Leah's Goals for Samuel and Joel

A Mother's Heart by Jean Fleming is SUCH a good book and I love the idea she gave to make goals for your children and to pray over them. Ed and I try to sit down and talk about our boys every 6 months or so. We discuss their strengths and weaknesses. We pick what things we want to encourage them on and what things need some work. Here are some things we're working on at our house:

1. Good Manners. This is for both boys and sort of an ongoing goal for our children. We started with simple "Please" and "Thank You" signs before they could even talk. Now that Joel is almost 2 and Samuel is 3 1/2, we've raised our expectations. We focus on table manners (sit in your seat, eat with utensils, ask to be excused, clear your plate), general manners (please, thank you, excuse me, cough/sneeze into your elbow), playtime manners (sharing, asking "may I have ___ please?", taking turns), and interaction manners (say hello, nice to meet you, have a nice day). I just read a great book about manners that I'm going to post for Book Review week next week.

2. Potty Training. This is actually for both boys too! Samuel potty trained when he was 2y2m, but he hasn't been independent on the potty. He still has to tell us that he has to go and we take him in and hold him up to the potty. He's totally inept at pulling his pants up/down and he was too short to get the pee into the toilet (and the stool made him TOO high up and he peed everywhere!). He's tall enough now to saddle up to the potty by himself and he definitely needs to learn independence on the pants thing. So we are working on this. He's getting better but definitely prefers us to help him. I just keep praising him for doing a good job and we don't punish for not doing it himself. We're just focusing on baby steps. As for Joel, I am prepping to potty train him next month. He will turn 2 March 18 and I want him out of diapers. I'm going to send Samuel to his grandparents and spend a few days potty training Joel. I did Potty Training in a Day with Samuel. You can read about our experience here. To prep for this day, I've been talking to Joel about the potty, having him watch Sammy go, and having him sit on the Baby Bjorn potty so he's not scared. I've also been working on getting him attached to Kitty (a stuffed animal) so that we can potty train Kitty just like I did with Bear for Samuel. I'm going to check the book out from the library to familiarize myself with the plan again.

3. Pre-Reading Skills. This is a goal for Samuel, but Joel is learning so much just by being around us while we work on this stuff. Samuel learned all of his letter names and sounds by watching LeapFrog Talking Letter Factory (I super highly recommend this video!). We started borrowing LeapFrog Talking Words Factory from the library next and Samuel learned about rhyming words. Now we practice rhyming words at home. Samuel is crazy good at this. He can think of long lists of rhyming words and comes up with some that even I didn't think of! :) My mom just bought this great See & Spell set from Melissa & Doug, and we use it to practice letters and making words. This is where we are working now. Samuel can do the rhymes aloud, but he hasn't transferred that to spelling out words with letters yet. So we practice and practice and try to make games out of it. And he has learned to sing his ABCs. Joel can sing from A to G. I'm also patiently waiting for Samuel to get an interest in writing his letters. He is not one to color/write/anything. Neither of my boys are that into those things. Samuel is still young and I don't want to force him into this at all. So I just patiently wait for him to start showing an interest in this area. Samuel won't start kindergarten for 2 1/2 more years, so there's no rush here. I also just read a good book about reading that I'll share next week.

4. Scripture Memory. This is our weakest goal area right now. We have the goal for Samuel, but I am not consistent in working on this with him. AWANA is great in the sense that it gives us a verse each week to learn. My weakness is that I usually wait until Tuesday to give Samuel the verse he needs for Wednesday night. We were really consistent in the beginning and Samuel still knows those verses. But he doesn't remember the later ones. It is great to have your child memorize Scripture because it can be really handy in discipline (and I mean discipline in the true sense of the word - both training and punishment). I can use the Scripture Samuel has hidden in his heart to both encourage/praise him and also when I am punishing him. I made a prompt question for each Scripture and I can use the prompt question to get him to tell me the verse. For example, I can say, "Samuel, who sins?" and Samuel will reply "All have sinned" (Romans 3:23). Or I can say, "Samuel, who is God?" and he will reply "God is love". He has since had some great AWANA verses and I wish I would have been more diligent in practising them. I guess this is a goal for both him and me!

That's about it for our house! Please ask questions if you have any.

Short Term Goals

My friend, Krista asked if I would post on how I plan short term goals for my kids. My name is Pam, but to introduce myself I would say I am a list maker, plan follower, routine driven, scheduled kind of gal! I am a stay at home mom to a 4 year old and 19 month old. I feel that God has called me to devote my days and time to instructing, raising, and loving my precious gifts. Although my children are young, I feel it is vital to work on all aspects of their learning everyday.

I became overwhelmed with how to use my days to “instruct” when our second child was born. Then the life of the “mommy journal” was born! It was hard to juggle two little ones and find time to “instruct” the older one throughout the day as I was getting accustomed to being a mommy of two! Then in my quiet time one day, I felt the Lord speak to me that instruction occurs in all aspects of life not just educationally (as I was driven to do from my prior teaching career). I also felt a burden that instruction was not only to occur for my older child but even for our newborn. So the “mommy journal” came to life with breaking down my kids lives into four keys aspects: their emotional wellbeing, physical wellbeing, spiritual wellbeing, and mental wellbeing. I pray over these four categories for both of our kids and make short term goals of things I would like to see happen over a three month span. Something that I read recently impacted me on what the true goal of parenting is, how I pray for my children, and plan for their future: " The goal of parenting is not for us to decide what we want our children to become and then ruthlessly teach, train, squeeze, badger, and cajole them into that mold. Instead, we must recognize that God has already designed them. God already has a mature person and a long-range purpose in mind. Our job is to see our children as God does--and to involve ourselves in God's plans for them. Like a sculptor, we must try to see the final form straining to break out of the uncut stone. This cannot be accomplished without prayer and planning." (A Mother's Heart by Jean Fleming)

So after pray and planning for each child, I think of things that I want to teach, activities we can do to help prepare them and ways to help them meet these goals. I also pray over each of these categories so that the Holy Spirit can guide me in how to best help instruct my kids in these areas.

Are they elaborate goals? NO! Do we achieve every goal? NO! Do we repeat goals from time to time? YES! Are my goals detailed, success driven items that I feel my kids must have conquered at their current age? NO! Do we steer away from them when we realize that the goal is not feasible and we need a little more time? YES!

My current goals for our kids are:
Katelyn (4 years):

Spiritual: Devotions on daily basis, Respect for others

Emotional: Confidence
Physical: Toe Walking/PT, Tying Shoes
Mental: Kindergarten readiness

Zachary (19 months):
Spiritual: Loving Others (sibling love), Singing bible songs
Emotional: Temper outbursts/frustration level
Physical: Toe Walking, Dressing/undressing, and interest in potty training
Mental: Verbally-expressing needs, Body parts/color/everyday object recognition

I encourage you as you think and plan short term goals for your children, pause for a moment and visualize each of your children. Bring them one at a time before God in prayer. Then follow His leading in how you plan short term goals. And see your children as God does and involve yourself in His plans for their lives.

Margaret's Goals for her kids

Honestly, I've never really sat down and written out short (or long term) goals for my kids. So, writing this post has been good for me. I am constantly evaluating both of them and praying about what I can work on character or personality wise to make them more like Jesus (I'm praying the same thing for myself too!), but I've never actually written it out. So, here goes...



Meredith (3.5 years)

Is quite independent. She will watch how I do things and take it upon herself to do whatever it is on her own. For example, I realized recently that she has been putting her own dirty clothes in the laundry basket. I never asked her to do this, she simply knew where they went and did it. I want to praise her more for things like this and foster her independence by giving her more grown up chores to do. I think she will love this! I also want to praise her for doing these things without me asking and doing them with a cheerful attitude! Sometimes if she doesn't want to do something I ask her, she responds by whining or pouting about it. I'm trying to reinforce that we need to do what is asked of us with a cheerful heart.

I also have a goal to work on "schooling" with her for a little while each morning. I havn't pushed school at all and while we plan on homeschooling, I really wanted to wait a while to start. But, she has started reading a bit on her own and begs to do crafts and school-type activities all the time. So, I've tried to be a bit more purposeful about coming up with structured things for her for every day of the week.

She is a talker! She litererally talks non-stop when she is awake! She loves language and is fascinated by new words and learning what things mean. But, I'm beginning to see that sometimes her talking can be a problem. For instance, I seriously cannot read one sentence in a book before she starts interrupting by pointing out things she notices and asking questions (many of which are usually answered by reading the story). I really value her curiosity, but I think I need to start teaching her to hold some of her questions and have some self-control to keep from interrupting others.

Jonathan (2)

Is such a joy to me! He loves to play hard, but will still snuggle sweetly with me when he's tired. I just can't get enough of him! He really loves his blanket (aka "nite-nite") and carries it around a lot. He will look for it if he is upset about something and needs comforting. I think I'm going to work on getting him to leave it in his room until naps and bedtime.

We have been working on potty training last week and he's doing great! After just one week, he only has one or two accidents per day, and it is usually because I haven't taken him to the bathroom soon enough. He still won't tell me he has to go, so I'll be working on getting him to understand that.

Character wise, I need to get him to stop biting! We've already disciplined pretty severly for this, but he gets so upset if he's overpowered by his big sister and resorts to biting. I can usually step in a referee if I see an argument that is getting heated, but if I'm not around he'll bite her. So, the biting and the arguing that entices it need working on (for both of them really).

That's about it! Do you have goals for your kids?