Remember the relationship between you and your child as a baby?  You love them to bits and delight in their company and feel happy and blessed just to be their mother.  You'd give it a 10 out of 10, not even detracting any points for the unpleasant parts like waking at night and nappies.  You feel the honour it is to be this child's mother and are grateful for the opportunity to help him - feed him - comfort him.

 

You are a "joyful mother of children"  Psalms 113:9

 

This childhood you are living with your child includes happy unhurried hours, introducing her to the big, beautiful world and enjoying her responses.   You both love spending time together and try to eliminate those things that keep you busy and apart.

As the child grows, you enjoy the expansion of their little world while feeling a little sad and nostalgic over the passing of each phase.  While other friends and other teachers enter their lives, YOU are still the one.   -

 

What is your relationship with your child now? At this age?  Is it still 10 out of 10 or has it slipped? 

 

A mother who keeps the relationship with her children high does something differently.

 

If it has slipped, how do we fix it?  Loving attention and service to the child.  That thing you are trying to get them to do and they are resisting and the lack of progress is driving you crazy?  Shelve it for a while and concentrate on the loving attention and service. When you are trying to teach something and it is not working, you are sure you've given them every benefit of the doubt, they know what you want them to do but don't do it?  Back right off.  A strange mother principle is that when the heat is off, the child, wanting to please you, and having the pressure he doesn't understand, but feels, removed - the child suddenly and without fuss finds they can do it at last. 

Examples of this wonderful  change might be toilet training, bed wetting, sleeping through.  Teach them, coax them, train them, encourage and even reward with treats and if it still doesn't work, back off for a month or a few weeks.   Just sit back and watch hopefully and you are often pleasantly amazed.  At any rate, the problem is a small stage of their childhood and the frustration you feel over it must not be allowed to spill over into all areas, it must not affect your whole relationship.

 

"Be a guide, not a critic"

 
"Make her first relationship with you a truly beautiful one." Linda Eyre

You have 10 or 12 years of this part of childhood.  That is a short time.  Even with overlapping childhoods of brothers and sisters, this time is short and so valuable.  It can't be replaced or overwritten. The mothering done in those years prepares the child and you for the teenage years eg How well they obey you, if they respect you, the relationship between you, and the habits for guiding and receiving guidance that you have both developed, not to mention the progress you and the child have made in minimizing the child's negative character traits and maximising their good character traits. A child with 10 or 12 years of this kind of teaching will handle the teenage years better than the children whose parents are just in damage control mode.  So it is really a preparation to those years.

A preparation where every day has bits of fun and adventure, delight and good food.  Never underestimate the glow factor  of something yummy mum has made just for her children.

 

I have copied Lorriane's "sausage days".  Once or twice throughout the year she would do the usual morning rush, helping the children prepare for school - uniforms, lunches, homework.  She then loaded them into the car for the school run, drove to the school.... then right on past it.  She took them to the beach and they cooked sausages on the beach barbecues, played in the sand and giggled every time they thought of their mother's good trick and how lucky they were to have such a mother.  Such a childhood.

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-Lisa