Cultivating Our Children

Rainy days make me want to ONE, bake and TWO, read.  I haven't really done either on this rainy day, but I guess you could count sifting through the email in my Gmail Inbox and checking out a few blog entries as reading.  Some pleasure reading through a novel was more what I had in mind though.

See Cookie Recipe Below

Anyway, one of my emails was one of Sally Clarkson's recent blog posts and it captured my attention.  [laughs] Just check out the title:  If you really love your children, turn off your computer, cell phone and tv and read!  I've read the articles in Parents magazine about the consequences of children watching TV at a young age.  I've even read Sally's thoughts in older posts about not having the TV babysit your kids and being intentional about reading more with them.  I've read it, I know it, and I agree.  But the reality is Leala has been tech savvy since probably about the time she turned 1.  I don't know whether to be embarrassed or proud of her ability to turn on a TV, turn on a DVD player and insert a DVD.  It wasn't until one day that she couldn't turn on the TV when she pressed the Power button that I discovered somewhat of a solution.  My husband must have recently installed our surround sound system and forgot to plug the power cord to the TV back into the outlet.  So now if we don't want her to watch anymore TV, we unplug it.  I would much rather have the TV and media players hidden behind the doors of an armoire, but that's not currently in our budget.  So we can only really limit her TV watching time by unplugging.  The other thing is I'm on the couch about 8 times a day nursing Adella and I don't have the freedom or ability to sit down with Leala during those times and encourage her to use her free time in more creative, interactive ways.  I would love to sit down with her and inspire her to play with her toys or to open a book, but when I'm stuck on the couch with her baby sister, having the TV on is the best way I've found to keep her in one place.  Left on her own, she usually ends up wandering somewhere in the house where I can't keep her from getting into trouble.  And "blanket time," as shared in the Duggar's book 20 and Counting!, only really works at least once a day (but is still an awesome training tool!).

Alright, so enough rambling about what I can't do (partially with the intent of getting good advice from other mothers or caretakers of children out there).  How about what I was inspired to do?  This blog entry from Sally coupled with the chapter I just read and studied, Gardener of Souls, from her book, The Mission of Motherhood, inspired me to ONE, start making it a daily routine to read a book with Leala, like the 2 times a day that she runs to her special spot on the couch to drink her warm milk, and TWO, to purchase Baby Colors by the photographer Rachael Hale.  In her book, Sally shared how she, "was always on the lookout for beautifully written and illustrated children's books that reflected moral excellence, family values, and a reverence for nature or God and that delighted the mind and heart," and when I was browsing online, trying to decide how to spend the last $8 of some birthday money I was given, the beautiful board book from Rachael Hale came to mind.  I remember seeing it in the book section of a store once and hadn't seen it again when I looked for it.  This book I think will be a great way to share my love for photography with my daughters and will maybe spark in them their own sense of creativity when they're older.  And hopefully it'll be the first one in a collection of picture books I'll be able to get from Rachael Hale for Leala and Adella in the future because browsing through her other books online, I've decided she's one of my favorite photographers.

I love this whole concept of "cultivating" things in our children from Sally's writings.  Looking up the definition to "cultivation" added more to the idea:

"cultivation, n 2. development, especially through education, training, etc.  3. culture or sophistication, especially social refinement."

And introducing our children to good books is just one of the ways we can cultivate them!  In closing, I really like this analogy from Sally:

"As a garden cannot flourish without a gardener, neither can a child reach his or her potential without someone committed to careful cultivation.  Just as a garden without a gardener will eventually go to seed and be covered over with weeds and debris, a child whose growth is unsupervised or left to chance will likely grow wild and undisciplined or stunted and unfruitful." 

{Sally Clarkson, The Mission of Motherhood, 142}

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Maple Syrup Cookies

Amish Friends Cookbook

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon milk

1 egg

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons shortening

1 cup maple syrup

3 cups flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 (8 oz.) package semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In small cup, dissolve baking soda in milk and set aside.  Cream egg, shortening, and syrup.  Add flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and baking soda mixture; blend well.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Drop by teaspoons onto greased cookie sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. 

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