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3 Reasons Having Children Will Not Make You Happy
Thinking of having children? Are you wistful at the sight of a swaddle blanket? Hopeful while gazing at bumper guards and high chairs? Delirious for tiny dresses with delightfully adorable matching shoes? We crave these pieces of parenting, but will having children make you happy? Oh, the ache for a baby. It can be something that swallows us whole. After my hysterectomy, I sobbed at my sister’s baby shower. Her children were prayerfully conceived after miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, and several rounds of fertility treatments. I certainly didn’t begrudge her having the twins, but I mourned the children I would never carry. Fast forward 4 years, and we were preparing…
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Reaction Time
This morning my daughter kept getting distracted from making her bed. She’s four. I expect a certain amount of distraction. First, she had to potty. Then, she found a piece of paper on the floor. Around the third time, I said, “Ok, it’s time to set the timer.” We’ve been using a timer to encourage her focused attention on a task. I always set the time to be several minutes longer than I anticipate a task requiring. The goal is to help her focus, not make her rush. But this morning, when I said I was setting the timer, she squealed and began to get upset. “I can’t do it!”…
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Be careful little tongue * Part 2
We all know children imitate what they see. From very early days, my daughter would imitate me talking on the phone. Because her daddy deployed when she was three months old, I spent a lot of time on the phone as a new mom with her husband in a war zone. She imitated me by pacing with the phone in her hand, gesturing while she talked, even laughing periodically as if the other person in her imaginary conversation had just made a joke. I was amazed at the depth of the details she picked up about talking on the phone from watching me, before she could even speak. It was…
