his team.

2.Your child knows that whatever she feels, it’s OK, and it matters to you. She will be held accountable for her behavior, but not for her emotions.

3. Your child learns how to tolerate, manage, and express his feelings.

Any parent who accomplishes these skills well enough is raising an emotionally healthy child and an emotionally intelligent child. You don’t have to do it perfectly. You just have to do it well enough.

 I do often times find myself reacting to my children's behavior rather than what they are feeling. Isn't it so easy to do that? Especially when we as adults act out our feelings through bad behavior. Wouldn't being a parent be so easy if you never got frustrated or angry or hurt? But I don't want to show my children through my angry responses that I don't care about their feelings- I only care about their behavior.

I feel like I have been learning these things through trial and error over the past couple of years, particularly when dealing with my son's behavioral issues and anxiety. I will give a few examples.
Please note- this lengthy bit is personal stories that you can feel free to skip. It is how I connect to this and may or may not be something of interest for you.

My son (now 6) has been going through some behavioral issues in the past few years and he and I butt heads often. When he acts out he is a real challenge for me. Once after some pretty significant tantrums and a fight between us I began to cry and told him, "I don't know what to do when you behave this way. I want to help you! How can I help you?" He began to cry and the anger left him and he simply said, "Hug me."

He seems angry and mean and out of control and I just want to send him to his room and tell him what he is doing is not ok....meanwhile he is a little boy that doesn't know how to manage his feelings of frustration and anger and needs his mother to reassure him that she still loves him and help him work through what he is feeling in an appropriate way. Validate his feelings and tell him what is ok to do and what is not ok. (His father is MUCH better at doing this with him than I am, to tell you the truth.) Instead I react in anger and send him off very often and then he slams doors and throws things. When he is acting like a little monster it is very difficult to hear what his heart is saying, "Hug Me." That has been a turning point in our relationship since he confessed what he needed and I hugged him so tightly and reassured him that I loved him.

In our quiet time together I remind him that he and I are on the same team. It is important for us to remind each other of this. I always need to remember to show him that I am on his side, even when I am not happy with his behavior. His family loves him even when he makes bad choices. Some mornings when he comes to wake me up, he will hug me and say, "I'm going to be on your team today Mom." I know that what I say is important to him when I let him know that our relationship is important to me. When he sees his sister acting out and me getting stressed he looks for ways to help me. Because I show that I want so much to be there for him, he wants to be there for me. Number 1 hit me straight in the heart because I know how much my son needs to hear that I am on his team.

At the beginning of this school year I saw first hand with my son that number 2 is very important. At the beginning of first grade he went off to school excited and came home happy and yet at the beginning of each week, or maybe even just a few days here and there he would start to say that he didn't want to go to school, or he didn't want to ride the bus. We would ask him "why? why? why? Is someone being mean to you? Did something happen on the bus? But you like school. Tell me why you don't want to go." etc. He always initially responds no, nothing happened but they would make up different excuses. One night while talking with him, alone in his room, he told me that he didn't want to go to school the next day. I asked why and he said he was scared. I asked why he was scared and he said he didn't know. That time it hit me that he really didn't know. He was telling me that he was scared but he couldn't put together why. It struck me then that he may be suffering from some sort of anxiety. I started explaining to him that when I feel anxiety I feel nervous or scared or upset about something but I don't always have a reason to feel that way. He agreed that that is what he felt and once he gets to school he does fine and feels fine but gets worried before starting a new week. I told him that it is normal to be scared and that he doesn't need a reason for feeling that way. What he feels is ok. He looked so relieved.

Things have changed since then. When he starts saying that he doesn't want to go to school or that he is afraid to ride the bus, I don't pester him with questions regarding what happened to make him feel that way. I acknowledged how he feels and let him know that his feelings are ok and that I understand and have felt similarly. Then I tell him what works for me when I feel that way. We don't ever tell him ok, don't go to school. He still needs to go and he knows that but we talk together about what may help him to feel better when he is feeling anxious. He is trying to communicate more with us now.

What's my point? When I look back at instances in which I have acknowledged and focused on my child's feelings, I have left him feeling more secure and closer to me and our relationship has improved. Some of his behavioral issues may be the result of feeling emotionally neglected.

Rambling done and ready to come back to the article.

I love the hope in the article- it isn't about shaming yourself or despairing over your imperfections:

Be assured, it is never too late to start responding differently.

It is never too late to improve your relationship with your child and affect their lives in a more positive way.

And finally the specific examples for how parents tend to respond and how an ideal parent would respond:

WHAT WE ALL SAY	WHAT THE IDEAL PARENT SAYS
Stop Crying	Why are you crying?
Let me know when you’re done with your fit	That’s OK. Get it all out. Then we’ll talk.
Alright, enough! I’m done with this.	Let’s take a break so we can both calm down.
Fix the attitude!	You sound angry or upset. Are you?
You need to think before you act!	How’d this go wrong? Let’s think it through.
Go to your room until you can behave better.	I see you’re angry. Is it because…?
OK, OK, stop crying now so we can go in the store.	Look at me. Take a deep breath. Let’s count to five.
There’s nothing to be nervous about.	Everyone gets nervous. It’s OK.
Don’t talk to me with that tone.	Try saying that again, but nicer so I can hear it.

I hope that this article has given you hope and some guidance for how to handle situations with your children in the future, as it has for me. I need to work this ideal parent talk into my vocabulary so that it becomes my go-to response, even when I am feeling stressed or tense. I naturally say a lot of things on the left column....and I want the right column to becomes things that come from my mouth naturally.

I DO care about my children's' feelings and I want that to be the message that I am sending them through my words and actions. Them knowing that will help them to have a better and happier life.

Communication and Pornography

Here is a great video for children explaining pornography and what they should do when they see it.

What Should I Do When I See Pornography?

The world that we live in (sadly) is one in which children will be exposed to things that we want to protect them from. They need to know what pornography is, why we need to stay away from it and how it works to hurt our spirits and our bodies. We need to communicate with our children so that they can feel comfortable communicating with us.

Should there come a time that children view pornography quite innocently and without knowing what's happening- because it can be accessed anywhere- they need to feel safe talking to their parents and to God about it without feeling like they are somehow bad and can't come to those trusted people.

I have had good friends struggle with pornography addictions and seen them suffer consequences that were both horrible and unexpected. I want to be able to have open and honest conversations with my children when the time is right. There are bad things in the world but we have eternal truths that we know and that bring light to our lives.

We live in the world but not of the world. We can't pretend that pornography doesn't exist but we can educate and warn and help them through.

Communication is an important way that I can keep my children safe.

Family Prayer

I've been thinking a lot about prayer this week. How I am a better mother when I am praying regularly, how much I need to be praying, how my family's prayers could be better and more meaningful, how much my children need to know why they need to pray, and how I can be doing better.

When out talking with some mommy friends of mine, the subject of our personal prayers came up and my thoughts jumped instantly to this month's first presidency message by President Henry B. Eyring. (In the LDS church we have a message from our Prophet and/or his two counselors that is published each month in church magazines.)

Families and Prayer by President Eyring

President Erying focused his message on his father's example of prayer and this particular quote jumped out to me and inspired me to change and improve the way in which I pray:

"I am still being blessed by a father and a mother who spoke with God. Their example of the power of prayer in families is still blessing the generations who came after them."

What my children need and what they need to know is that their mother and father speak with God. We speak with God in their behalf, we ask for help for them, we ask for blessings for them, we are praying for their safety, we are praying for them when they are away from us. We know God and we love Him and we can teach them how to know Him too.

All of this inspired a family home evening lesson in which I opened up my heart to my young children regarding prayer and it has been changing the spirit in our home this week. I write this so that I can always remember that these goals have the potential to change my children's lives for the better. Confession: building up the habits for good personal prayer have been a struggle for me. I grew up in a home where we rarely prayed together, I was not taught or reminded to pray besides the random prayer here and there to help us find something or get home safely when we were having car trouble. Regarding Heavenly Father as my Father who knows and loves me and wants to hear from me is a concept that has taken me years and years to wrap my head around. And I want to give my children this precious, important knowledge right away in life.

I opened by telling my kids that they were given to us by Heavenly Father and that he expects and needs us to teach them things so that we can all return to live with Him as a family. "Heavenly Father wants us to teach you to prayer so that you can know him and speak with him." This caught my 6-year-old's attention immediately. I am not just telling you things because I'm in charge, blah, blah, blah- be quiet and listen. I am telling them that Heavenly Father wants and needs them to learn this. We need to teach them how to pray and why we pray.

The Bible Dictionary points out the reasoning behind many of our struggles with consistant personal prayer- and the solution:

"As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part (Matt. 7:7–11). Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship."

The Family, a Proclamation to the World teaches us what is necessary in successful families, and prayer is an important part:

"“Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”

President Eyring's message struck me. I dare you to read it without hearing the spirit whisper to you that your children need you to pray with them:

"Think of what that can mean to those who kneel with you in family prayer. When they feel that you speak to God in faith, their faith will increase to also speak with God. When you pray to thank God for blessings they know have come, their faith will grow that God loves them and that He answers your prayers and will answer theirs. That can happen in family prayer only when you have had that experience in private prayer, time after time." 

The best way to bring my children to God is to show them the way. My children need to know that God loves them! And they can learn this through my prayers and through our family prayer. There have been many times that I just want to give up when attempting to have family prayer and scripture study with young children that ends in sheer craziness. "What's the point? They are just fighting. They aren't listening. I'm just getting frustrated. It would be so much easier not to do this. I don't even know why I try." Ever find yourself saying these things? I would venture to bet that you are probably doing better than us but are still saying these things. I would always tell myself- keep going so that they will always remember that we tried- we had family prayer and scripture study. It wasn't perfect but it was important to us and we worked at it and didn't give up. This message spoke to me and reminded me not to give up!


The main thing that hit home to me in this prayer light-bulb-moment, and the way to help my family was: If we want to strengthen our family prayers we all need to be working on our own individual prayers! All of us: me, my husband, my 6-year-old that often wants to do only what he wants to do, my energetic 4-year-old that cannot be rushed, my baby....well, she can't talk yet but she does know when we pray.


When we are working to do this- because prayer can be a form of work- we need to remember that a loving heavenly father hears and answers our prayers. We have to remind our children when we are wrestling them to come kneel with us that we are getting ready to talk to Heavenly Father.

I loved what President Eyring said his father would do when praying:

"My father had often said that when he prayed, he thought he could see in his mind the smile of Heavenly Father."

I remind my children of this now. That He is happy when we speak to Him. He wants to hear from us. Her knows us. He knows our names.

And this is our Family's reminder (that I need to print out so that we can have at our bedsides)  "A loving God is as close as a prayer."

I have been touched by my 4-year-old's sweet prayer that she has said nightly since this lesson, "We are thankful for Heavenly Father and that we can talk to you."

One thing I know- prayer in my home will bless my family.

Our Value Comes From 3 Places

One parenting book that I have been picking at and have loved is The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers. One concept addressed from the very beginning is the importance of knowing our value, as mothers, in order to be good mothers and teach our children their own value.

The book states that our real value as mothers comes from three places:

1. We are loved
2. We are needed
3. We are born for a higher purpose

We may sometimes feel like failures, but we are not failures. We are loved, we are needed, and we are born for a higher purpose. This book offered a needed reminder for me that I am the center of my children's universe and my mood changes their world a bit. Especially to my young baby, (as I provide for all of her needs) I matter as much as life itself.

Some days I feel like I am doing all the work behind the scenes and not being noticed whatsoever. If you come to my house, I promise you will hear me say the following or something close to it when talking to my children, "Hello? Hello! Are you listening to me? Yes, Hi. Focus on me for a second." Sometimes I even have this conversation with my husband...I loved these reminders that feeling good about my value to them (my family) is important because the better I feel, the better my relationship with them will be and the happier we will all be.

My children and my husband deserve a happy mother and wife. They need me to remember that I am loved by them. They need that love to guide me in all that I do for them (even in housework) because I am needed. I am born for a higher purpose- I am born to be a good mother. This is the calling in which I will leave a mark in the world. My very presence is important in my home.

Put it on a sticky note

slap it on your mirror

write it on your hand

stencil it on your wall?

chant it to yourself in public places...and laugh at people's reactions

1. We are loved
2. We are needed
3. We are born for a higher purpose

(From The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers)

Laughter

Because wisdom can frequently be found in children's books, I give you this quote from Beth Shoshan's,  If You Can...We Can.

There's nothing in this world that can make us feel so good as laughter can, as laughter does, as laughter should.

Then What? Things to Remember

This is an exert from Dr. Laura's book, In Praise of Stay at Home Moms:

"When you haven't shown patience? When you haven't gone with the flow? Then what? Remember these 5 things:

 1.tomorrow is another day
2.most mistakes can be fixed. Figure it out or ask for help. ...
3. It is never as bad as you think. Not really.
4. A lot more good than bad things happened today. Admit it.
5. Everybody still loves you. Let people hug you. "