One of my pet peeves is when people forcefully offer parenting advice when I have not asked for it. I know it is because I am insecure, but I feel like the person "offering" the advice thinks I am a bad parent. I know that I need to care a little less about what people think, but it is hard when you are a first time mom and are really trying to do what is best for your family. But even as a first time mom, I still feel like I have pretty good common sense. Not only that, but if every first time parent truly could not handle raising a child, God would not have given them to us.
With all that being said, I have received some wonderful parenting advice from some really awesome Christian women that I respect and admire. They have been so good about not being forceful and instead, have helped me reach a conclusion by casually bringing advice up in conversations. I want to share this on my blog because I want my girls to have a record of the things that I think. Maybe this advice will help them with their children one day! Please understand that this is not me giving advice to anyone. I generally try to keep my mouth shut about what I think (unless someone asks) These are just some neat things that are currently helping me to be a better mom.
Sheila Butt is a Christian, a mom, a wife, an author, and a speaker (in recent years, she has thrown her hat into the political arena and is doing a great job of trying to keep God in America). Jeremy had the great opportunity to call her his 2nd mom when he was growing up. He was very good friends with her 3 boys: Stan, Cliff, and Kyle; and probably got them into some trouble (I have heard stories about toilet papering houses and beating each other up until someone yelled "uncle.") Anyway, I am glad to know Sheila and value her opinion tremendously. I sat in on one of her classes at Polishing the Pulpit last year and took away several things. The most treasured piece of advice she gave in her class was this: "When your child obeys you, tell them how beautiful obedience is to God." On a daily basis, I try to tell Ava how God thinks she is so pretty when she listens to me. (God sees the heart and not the outward appearance) The second thing that I will never forget, is an anecdote that she shared about consistency. When her 3 boys were little, she took them to the mall to play. During their trip, the boys became fascinated with a toy car in a toy store. She told the boys that they could choose between the toy and going out to eat on Sunday after worship. Of course, they chose the toy. On the way home, the boys began to fight about the toy. She told them to stop fighting several times. Finally, she said, "if I hear you fight one more time, I will take the toy and throw it out the window." There was silence for a while until another fight broke out. She held her hand back to the backseat. They boys passed up the toy car. She rolled her window down and chunked it out the window. She said she wanted to cry when she did it, but she knew that she had to do what she promised. WOW! What a powerful story. I learned a lot from her class!
Tammie Dye is a Christian, a wife, and a mom of 3 children. She and her husband were once missionaries in Papua New Guinea, and one of her daughters is now a missionary in Paraguay (with her husband) I had the pleasure of meeting Tammie a few weekends ago in Tennessee when Jeremy taught some classes on Family Ministry at the congregation where her husband is a minister. Even though I only met her for one weekend, I was inspired by her and her husband because of their faithfulness and diligence as parents. All 3 of their children are faithful members of the Lord's Church and have married faithful spouses. I talked with her a little bit about parenting and the struggles I will face when we have two babies in our home. She told me that someone had given her a very valuable piece of advice (her two oldest children are 11 months apart) for that very thing. She said that when she came home from the hospital, she made sure to spend time with her oldest child. She put her newborn down (because all a newborn does is sleep) and spent quality time with her oldest child who was wondering were mom was for the three days spent in the hospital. She reassured her oldest child that Mommy still loved her and even though a new baby had joined the family, Mom's love would never change.
I really needed that advice because I have been trying to figure out how to divide my time between both girls. I will be honest and say that my first instinct would be to hold my newborn all the time and let Jeremy take care of Ava. I want to be able to bond with Greta the same way that I was able to bond with Ava, but I know that most of my bonding with Ava took place when she was a little older and more alert. I realize after my discussion with Tammie, that I might hurt Ava in the process if I don't give her the attention she needs. Greta will not care if I am holding her. If she is anything like Ava, she will want to sleep all the time for those first few weeks! I am so glad that I had the chance to talk to Tammie. She really gave me some perspective on how to handle our family situation. I am glad that God placed her in my path to help me!
