"Christian" Parenting? ...Why You Don't Need Any More "Should"(s) in Your Life

Parenting is really, really hard sometimes. I feel like all of my pre-parenting experiences with kids, which generally convinced me that I was going to be great at this, were the child-raising equivalent of a Junior High track meet. It wasn't until I showed up at the real-life parenting Olympics that I realized how far off my self-assuredness had been.

One thing I keep stewing on lately, though, is how Jesus actually asks very little of me when it comes to raising my children, compared to the standard many other believers would hold me to, or even compared to the standard of many unbelieving parents or other unbelieving adults with an interest in child welfare. It seems like everyone has some sort of high-reaching expectation or standard regarding parenting, with varying focuses and levels of detail depending on where they are approaching it from, each with their own hot-button issue when it comes to children. Yet what Jesus asks and expects of me is really very simple: Love them. Love them the same way I am responsible to love any other believer or "neighbor" in my life.

repost/rewrite: poems

Saturday night, we were talking with some friends we've known for many years, and the conversation gradually turned to some gloomy topics; specifically, friends or family who died unexpectedly and the heartbreak and process of grieving. So, when a link to one of my old entries in my blog sidebar caught my eye this morning, I reread it and decide to repost because of its relevance to the topic we had discussed.

Life as Normal

14 years old, blonde ponytail, crisp-pleated cheerleading skirt
Sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere
with a brick main street and hideaways on the outskirts of town for illegal beer
Summer-dried grass crunches beneath my feet on the worn path home
Crunch to broken sidewalk to manicured lawn of the First Baptist Church to red dirt alleyway -- Almost home.
White Oldsmobile with a broken taillight resting heavily,
still
in the sloped driveway
Near the modest yellow sided house
with overgrown bushes and a large picture window.
Dad's home already?
A lag in her step, almost unnoticeable
A tightness in her chest that goes unseen
A shake of her head to clear it.
What time does the game start, again?
Life as normal in a sleepy small town.

I hated it before I loved it

I have this bad habit of hating music before I decide I love it. Well, not necessarily hating, but at least not seeing the appeal. Like the first week or two Heath had the new Mumford and Sons album, and I kept remarking on his new "country" music album. He finally got irritated enough that he demanded I never call it that again, but it wasn't until I listened to it on my own on a long drive that I realized I LOVED it. The same things happened earlier this year with Future of Forestry, and before that the Avett Brothers and before that the new Radiohead album. I suppose I should just realize by now that whatever new music he introduces me to that I intially shy away from will eventually become my favorite. Especially if he and DanM find it together; I'm almost guaranteed to eventually love it (Gomez and Young the Giant, to name a couple).

I don't know why I continue to be surprised throughout my life by music's ability to reach through our clouded thoughts and emotions and speak some truth to us, or to express what our heart is feeling that we weren't able to nail down until we heard it to music. But Thank God is does.

possible symptoms, or normal experience?

I gave a couple of examples in my last post of experiences or traits I have had that could possibly represent ADHD symptoms. There have been quite a few markers from various checklists or articles that I identify with in addition to the ones I already mentioned. The question for me, always, is whether I have difficulty with these issues on a level that would justify a clinical diagnosis. I just keep thinking, "These things seem to be hard for everyone I know!" But maybe they really aren't.

So here are some of them. Maybe you can judge by looking at your own experiences whether my experiences are normal, or really something more.

me and ADHD

Hey! It hasn't been a whole year since I last wrote! Whaddaya know!

So, since it is a fairly small circle of people who still check my blog for updates, I'm going to assume most of you who are reading know that I now have not just one, but two sons who have been diagnosed with ADHD. The thing about this situation which has me thinking and perhaps even obsessing, lately, is that if two siblings have ADHD, it is likely (maybe 60% or more likely; the sources I found didn't all agree on an exact number) that at least one of their parents has it. When we first had Ethan evaluated, and they asked who else in the family had it, we were just like...??? [insert blank expressions here] We tried thinking through all of our close relatives and what we knew of them, and we couldn't think of anyone who had experienced similar problems as Ethan in school. Yet, it was likely one of Ethan's near relatives had ADHD if he had it.

Then, we had Samuel evaluated, and it hit home for us that ADHD does NOT always look the same from person to person.