Friday, January 22, 2016

7 Things Your Kids Will Never Forget About You

My husband shared a great article with me that I wanted to link to here.

7 Things Your Kids Will Never Forget About You

In short, the article pointed out the following seven things that will stick with our kids. They were:

  1. The time you gave them real responsibility.
  2. The tone of your voice.
  3. The times you admitted fault and apologized.
  4. The times you gave them clear boundaries.
  5. The times you gave them a completely unexpected surprise. 
  6. The times you laughed until your stomachs hurt.
  7. The times you showed up.
In sticking with my theme of keeping it real, I wanted to share which two convicted me most. These are not to make me feel bad. They are simply to make me think. I have to work most on #2 and #6. 

My tone is, without a doubt, the thing I struggle with most as a mom. 

I am a dramatic person and the sighing and frustrations and raising my voice are at the forefront of my mom each and every day. In fact, I have an accountability partner in this one that I text with regularly to let her know how I am doing and vice versa.

The other thing I want to do more is ... laugh. My nature is simply not an out loud laughter. My husband will laugh easily and loudly. But I tend to laugh on the inside. I also find myself hesitating in getting my kids silly because calming them back down can be so difficult. But I want to laugh easier and harder with my kids.

What about you? You are lucky. You can even leave your comment anonymously!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is so beautiful...so sweet you are working on the tone of voice and know it...it opened up a thought to me about my feelings sometimes as a daughter w/ my mom -that she just may have been a more outwardly expressive person about nearly everything! And it maybe had less to do with me than I thought as a little one....maybe you can help your kids know that even as you're working on it..:) Wow tho -you are amazing lady even aware of it and caring about it and an accountability partner in it!! I admire you so much! The article made me think about the tone of my voice and the being present to my husband and a little humor going a long way...even more than with my kids....Re; Laughter -I'm with you -I'm more an inward laughing person...plus honestly I don't get all my husband and kids' humor cuz they have HIS genes so sometimes it's like 3 to 1 -and I don't quite get it! :) But the RIGHT person(s) can make me really laugh and bring out the silly -I think around family sometimes my high Dutch work ethic and sense of responsiblity kicks in hard and with friends it dissipates!....I'd say my friends think I'm very fun and love to laugh more than my immediate family does...fact i'm not sure they'd believe it! :) Just don't know that side of me :)....maybe I just felt too responsible and had so much to do -but could be they just haven't found the button in me that a few good friends do! :) I do know marriage is alot harder if we can't laugh together -those times it has disappeared were hard! I'm with you tho on the silliness -i love to see it but!!!.... -your hubby is like mine -the boy in him can get the whole gang all hyper and silly and then out of control ---but it would be good for me to go with the flow of it at least for the first 10 minutes or so I think, chill and enjoy!...very thought=provoking article as you can tell here! :) Would love to talk about it over a cup of tea dear one! Tante