Teamwork

I think we are in need of some team building ideas for our family.  Does anyone have good ideas or good resources for encouraging teamwork in families?

A Normal Day

With kids around, even a normal day has very odd and funny moments.  Today, as Abigail and I were doing grammar, Josiah kept bugging me.  He finally had his head between my knees and I was squeezing his head, just to keep him occupied.  At one point he looked up at me and said, "nice butt".  Yep.  He's 4.

Later, I told the kids I needed 10 minutes of quiet.  Just 10 minutes to lay down, read a homeschooling magazine and have silence.  Within a couple of minutes, in comes Seth.  He cuddles up next to me and says, "Mom, during church they said that if we live with God we will have joy.  So why am I always unhappy?"  Sigh.  This is not a little conversation and it certainly isn't one I can read my magazine and give a "uh huh" kind of answer through.  So I put down my magazine and chatted with Seth.

Then there's Liza.  Yesterday I said, "aren't you being nice?"  And I meant that she was being nice.  She said, "Yes.  Actually no.  I was mean to Siah and to the Arnica."  (Arnica is a homeopath and she got into the homeopaths and ate some the other day.)

Abigail looked at me today and said, "Mom, I know what causes bruises."  I'm looked at her and said, "O.K.", thinking she's going to tell me how it's internal bleeding...  She said, "Falling out of a tree."  Very very funny.

So there you have it.  A normal day.  I'm sure Rebekah said something funny or profound in the last few days too, but my brain cells are dead tonight!

How Much Grace?

We have a child who struggles with being mean.  She hits, says mean things and can be downright cruel to her siblings.  We have struggled for years now to know exactly how to discipline and train this child for this kind of behavior.  We've tried numerous things and many many days it feels like we are failing.  Today, after she hit her brother, she was put in time out.  I was trying to be creative and called it "prison" and told her that in real life, hitting a person is something you can be put in jail for.  She was livid with me.  Understand, I did this not in anger, but in an attempt to fix a long standing problem.  I let her out of the room after about an hour, when her little sister needed a nap.  She promptly went downstairs to another room and locked herself in (including taking all the door keys in the room with her!).  A funny aside, she even had the nerve to call me to her, through the door, and tell me she needed matches to light a candle in her room.  FAT CHANCE. 

About an hour after locking herself in her room, she called to me again.  I went to her and she had a note in her hand.  I asked her if it was for me and she handed it to me.  This is what it said, "Mercy triumphs over judgment!!!  That is why scripture says:  'God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.' "

Woah.  What did THAT mean?  Since we had extra kids around at the time, I didn't get to talk to her about it until much later.  In the meantime, I obviously spent time thinking about what she meant.  I have given this child ample grace - too much some people think.  I haven't punished enough, haven't been consistent enough, haven't had big enough consequences.  I mean, obviously if I had done a better job she would not behave this way still, right?  Last year, while talking to Eric about all this and praying over this, we both felt convicted that she needed even more grace.  Today I found myself asking "how much grace is enough?  Can you give too much grace?"  Wow.  What a question!  Think about it!!!  How much grace do we want God to give us for our sin? 

Part of all this story is that this child feels her mistakes very strongly.  She agonizes over them, but what she shows everyone is anger.  Not remorse.  ANGER.  She apologizes with an angry tone of voice, she glares at people.  But I know that in her heart she hates what she's doing.  But as her mother, I am supposed to teach her that there is a consequence for what she's doing!!!  How?

I finally got to talk to her tonight.  She told me she wrote the note to encourage me.  And then she said, "you give me more grace and mercy than most people would."  And yet, I don't think I've shown her enough.

So, how do you temper grace, mercy and consequence?  How do you train up a child in the way she should go and extend grace in the midst of it?  How do you teach a child to be kind, loving and not to hit, say mean things and be cruel and yet extend grace?

We ended our conversation with me asking her to come up with some good ideas to figure out how to teach her to not do this.  We prayed together.  I told her that we are on her side - and this she needed to hear.  We hugged and all feels right for the moment.

Advice Request

Eric is pretty consistently putting in 12 hour days, which means he's not home until 7 many nights.  How do you get the "extras" done when this is the case?  Stuff like needing to take the oldest child (the only one old enough to babysit the others) out to purchase needed clothing?  We don't have family in town who can babysit, so that's out.  And what about home repairs?  Do you wait until your husband has a spare 2 hours on a weekend to fix broken things?  Pay someone else to do it?  Attempt to fix it yourself?  What about bills needing to be paid?  Eric handles all our finances and wants to do that, but more and more it's becoming an extra for him.

By the way, it's 10 minutes after 7 and he's still not home.  I need to run to a store 5 minutes from the house to pick up some boots, but I also need to take the eldest there to purchase jeans.  The store closes at 8.  Sigh.  And he just called.  He's just leaving work, so he won't be home until 7:45.  Double sigh.

Any good ideas?