Category Archives: Parenting & Family Life

Family Valentine Ideas

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I make my children breakfast in bed every Valentine’s day.  It’s a tradition that we all look forward to.  It is my Valentine to them.  Some times we have red heart pancakes and sometimes we have eggs with candy sprinkles and chocolate chips.  🙂  Try it.  Surprise them.

Relationship building is so important.  If you want your children to come to you and confide in you during life then you need to build an honest, thoughtful, loving relationship.  Nothing says, I love and accept you better than doing surprise service for someone, and nothing makes children feel more grown up and special than getting breakfast in bed.  I hope you have a happy Valentines Day. 

Other ideas are: Continue reading →

LDS Families – Making Home an MTC

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For years now our family has had one focus;to be the kind of family who lives each day with spiritual purpose.  We deliberately do all kinds of things like have daily devotionals and family council meetings, weekly PPIs.  A family mission statement isn’t  just a good idea to us, it is something we use to keep our family focused on progressing as a group toward the missions God has prepared for each of us.  We talk about everything and every feeling.  If we feel the Spirit leave our home every member of the family has been taught to bring it to the family’s attention and to pray and sing a song to invite it back into the home. 

If we are driving to the store and children start to argue, we stop, discuss, pray and sing until we feel the Spirit so that we can go out into the world carrying a feeling that will be different, warm, and inviting.  This is the way we live to keep the Spirit and to stay focused on our responsibility to spread goodness and light to the world. 

Each member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has been asked to be a missionary. Continue reading →

Children Arguing ~ How To Teach a Different Way

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“Waaaahaaaaa!” My five-year-old son Porter was screaming on the other side of the family room. He held on to a shoe belonging to Paije, his much older sister, as she tried to wrench it away from his grasp. I looked over just in time to see this but before I could say anything, Paije grabbed the first shoe away from Porter and reached for its twin, still attached to his foot.

“Give me the shoe, Porter!” Paije ordered as Porter let out another wail.

I quickly stepped in before someone got hurt again. “Paije, you need to stop touching Porter Continue reading →

Children Crying? -Don’t Overreact…Understand Instead!

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I was baking bread one day when I heard a commotion coming from downstairs. The children then came to tell me what was happening because they didn’t know where their friend was and had grown concerned. I  discovered that one of our darling little friends had broken a toy.

This little five year old girl had been playing with the toy when it accidentally dropped and broke. She was so worried about getting into trouble, she had run off and hidden herself. Continue reading →

Family Goals -The Best and The Worst

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      Each week our family has family meetings, or family councils.  We use this time to check up on the family; on how well we are maintaining the right spirit of the home, and on how well our family is using it’s system of family government. 

     During a recent family meeting we decided to discuss how our family did during the past year.  We each took turns recounting the three best things and the three worst things which happened to each person during the past year.  At first Continue reading →