Parenting is hard!

I know, it is one week shy of four years and you are wondering if I am just now figuring this out. Well-yes and no.

Sure taking care of three kids under the age of four has been hard. (But relativly easy compared to when I used to take care of six two year olds?!? By comparison my house most days seems calm.)

However, my eldest is about to be four and he is growing up. He can dress and undress himself, go to the bathoroom (most of the time,) speak in complete sentences, etc. He needs less of my physical attention than his siblings.

But I have a feeling the REAL parenting is about to begin. He is beginning to get his own mind, ask questions, and understand more complicated things. And I have to help him understand and make sense of the world and grow up to be a productive member of society? Help!

Did I mention that my job is going to be a lot harder than that of my parents given the things parents now have to deal with that they didn't then like, oh, say - the internet!

In walk the book I was looking at in the bookstore when my mom offered to buy me something for Mother's Day. Modern Parents, Vintage Values: Instilling Character in Today's Kids by Melissa Trevathan and Sissy Goff is a perfect starting point to uncover the issues up against parents these days and how to combat them. These two counslers speak across the country and run a Christian counseling house. They see these obstacles everday and have the knowledge to know how to give parents help to make their kids be the people God intended for them to be.

The issues: Technology, safety-think stranger danger, entitlement (the chapter begins with the girl who bought 2,000 dollars worth of clothes without asking but the mother brought her for the counsler to eb the bad guy cause she doesn't want to damage her self esteem), lack of respect, risky behavior such as drinking, and emotional issues like depression and stress.

Now for the vintage values: kindness, compassion, forgivness, gratitude, integretity, responsibility, patience, confidence, and manners. Yeah, do we know people who have these values anymore?

Do I (you) have these anymore? The book does give good insights into how to instill them into our kids, but one of the main ways is-you guessed it-modeling. They have to see us do it! How are we to teach them to our kids if we can't get them straight ourselves?

I think I have three of these down well. The other six I have been greatly improving on in the last few years. I feel this book will give me great ideas to instill them in my kids and remind myself what I am supposed to do at the same time.

(My husband and I talked about the book and what we thought our strengths and weaknesses were. As usual, where I am weak he is strong and vice versa. Marriage really is a balancing act...)