I remember once listening to my brilliant older cousin (your husband, Botanyhead) debating with our atheist grandfather on the subject of abortion. Our grandfather (who was later saved, but that’s a different story) was adamant that we needed abortion to be “safe, legal, and easily available” because, among other things, the world is overpopulated. My cousin, tongue firmly in cheek, said with a big grin, “And the answer is, machine guns!”

In It’s All About the Money (and Greed, and Selfishness) my favorite Israeli blogger, the delightful Mrs. Anna T. of Domestic Felicity takes on overpopulation and the vast consumption inherent in the whole argument. She even fleshes out the machine gun idea. (And while you’re reading her great post, join me in being seriously impressed when you realize that English is this young woman’s third language.)

Every now and then, I read something so profound, so encouraging, so convicting that I just have to print it and keep it on my fridge for years. This is one of those “Wow” pieces, beautifully written, serious truth for the weary. Click on over and read What a Mother Must Sacrifice.

And after you do, Pluck.

Dear ladies, I am delighted to share our news with you that we are expecting our fourth child in early May. So far, I’m just a bit queasey (more and worse to come, if past pregnancies are any indication), and I’ve already started to gain weight (also normal for me–I get REALLY big).

You may be surprised that I’m announcing this so early. Why not wait until the chance of miscarriage is much lower? Well, I’ve always figured that I’d rather have people praying for me even if it means I have to tell them I lost the baby. (Anyway, if I did loose a baby, I’d probably want to blog about it!) If you get a chance today, please pray for our little one to develop normally, and most of all, to grow up to love and serve the Lord.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. James 1:17

It says in James 4:6 “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” So today I’m going to be humble and hope the Lord graciously blesses me with some great ideas through all of you. True confessions here. Are you ready for the horror?

My kids toys are not organized.

Oh, sure, I have them categorized in labeled bins, so if you happened to go into my basement on one of the three days per year that it was actually clean, and you could, you know, see the floor, you might be tempted to think that I don’t have such a problem with this. (Of course, if you’re a veteran mom, you might see through all my little labels and smile to yourself while you marvel at your great luck at arriving on one of the only three aforementioned days…)

BUT the fact is, that my toys are not functionally organized, and therefore, for the other 362 days out of the year (which sorta feels like always) they are a mess.

Over at Organized Everyday, the Organizing Mommy has written a brilliant post called, Organizing for the High-Brow Types. I hope you all go over and read it because, as I said, it’s brilliant. Anyway, in this post she gives a bit of a checklist for how you know when your “organizing bird” can fly off to a different part of your house:

1. Is the space used for it’s most effective CURRENT purpose? (these change all the time)

2. Are the items used MOST often in the MOST easily accessible space?

3. Are the items that are truly JUNK removed? disposed of?

4. Is it visually appealing to the eye? (Yes, I like beauty and artistic order in my home)

5. Is the space labeled/ marked for easy upkeep of the current system?

Sounds great. Sounds logical. I’m trying to apply it to my kids toy area, and suddenly I see why my current system does not work, but I don’t know how to fix it. I need some help. So, of course, I thought to myself, “Who better to ask for help than people who have mostly never even seen my house?” But seriously, I don’t really expect that any of my problems are all that new. I think most moms have faced something along these lines and come up with lots of solutions that would probably also work at my house, and I am so in need of creative inspiration.

So, will y’all brainstorm with me?

OK, so here’s my situation. My kids’ toys are in the basement. The idea is that they ALL stay in the basement unless they are being played with, and then they are supposed to be returned to the basement. (I can hear so much laughing right now. Yeah, I know, I’m totally unrealistic, and probably someone has a bridge to sell me in Brooklyn, too.) Since the kids don’t PLAY in the basement, we fail big time on Question 1. because the basement is not being used for the most effective current purpose. Why is this section of my basement a toy area? Well, it’s because we live in a VERY small house. All three kids share one bedroom, so there really isn’t a lot of room for toy storage in there. The other bedroom is a study/sewing room/guest room, so there REALLY isn’t a lot of room for toy storage in there, and that leaves the living room.

The living room is where the kids usually actually play, and that means that my decor tends towards the “tornado aftermath” theme, which can be a little unappealing, especially given the open floor plan that means that first thing when you open the front door you are greeted by a disturbing scene from a Kansas newspaper… er, my kids’ un-cleaned-up mess.

It doesn’t make much sense for the toys to be kept where they are not played with. I could insist that the children play in the basement. But there’s like nine square feet of floor space when it’s clean, and there’s no window down there, and besides, it’s hard to determine who had the Magnadoodle first if I wasn’t there as a witness.

SO, if you had my house, where would you keep the toys?

Here’s my next burning question, what would you keep the toys in? Currently, our toys are in Rubbermaid bins. This is bad. The children are not strong enough to open the bins/get the bins down from the shelves/unstack the bins to get to that inevitably bottommost bin they want. So they need help both to get the toys they want and to put their toys away. Since I am often doing trivial things like making dinner at clean up time, the toys often just get dumped on the basement floor.

Another problem with my bins is that they are organized by category (trains, dolls, crafts, etc.), and that means that in every bin the one or two favorite toys in each category are buried in amongst the non-favorite toys of the same category, leading to the constant refrain, “Mommy, where’s my blue propeller airplane?”

Both of my bin issues are failures of Question 2. because the things that are used most often are not remotely in the most accessible places. In fact, in my current system, NOTHING is really very accessible.

As for Question 3., the junk, I’m afraid we probably have a lot of junk, but I worry about throwing away treasures. How have you all managed that with your children?

The Organizing Mommy’s last two questions can probably wait until I get the first three headed in the right direction.

Thus ends my humble confession Anybody have any gracious ideas?

College is becoming a hotly debated issue in Christian homeschool circles. At long last, a lot of people are waking up to some of the dangers and drawbacks. When I was at Stanford a decade ago, the campus was rife with drugs, alcohol, pornography, homosexuality, hook-ups, co-ed bathrooms (including one house with co-ed gang showers), and university sponsored kiss-everyone-and-his-brother-fests (”Full Moon on the Quad”), to say nothing of all the totally sold out, anti-God professors just waiting to mold young minds. And let’s not forget that college costs thousands and thousands of dollars, that life there is often completely disconnected from the real world, and that your zippy degree in 16th century French poetry failed to prepare you for the job market, so now you’re considering going back to school and taking out more loans so you can get a better degree that will allow you to get a good enough job to pay off the loans from your first degree. Kind of makes some people wonder.

Some, though not always all, of these difficulties can be ameliorated by things like living at home, going to a Christian college, or doing what I did and choosing courses and situations VERY carefully. But the long list of cons has led a lot of families to question the college model entirely and abandon it as ungodly and inefficient preparation for a serious Christian adulthood.

But not going to college is not necessarily the only “holy” route any more than going to college is the only “responsible” route. Here’s a great post by Alex Harris of The Rebelution on why he and his twin brother, Brett, are going to college. It offers an excellent perspective on the late teen years and how they should fit in to a godly Christian life.

Here’s a wonderfully encouraging, practical and funny series by Amy Scott on life with three children under three years old. No matter how many kids you have, if you’re mothering in the trenches or even if you just know someone who is, you’ll love this one.

I met the young man who would eventually become my husband when I was still only fourteen years old. It took us a month to figure out that we wanted to get married, but we had to wait seven years to finally tie the knot. During all this time, I was “taken.” Consequently, I never went through the typical angst about finding the “One,” never navigated the waters of being deliberately attractive bait, and safely shunned most young men because I wasn’t available and didn’t want anyone to get hurt. It all worked fairly well except that I never learned how to be friends with my brothers in Christ. That was OK with me because at the time, I couldn’t see that male/female friendships ever worked out very well.

My experience was mostly from observation, but what I observed did not impress me. It always looked to me like male/female friendships were lopsided. One person wanted to be “friends,” the other hoped for much, much more. In some cases, romance won out, and the couple wound up married, a lovely friendship blossoming into a happy marriage. I remember one man telling my husband and me the story of how he won his bride, “I told her I’d be happy to teach her to play the guitar, as a ‘friend,’ but really from the moment I saw her, I was thinking, ‘I’d like her to be my wife.’”

But far more often, these lopsided friendships wound up breaking somebody’s heart, or at the very least creating fond hopes that were never fulfilled. I remember a dear friend in college, miserable because she was in love with a “friend” but he didn’t seem to be in love with her. She recounted various things he’d said and done (like inviting her to his parents house for a weekend) and asked me what it all meant. What could she do to make him feel more for her? I thought he never should have played so fast and loose with her heart in the first place. “Friendship” seemed like unchivalrous confusion.

But I’ve been reading some things that are making me question my conviction that it always needs be this way.

Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin have been doing a fascinating series on their blog about male/female friendships. The first installment was especially interesting to me.

Even in family-integrated churches, guys and girls often don’t know how to interact comfortably as brothers and sisters. We usually see this expressed in one of two ways: either flirting and posturing, or shying demurely away from any interaction with the other sex. (Blogger’s note: This is the part where I start blushing!) These two symptoms may seem opposites, but they both stem from the same root problem: a failure to think of the other as “[brothers or] sisters, with all purity” (1 Tim. 5:2).

In other words: thinking of the other sex chiefly as marriage material

Ah, so perhaps all male/female friendships are not doomed to be lopsided? Maybe there’s another way? I think it sounds plausible, but since I never did it, I’m not sure how to help my children learn to do it. They are still very, very young, but as our family interacts with other families, the question is always in the back of my mind: at what point do I need to train my children to be circumspect and guard their hearts? Right now, they’re running around playing with whomever happens to be in the other family we’re spending time with. But when does that need to change, and what does it need to change into? What kinds of friendships are appropriate between the sexes? This brother/sister thing sounds intriguing, but how would it really play out? Is it truly possible for young people to have interactions that aren’t bristling with attraction? What has been your experience and what are you teaching your children about this?

Recently, after thinking seriously enough about moving to get a Realtor to start showing us houses, we made the decision to stay in our three bedroom, 1,200 square foot home, with a half basement. We thought there’s no good reason a family of five can’t fit in three bedrooms, and we decided to make it work for a few more years, and (Lord willing) a couple more babies. The only thing holding us back was that we had too much stuff.

And thus began the sorting, purging, and reshuffling project that led to an epiphany: we cannot get any more toys. No more trains: my train bin is full. No more Duplos: my Duplo bin is full. No more dress up clothes: my dress up bin is full. No more trucks and tools: my truck and tool bin is full. No more dolls and purses: My doll and purse bin is full. DEFINITELY no more stuffed animals: All THREE stuffed animal bins are full. We do have room for a few more books, but only because we added another book shelf to take care of the books that were stacked on the floor, and if I get too many more books that we own, I won’t have any shelf space for library books, so it’ll be back to the floor for book storage.

The only problem with this is birthdays. The traditional American cake, ice cream, and presents birthday party results in, you guessed it, toys. If you figure three or four presents from the parents, a couple from each set of grandparents, and one from each family that you invite to your party, then you end up with ten to fifteen generously given, warmly received, fun, creative, space-eating toys. And if you have three children, then that’s thirty to forty-five new toys that have to be stored each year. And if you’re hoping to be blessed with two more children before you leave your already crowded, three bedroom, 1,200 square foot home, with a half basement, that number could go as high as seventy-five new toys seeking storage annually. Did I mention that my bins are full?

With our youngest about to turn one in a week and a half, we’re rethinking birthdays and how we celebrate them. For starters, the baby doesn’t need any more toys. She’s just as happy emptying out my kitchen cupboards as she would be playing with the latest and greatest from Fisher Price. But I want her to have a fun birthday. I want the family to have a chance to celebrate her and what a gift she is to us. I want a good picture to paste on the “First Birthday” page in the baby book (right next to the neatly lined space titled, “Guests and the Gifts they Brought”). And, while I’m at it, I want something to write in that neatly lined space. I don’t want our great-grandchildren to remember us as the mean parents whose bins were too full to let their grandmother have any birthday presents.

(Who started this birthday present thing anyway? What a commentary on our materialistic culture that we view birthdays as a chance to acquire. Did I mention that my bins are full?)

My husband had the great idea to do birthday trips instead of presents, giving our children interesting, fun, non-space-hungry experiences that would otherwise be a bit on the pricey side. I’m wondering what our soon-to-be-one-year-old might like to do. I’m also wondering what other people with small houses, full bins, and big hearts for children do for birthdays. Does anybody have any ideas for me?

Wow, ladies, for those of us who had an inkling that there was a cultural aspect to the isolation many woman feel staying home with babies, here’s an incredible breakdown of recent cultural shifts that puts it all in perspective.

Does anyone want to weigh in on this? Am I the only one who’s saying, “Ah ha!”?

If you missed the original discussion, you can find it here.

Ladies,

I’d very much like to hear your ideas on something.

I was talking to a woman who had read my post, Ideas of Home, (which was sparked by a conversation with a young mom who felt like a zombie after several hours with her baby) and this other woman shared with me that, in her view, the fact is that some people just find babies boring. She felt that babies don’t really do much besides eat, sleep, and fill their diapers, and they require so much care that even if you’re doing things to keep your mind active, in the end you might still feel like a zombie.

I have never felt this way, but I sincerely want to understand people who do, and I want to learn how to help them because I believe that feeling joyful at home with your baby ought to be a big part of “loving your children,” and is therefore something that I’m supposed to be able to teach younger women about in a few years when I qualify as an “older woman.”

So I have a few questions, and if anyone has anything to share, I’d love to hear it.

1. Have you ever felt this way? And if so, did anything help you, or did you just have to “get through” your children’s babyhoods?

2. Do you think that this is just a personality issue, or is enjoying a baby a skill that can be learned? If it’s a skill, how do we learn it? If it’s a personality issue, how can we live joyful, God-honoring, productive lives during the “zombie years?”

3. The Bible calls children blessings. How should women who don’t like babies, or who find them boring, or who feel unfulfilled caring for them view their little ones? Is the baby a blessing to come, a sort of an investment, or is the baby actually a blessing right now? And if the baby is a blessing right now, how can women who don’t have a baby addict’s personality enjoy that blessing?

4. Is there anything cultural going on here? Have we somehow lost sight of some crucial ideas about babies and about life in general and been left without the resources to get through the baby years?

Let me know what you think.

There is a question that ranks right up there with childbirth method, homeschooling, and whether or not you’ll let your children watch TV. Proponents of both sides promise you a happy, healthy child if you follow their advice, and a maladjusted, sickly child if you go with the other side. There’s been a lot of rhetoric spewed back and forth, along with condemnation, hurt feelings, and accusations. What am I talking about? The mother of all parenting questions: Are you going to feed your baby on a schedule (or “flexible routine”), or are you going to feed on demand (or “cue feed”)?

I used to find the debate frustrating and bewildering. I knew what I believed in my heart, but I was disturbed by so many other Christians who just as strongly believed something else. Then a couple of years ago, I stumbled across some information that finally helped me understand how people could have such enormously different experiences with feeding their babies.

Breastfeeding is a supply and demand process, and the way the “demand” is communicated to our bodies all depends on something near and dear to the hearts of countless women: storage space.

Think of it in terms of your kitchen counter. Imagine you and a friend are working in the kitchen serving up ice cream for a church party. You’re scooping out bowls of ice cream, and your friend is carrying the bowls to the hungry people. Well, imagine if every time you filled a bowl, it was instantly passed to someone, and maybe your friend was even standing there a moment, waiting for you while you scooped. You’d probably be working as fast as you could, dishing up ice cream at lightning speed. But what if your friend started walking around with a couple of bowls, and she couldn’t find anyone who needed any? You might notice that your filled bowls were starting to accumulate on the counter. In fact, you might be running out of space to put them, and by then, you certainly wouldn’t be feeling any pressure. You might look around, stretch, chat for a minute, etc., maybe even stop entirely, and have some ice cream yourself! Your “ice cream bowl production” slows to match the speed with which the bowls are removed from the counter.

It’s just the same with your breasts. It turns out that empty breasts “hurry” and make milk at a rate of about two ounces per hour, while full breasts slow way down and only make milk at a rate of 1/3 of an ounce per hour (and it’s a good thing they slow down production because otherwise we might explode). (Learn more here.) Put another way, empty breasts make six times as much milk in an hour as full breasts do. If your breasts are full, you have to empty them before you can make very much more milk. If healthy women are emptying their breasts regularly, they can have what is for all intents and purposes an unlimited supply (giving them the ability to nurse twins or even triplets).

Now, here’s where the storage space comes in. Imagine you’re back in the kitchen at your church party. How many bowls of ice cream are you going to fill before you give up on your friend and quit? It might depend on how much space you have on your counter. If you live in a farm house with acres of counter top spreading out before you, you might fill eight or ten more bowls before you decide to give up. But what if you live in a tiny newlywed apartment with barely enough space between the dish drainer and the coffee maker to cram in more than about two bowls? Are you going to fill ten? Not likely. You’ve got no place to put them.

Breasts are just the same. All women can make plenty of milk for their babies over a 24 hour period, but the amount that the breasts can hold without feeling uncomfortably full and needing to be emptied varies greatly. There is a 300% variation in milk storage capacity (counter top space) among women (Learn more here). We’ve all got a nice freezer, a Costco bag of plastic bowls, and a perfectly functional ice cream scoop, but how many bowls can sit on our counters before we stop filling them is not the same. If we don’t get the milk emptied out of our breasts, production will grind to a halt.

Now, think about something else. Chances are, all that “emptying” is going into your baby’s little tummy. That’s his food and drink for the day. So, that 300% variation also means something else. It means that when two babies nurse and take in almost all the milk each of their mothers has at any given time, the babies are actually getting different amounts of milk. Therefore, in order to take in exactly the same number of ounces of milk per day, two babies with different mommies are going to have to nurse two different numbers of times. It’s sort of like plate sizes at an all you can eat buffet. If your friend has a turkey platter for a plate, she’ll only need to go through the line once to get enough to fill her up. But if you have a salad plate, you’ll need to go through the line several times to get enough. And babies have different metabolic rates and activity levels, not to mention different sized little bodies! All these things have an effect on how many times they need to “go through the buffet line.”

OK, enter the schedule. Let’s say you buy a book that your friend said worked great for her, and the book says your baby should nurse every three hours or so, and that he shouldn’t need any more than that. You try your best to follow the book, but pretty soon, it appears that you’re not making enough milk. What happened? Storage space strikes again. Your breasts filled up, didn’t get emptied, and slowed production. If women have a 300% variation in milk storage capacity, then one schedule is not going to work for all of them.

This accounts for the wildly varying testimonies of different families trying to follow the same “book” schedules. I remember one father of a schedule fed baby who told me that the only problem he and his wife had was dealing with the jealousy of other parents when they heard how this dad’s baby slept through the night thanks to her wonderful schedule. But I have also read the words of other parents whose babies were on the exact same schedule who had very different experiences:

The reason why my baby was sleeping so long was her blood sugar was dropping so low she couldn’t wake up. She, in fact, was going into a coma. She may have had a pre-existing condition, but following Babywise (a scheduling book) reduced my milk supply and gave me a false picture of normal, healthy feeding and sleeping patterns, making her health problem truly dangerous. We almost lost our baby. –D.P.

After being admitted to the hospital, it took several specialists nearly 2 hours to insert an IV because his veins collapsed every time they inserted the needle due to his critical state of dehydration.

We can honestly say this was the hardest moment of our lives, knowing that our son was suffering and had been suffering for nearly three weeks because he had not been fed enough due to our foolish implementation of a feeding program taught by Prep (a scheduling program). –Jeremy, Lori & Son

We went to his 4-month appointment and he weighed in at 11 pounds, 6 ounces. He had lost nearly a pound in 2 months, where he should have gained at least 3.

I was horrified….

I still didn’t want to screw up my baby’s schedule. Mr. Ezzo (an author of scheduling books) promised me I’d have a demanding brat with “metabolic confusion” if I did. So I sadly sent my husband out for formula, and started pumping my milk to try and get my supply back up.

It didn’t work. Within a week I was feeding J. 75% formula. –K.M.

You can find links to more schedule feeding testimonies here. Of course, these are rather extreme cases, but they demonstrate graphically one end of the schedule response spectrum. And because there is such a spectrum, following a one size fits all schedule, no matter how well it worked for your friend, does involve risk. You have no idea whether your breasts will be able to store enough milk to continue to produce when feedings are spaced according to the schedule. You have no idea whether your baby will be like the daughter of the schedule feeding dad I knew or like one of the babies in the tragic stories I just quoted.

So, if your baby’s nursing needs can’t be predicted by an external schedule, how do you figure out when your baby needs to eat? Well, pretty much the same way you figure out when your older children need to eat. Not when they get so hungry that they’re crying (crying is actually a late indicator of hunger, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement, Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk) but long before then, when they either wake up, or when they say politely, “I’m hungry, Mommy, may I have a snack, please?” How does a baby who can’t talk tell you politely that he’s hungry? By making nursing cues, any kind of “increased alertness or activity, mouthing, or rooting,” according to the AAP, what we call at our house a “nursey face” –smacking his lips, opening his mouth, turning towards you, sucking on a fist or your shoulder or cheek. My current baby has always tried to throw herself down into nursing position when she wanted to nurse, taking a sudden sideways dive toward “lunch.”

Let your baby’s behavior tell you when it’s time to hit the buffet line, and keep that ice cream scoop going by keeping your counter tops clear.

The other day, as I was heading to the bathroom to get into the shower, my two and a half year old said, “Mom, I don’t want you to get in the shower. Because when you in the shower, I don’t have . . . I don’t have you.”

Socialization. It’s one of the most common arguments against homeschooling. In fact, when I tell people that I’m a homeschool graduate, they almost never ask me if I thought I had a good education, or if I felt prepared for adulthood. No, the question I nearly always get is, “What did you do about socialization?” For most of my life, I have said things like, “Actually, I had more friends when I was homeschooled than I did when I was in public school.” But this week, I had an experience that made me realize that true socialization is a lot more than having other kids to play with. True socialization is gaining the ability to behave socially (and therefore, not anti-socially); it’s mastering the skill of getting along with people.

With my husband out of town on business, I decided to console my children (and myself) with a trip to the local children’s museum, figuring that we’d pretty much have the place to ourselves on a Thursday morning, a welcome change after enduring Saturday crowds on our previous visits.

My first clue that I had made a miscalculation came as we entered the front door and saw giant bins marked with the names of local schools and the word, “lunches.”

“Hmm,” I thought, “there must be some school groups here today. I guess it won’t be as empty as I’d thought.”

It turned out to be just as crowded as on the weekends, only this time, instead of being crowded with families, it was only children, everywhere. Of course, there were a few teachers and volunteer parents, but they were milling around, trying to watch everyone, and therefore not really watching anyone very carefully.

It was chaotic, and several of the children were rather aggressive. We tried to visit the climb-in ambulance, but my two-year-old was nearly knocked down by a couple of gleeful, oblivious, big boys jumping out of it. Everywhere we went, children were running around, some of them getting right into whatever we were doing with seemingly no concept of waiting their turn, others abandoning whatever they were doing and wandering off the minute we approached, looking a little shell-shocked and beaten up. I got the impression that maybe they didn’t realize that I had every intention of making my children wait their turn.

We spent ages waiting in “line” (or perhaps “blob” is a better word) for a favorite experiment, and as we waited, I watched the interactions. First of all, the child who was using it (over, and over, and over) seemed completely unaware of how long she was taking or of how many children were waiting for a turn. Second, hoards of other children kept sidling up, trying to join in when it wasn’t their turn. They were greeted with shoves and dirty looks, which seemed to me to have a touch of pitiful desperation. My children were getting bored standing and waiting, but I explained to them that we had to wait for all the children who had gotten there ahead of us to try the experiment, and that then it would be our turn.

That’s when my daughter asked a profound question, “How do you know that’s how it works?” How do I know? How do I know that that is the way polite society functions? Where was I socialized to understand “first come first served,” “wait your turn,” etc.? And, for that matter, what is the best way to learn these things?

Many people assume that by constant interaction with lots of peers, children will pick up on the nuances of life, like not knocking down toddlers, and not cutting in “blob.” This is all part of the important skill of getting along with people, of being well “socialized,” but as I watched the mobs of kids bouncing around, vying for chances at the exhibits, and getting very little guidance about how to actually treat one another, I started thinking about another kind of social interaction: driving.

Just as we have social rules about not knocking into people, waiting your turn, staying in line, etc. for everyday life, we also have socially agreed upon rules for those exact things when it comes to driving. But with driving, we have a significantly different approach to learning those rules. I began to wonder what the roads would be like if we expected new drivers to learn to behave on the road the same way we seem to expect children to learn how to behave in school groups.

What if we put a whole bunch of people who’ve never driven before in cars in a big parking lot, and just let them drive? Would they eventually figure out how to behave at a four-way stop or how to merge with traffic? Or would we have exactly what I saw at the museum, a few aggressive, gleeful drivers, knocking into others, a few oblivious people doing their own thing, not noticing the effect it had on the others, and maybe a few self-preservationists, hiding off in the corners, feeling nervous, and not really getting anywhere?

You don’t learn things as complex as the rules of the road or the rules of etiquette by bumbling around with other people who also don’t know what to do. You learn by having someone with you telling you, “OK, this is what we do in this situation,” someone like the licensed adult who’s supposed to be sitting next to you when you have your learner’s permit.

When I got my permit, my dad took me to a nearly deserted parking lot, and sat beside me talking me through my first jerky attempts. Later, we moved on to driving on back roads with very few other drivers and Dad beside me all the time. Pretty soon, I was driving everywhere, but always with my mom or dad right next to me, coaching, until at last, I passed a test, and then I was off and driving on my own.

Doesn’t it make a lot more sense to approach socialization the same way: starting small with constant supervision and coaching, gradually adding more and more interactions, but keeping children right with their “licensed adult” parents, until they truly know how to behave? This is Dicipleship Parenting applied to socialization, and it makes the whole question of how children can be socialized without classroom time seem a lot less logical.

Of, course, you don’t become well socialized simply by being homeschooled. Just as you can’t learn to drive if you never get in the driver’s seat, children will never be socially savvy if they’re never around other people. The key is the coaching. Our children need lots of chances to interact with others, but slowly, step by step, back roads before interstates, and always with help.

The museum is a very different place on Saturdays. It’s crowded, but you never have to wait very long for an experiment because the socially adept parents see you standing there and help their children take a short turn, “so the other kids can try, too.” Rowdy children are corralled, collisions apologized for, and polite conversation skills practiced. “Say goodbye to the little girl. We’re going up to the next floor now.” “Say, ‘thank you.’ That boy just got down so you could have a turn.” This is the kind of socialization that’s going to help our children get places in life. And it’s virtually impossible to give it to them in a classroom environment.

As we walked away from the museum after our school group experience, my daughter said to me, “Why didn’t all those kids have their parents with them?” I couldn’t have asked a better question myself.

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Matthew 7: 5

Children can be very sinful. They can be selfish, disobedient, disrespectful, quarrelsome, grumpy, lazy, whiny. As my father-in-law likes to say, “Cute little unregenerate sinners, aren’t they?” And my job, as a mother, is to correct and discipline, disciple and train, until some day, by the Lord’s grace, they manage to behave like civilized adults. It’s like constantly taking specks of dirt out of their eyes, clearing away the thing that’s hurting them, that keeps them focused inward, and freeing my children to stop the tears that blur their view of life around them, so they can learn to respond wisely, and hopefully, some day work at changing their own corner of our messed-up world.

I have a problem, though. Just as I’m coming over to get that bit of dirt from my child’s eye, WHACK! I bash them in the head with that stupid beam I have sticking out of my own eye, that beam that keeps me from getting close enough to reach my child, that beam that won’t let me see anything, let alone the best way to help get the speck out. What am I talking about?

Anger.

My children’s sin irritates me, and I get mad. Let’s say my dear daughter and son are bickering over a toy they both want. I haven’t been doing a careful enough job of keeping them close to me and watching them, so let’s say I don’t catch it at first. Lost in my own thoughts, floating along in my daydreams, I’m a hundred miles away, planning meaningful and challenging homeschool projects, or trying to mentally compose a sweet e-mail that I hope to be typing out at computer time later, or maybe I’m…

“Aaaah!!! NO! That’s MINE!”

The first thing I feel is startled, then frustrated. I’ve been disturbed. There are unpleasant noises in my haven. The children are still yelling, and now I feel angry.

“Alright, you two,” I yell in exasperation, “STOP YELLING, NOW!!!”

Um…right.

The Bible is pretty clear about anger. It’s sin. We’re supposed to get rid of it, not indulge in it. And it doesn’t matter if Johnny did just run away with Suzy’s toy for the ninth time today, or if Suzy’s now screaming at Johnny and ruining Mommy’s peace and tranquility. Anger is still sin.

Psalm 37:8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

Proverbs 16:32 He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

Proverbs 21:24 Proud and haughty scorner is his name, who dealeth in proud wrath.

Ecclesiastes 7:9 Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.

Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:

Colossians 3:8 But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

James 1:20 For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

Anger is terrible because it drives people away. It frightens our children. It makes them instantly defensive. A child who needs to be lovingly corrected and made to see his sin, even punished for his sin, is not going to respond well if he’s being sinned against in the process. He won’t feel our love or believe in our motives for correcting him. He may leap to action, startled and scared, but in the end his heart will be harder, not more tender. He’ll feel bitterness and rebellion, and want to get away from us because the relationship has been broken. Getting angry at children is really just emotional bullying. They have to do what we say because we’re big and bad, unstable and dangerous. In the process, we lose their hearts.

We also infect our children with our own angry disease. Anger is like a virus. It grows and grows, making copies of itself until the cell it infected explodes, spewing the deadly perversion all over neighboring cells until they, too, are left ruined and tattered, while the disease continues to spread. Consider these verses, which are especially convicting to me as a mother because I want a peaceful, happy home.

Pro 15:1 A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.

Proverbs 22:24-25 Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.

Proverbs 29:22 An angry man stirreth up strife, and a furious man aboundeth in transgression.

When I’m an angry, grumpy mommy, guess what happens? I stir up strife. My children learn my ways. My anger begets more anger. I hear my children yelling at each other, but they’re quoting me! Yikes! By my own bad attempts at dealing with the sin in my house, I’ve actually increased the net amount of sin. How’s that for failure?

But, you might ask, what about “righteous” anger? Well, personally, I can’t see from Scripture that anyone is truly capable of righteous anger except God. (Dr. S. M. Davis has an excellent sermon about this that you can get here.) But let’s assume for a moment that righteous anger is possible for humans. If I’m really honest with myself, I’ll have to admit that I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced it, certainly not when I’m yelling at my children because they disturbed my peace, or messed up my plans, or broke my priceless keepsake. When I’m angry at my children, it’s usually because I’m being selfish. If I’m genuinely grieved over their sin, if I truly want to help them, I do it calmly. I may have to discipline them over and over. I may have to explain, and correct, and memorize verses with them, and pray for them, and then discipline some more, but I do it cheerfully. There’s no emotional manipulation, no whining about whyyyyy my child has done this agaaaaaain, no irritation, and no yelling.

If I really want to help my children, my goal will be changing their hearts not just changing their behavior so it doesn’t irritate me. And their hearts will never be open to me if I’m busily terrifying my children with my own sin. To get those dirty sin specks out of my children’s eyes, I’ve got to get to get the beam of anger out of my own.

Shortly after I began my own journey of breastfeeding, people started sharing with me stories of women, either themselves or friends, who “couldn’t” breastfeed because they didn’t “have enough milk.” At first I simply joined in the sorrow and horror, thinking this or that poor woman’s inability was an unfortunate fluke. But as time went on, and I heard more and more of these stories, I began to see some common threads. I also realized that it was more of an epidemic than a few flukes. If you’re a breastfeeding mother and have just discovered that your baby isn’t getting enough, PLEASE be encouraged. Don’t give up. Get help now.

In my experience, low milk supply is an extremely common reason for women’s giving up nursing. Despite the recent resurgence of support for breastfeeding, we still live in a culture that has been grossly affected by bottlefeeding ideas, and high on that list of ideas is the notion that many women aren’t able to produce enough milk for their babies. The belief that so many women fundamentally can’t breastfeed becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as women who are faced with challenges just assume that they are one of these poor mommies who “can’t” and throw in the towel, when in reality, they could have been entirely successful if they had gotten help.

Women are willing to give up on their breasts extremely easily, far more easily than they would give up on other body parts like, say, their teeth. We would all find it sadly ridiculous for someone to say, “Wow, my teeth are full of cavities. I guess I’m not meant to use my teeth. I’d better have a feeding tube put in so I can bypass chewing.” Most of us would say, “Why are you giving up? Why don’t you go to the dentist and find out what’s wrong?” We should apply the same logic to our breasts. They are body parts, and like any other body part, if they aren’t doing their job, something’s wrong. For your baby’s sake (and your own), find out what the problem is.

It would really be very surprising if women’s bodies were as dysfunctional as they appear to be in this day and age. Think about it. Before formula, if a mother couldn’t produce enough milk, her baby died. Don’t you think the Lord would have designed a system that would work a lot more often than the one we seem to have? He would have. And He did. True, we live in a fallen world. And true, there actually are a few women with deformed breasts who really can’t produce enough milk. But they are very, very few and far between. (If your breasts look remotely normal, you probably aren’t one of them.) For 99.9% of women, breastfeeding challenges are not insurmountable. Don’t give up. Get help now.

A major issue is that it is most often the baby’s doctor who first recognizes that there’s a problem. (Praise the Lord for well-baby checks!) But unfortunately, the doctor equally often does something extremely unhelpful. After seeing that the baby is not getting enough, he immediately recommends formula. Why is this so unhelpful? Well, quite simply, breastfeeding is a supply and demand process. If your baby is getting formula, his demand for breastmilk will go down, and therefore, unless you are undertaking serious measures to prevent it, your supply will go down even further. What usually happens next is that women give up entirely. Supplementation, unless carefully managed, is the absolute worst thing you can to for low milk supply. Sadly, an awful lot of women assume that since a doctor told them to supplement, there must really be no other option.

You may be shocked to learn that your baby’s doctor is most likely not an expert on breastfeeding. (See this article for more information.) A pediatrician is an expert on childhood diseases, and most importantly for you right now, on infant wellness and proper growth and development, so you should absolutely take the news seriously that your baby is in trouble. However, a pediatrician is rarely in a position to tell you what to do about your low milk supply. Pediatricians are not specialists in breastfeeding. In fact they receive very little training in medical school on this topic. Some may have educated themselves, of course, but you cannot assume that just because the person is a doctor that he is qualified to diagnose and treat your milk supply problem. Indeed, pediatricians rarely try to treat low milk supply. Instead, they usually just give the common advice: “Supplement with formula.” Or even, “Switch to formula entirely.” This is not a treatment. It’s a bypass.

Now it may be the case that problems have gone unchecked for so long that by now you are producing almost no milk at all, and that your baby is truly starving to death. In that case, of course, you’re going to have to supplement. In fact, even if things are a lot less grim, you still might have to supplement some. But that is why it is imperative that you get the help you need to manage the supplementation properly so that you do not lose your milk supply completely, and so that you have a chance to build it back up again. I do not know your situation and cannot presume to tell you what the best treatment is in your unique circumstance. However, there are people who can tell you what to do. Don’t give up. Get help now.

Your first step should be to contact La Leche League . This organization is one of the world’s foremost authorities on breastfeeding, and offers support free of charge. The leaders you contact are mothers who have undergone extensive training (much, much more than the average pediatrician). They will be able to tell you if you can tackle the problem on your own with their help, or if things are so grave that you need to see a professional lactation consultant. A professional lactation consultant is someone with the letters “IBCLC” after her name. That stands for International Board Certified Lactation Consultant. Just as you would be leery of a “doctor” who was not an M.D., you should be leery of “lactation consultants” who are not “IBCLC.” The world is, unfortunately, full of them. There are a lot of “credentials” that you can get after attending a very short (as in one week) course. These women may not have the expertise you need. Find someone qualified to help you.

Why am I encouraging you to fight so hard to protect your milk supply? Formula is not good for your baby. It lowers his immune system. It causes his gut to stop functioning normally, making him prone to allergies. It even lowers his IQ and raises his risk of developing certain cancers, high cholesterol, obesity; and of dying of SIDS. You can learn more about all this here. Switching from breastmilk to formula is the equivalent of switching from fresh, organic produce, prepared by a gourmet chef to eating all meals at McDonald’s and popping a multivitamin. Formula is a processed food based either on highly allergenic cows’ milk or equally allergenic soy, with nutrients added in to mimic breastmilk. Problem is, we don’t even know all the good things in breastmilk. We’re discovering more and more all the time. So how could we possibly get all the necessary nutrients into a man made formula? Further, there are living cells in breast milk that we know benefit the baby’s immune system that we have no hope of getting into canned or powdered formulas. Formula use should only be temporary and only a last resort. Make a commitment to your baby that you will provide him with the best nutrition possible. Don’t give up. Get help now.

Breastfeeding has benefits for you, too. Every 12 months you breastfeed, your breast cancer risk is reduced by 4.3%. (Learn more here.) Breastfeeding also reduces your risk of ovarian cancer, lowers your stress level, increases your bone density, and helps you lose weight. (Learn more here). Make a commitment to yourself, too, to do what’s best for your own health.

Now if you lost your milk supply long ago with a previous baby, please don’t read this and feel guilty. As mothers, we all do the best we can with the information we have at the time. My purpose in writing this is not to make you feel guilty about the past, only resolved about the future.

Don’t take dire pronouncements lying down. Take your baby’s doctor seriously. Believe that your baby is in trouble. But don’t just supplement. Find out what’s wrong. For your baby’s sake, for your own sake: Don’t give up. Get help now.

Note: This post is not to be considered a substitute for the professional judgment of a medical doctor or International Board Certified Lactation Consultant.

Society places many expectations on us as mothers to make time for ourselves, for our own interests, pursuits, and leisure. Popular psychology calls it, “Me Time,” and there are many slick prophets of doom out there warning of Mommy burnout if we don’t make sure we take time out for ourselves. Most Christian women realize that the Lord can get them through if a sick child gets in the way of Mom’s making it out to coffee with friends. But there is a milder form that some Christians proclaim, and that has been spiritualized in such a way as to make me, at least, feel guilty. We are told that our priorities go something like this: God first, our husbands second, our children third, and on down the line. Since God and our husbands both come before our children, the logic goes, it’s crucial to find times when our children cannot be allowed to interrupt our times of personal refreshing with God or marital refreshing with our husbands. Otherwise, we are admonished, we will fall apart as women of God, our marriages will disintegrate, and we will not be able to raise our children well. The problem is that children do not always conform to our schedules. We can’t schedule squabbles or dirty diapers, the agony of teething, a cut lip, or a bad dream. Even as we strive to make time for the seemingly most important priorities of the Lord and our husbands, our children’s needs can and will crop up and interrupt us just when we think we need the time the most. And then how should we respond? It’s easy to feel like you’re having to “choose” between two priorities. Since few of us would really leave our children standing there bleeding, priority number three tends to win out, often leading to frustration and even worry over whether our “top priority” needs can safely be put on hold, or if we’re sabotaging our chances at a godly home if we don’t somehow find a way to put our children off until later.

A major battleground for me on this issue was the matter of “quiet times,” which at times have seemed to be the foundation of modern Christianity, judging by the way some people talk. I’m sure you’ve all heard the guidelines: first thing in the morning (preferably at the crack of dawn), in absolute solitude, you commit your day to the Lord in prayer and intercede for your family, friends, loved ones, various missionaries, the nation, and the world. And then you’re supposed to spend a good chunk of time reading God’s Word, journaling various insights, doing word searches with your concordance, consulting commentaries here and there. And then, when you’re done, you are guaranteed a better, more smoothly running, and God-honoring day. It sounds really heavenly.

Right after my second child was born, though, as heavenly as it sounded, in reality it seemed completely impossible. I had to rush in the mornings just to get dressed before he needed to nurse, and then my oldest needed help with her clothes, and we both needed breakfast, and the laundry had to be started or it wouldn’t be done in time for me to finish folding it before it was time to make dinner. It was the middle of the morning before I could sit down for devotions, and then it wasn’t a private, personal encounter with the Lord, it was trying to manage a two-year-old and an infant while I prayed and read a couple of chapters out loud and tried to think of ways to apply them to my two-year-old’s life. And still, every Bible study book I read was hounding me on the importance of a personal quiet time first thing in the morning. So I felt guilty, guilty, guilty.

Finally, as my baby got older and our schedule started to change, I stared being able to get up early enough to have a few minutes between getting dressed and waking him up for breakfast. Ah, finally, I was going to have a quiet time! The first morning it was sweet indeed, and I did feel better as I began the day. The next morning, though, just as I began reading my Bible, who should come pitter patting down the hall but my precious, little daughter, crying because she had not been able to find me. Inside I was screaming. I was so frustrated. Why couldn’t God give me a little uninterrupted time with Himself? How could I possibly be a patient mommy all day if I didn’t have my quiet time?! I pulled my daughter up onto my lap, praying miserably, begging to know what God was doing. She asked me what I had been doing. I explained that I was having my devotions. She wanted to know what I was reading and asked me to read it out loud to her, and as I read, she asked me questions, and we got to talk about the passage.

It was then that I came to the heretical conclusion that I do not have to have a private, personal quiet time every day first thing in the morning. Nowhere is this directly commanded in Scripture, and if I had hung on tenaciously and excluded my daughter from “my time” with the Lord, I would have missed this opportunity to share the Lord with her.

Serving God as a mother is about putting myself aside. It’s about sublimating my own needs, even my needs for private time with my husband or the Lord on some pre-determined schedule I’ve put in place. I’m not saying that we should never have time alone with God or our husbands, only that we need to be willing to put our own needs on hold if the Lord has some other ministry in mind for us at that moment.

One of the principles I’ve taken much to heart is that we as parents should model our behavior on that of Christ. And Jesus never put His need for time alone with the Father ahead of His service to those to whom the Father had sent Him to minister. In Matthew 14 we read, starting at verse 13 (read 13 and 14). Jesus has just heard of the death of his cousin, the one who had baptized Him, the one who seemed to come the closest to understanding Who He was and what He had come to do. If anybody was deserving of alone time with God to pray and sort through His feelings, it was Jesus. But what actually happened? The multitudes found Him. Did He send them away because this was “His time”? No, it says that “he was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.” Instead of the alone time he had planned, he wound up ministering. His disciples seemed to think a little ministry was ok, but hoped to get rid of the crowd when it got late, but Jesus went the extra mile and miraculously fed the multitudes before he finally got a chance to pray alone. As Matthew 20:28 says, “Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many.”

And God asks nothing less of us. Mark 8:34 says, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” We should not worry that we will shrivel up and die if we make ourselves available for whatever the Lord sends our way rather than holding on tenaciously to “our time.” Reading on to the next verse we get a precious promise, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”And as Proverbs 11:24-25 says, “There is that scattereth and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.” And I think that Proverbs 19:17 also may apply “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.” The Lord will meet our true needs. When we have pity on our children and sacrifice ourselves the Lord will pay us again. He will water us, make our souls fat, and enable us to find life itself.

 Editor’s Note: After posting this, a friend of mine pointed out that some mothers with colicky babies can become so stressed that they are nearing their breaking point, and must get away from the situation to regroup. This is important. If you are afraid that you are going to hurt one of your children, it’s time for a breather. This is not “me time.” It’s “protecting your children time.” Definitely talk to your husband and get some help in this situation.

On this earth, our human relationships reflect spiritual relationships and can serve to teach us many things about our relationship with God. For most of us, the first, most fundamental relationship is that of children relating to our parents. Time and time again in Scripture, God describes himself as our Father, and we gain much of our understanding about Who He is based on how we have interacted with our human parents. And so one thing that has become foundational to my husband and me is that we behave toward our children in such a way as to teach them experientially from the moment of their births things that are true about God, things that will help, rather than hinder their relationships with Him, because the ultimate goal of parenting should not be independent children, but children who transfer their dependence on their parents to dependence on God. It is out of that desire that we have sought, in our very fallible way, to model our parenting of our children after the Lord’s fathering of His children.

One of the most basic ways this has been played out practically is in seeking to always be available to our children. This is a somewhat revolutionary thought and one that severely goes against our independence-loving culture. All around I hear moms talking about how much they want to get away from their children. They can’t wait for school to start so they can get something done. They need “me time” so they don’t go crazy. And they need babysitters for everything, babysitters during Bible study and church, babysitters so they can hang out with other couples, and babysitters for clubs and “Mom’s Day Out;” I even had a lady suggest to me that I should have a mother’s helper come in so I could do my laundry. It was quite a revelation to me the day I asked myself, is this the way God treats us? I came up with a resounding, “NO!” Consider the following verses, which are just the tip of the iceberg:

Deu 31:6 Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

Heb 13:5b I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

Psa 55:16,17 As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.

Psa 34:15 The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.

Mat 28:20b and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

We have come to the conclusion that just as the Lord is always with us, we should seek to be with our children as much as we possibly can to help foster in them the kind of trust that they will eventually transfer to the Lord. But the Lord doesn’t stay with us just to comfort and help us, He is discipling us, chastening us, teaching us through His Word and through carefully chosen life experiences, all for the purpose of conforming us to the image of His Son. So, too, we believe, should we as human parents have as our purpose discipling our children toward Christ-likeness. And, interestingly enough, there’s a direct command for parents that seems to me to illustrate this principle.

Deu 6:6,7 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

The picture here is one of discipleship, it’s one of parents taking their children everywhere with them. It’s a system in which no teachable moment is ever missed. Not only do the children have constant access to their parents, but the parents are constantly investing in their children, constantly teaching and training. And the children who are parented in this way, learn not just from their parents words, but from their examples also. This is exactly the relationship that our Heavenly Father has with His Son.

Joh 5:19, 20 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.

Showing our children what we’re doing, teaching them to do it, too, working together: this is the kind of relationship that fosters the closeness necessary for our words to have weight with our children. Consider:

Pro 23:26 My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.

How many teenagers lament that their parents “just don’t understand” them? We want to have our children’s hearts, and though we don’t have teenagers yet, we believe a key element of preparing for that time is simply spending A LOT of time with our children from Day 1 so that we will truly know and understand them and they us, and so they have a chance to observe our ways.

And, of course, we’re not just trying to produce clones of ourselves to pad our own egos. As Paul said in

1Co 11:1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.

Any fruit that we hope to see in our children’s lives must first be evident in our own lives. We need to be working together as a whole family toward godliness, and as parents, it’s our job to take the lead both through direct training and example.

We all have the tendency to want to be like whomever we spend the most time with. If we want our children’s hearts, if we want their eyes to observe our ways above the ways of their friends, the people on TV, and the media all around them, if we want them to have the kind of relationship with us early on that will help them understand a right relationship with God later, then we need to never leave them nor forsake them, our ears need to be open unto their cries, we need to tell them about the Lord throughout the day, and show them everything we do.

So, how do you really go about this day by day? I’m definitely still learning myself! In a moment, though, I’ll share some of the things the Lord has taught us so far on what it might mean to be discipling our children. But before I start, I do want to emphasize one very important thing. What I’m about to say is the practical outworking of the principles I’ve just gone over as my husband and I have applied them to our family. Your family is different. Please consider what’s here and take what is helpful. I’m not trying to create a new law that you must live by or you’re a bad mother and a bad Christian. These are our convictions, and they are genuine convictions, but I’m not here to judge you if you have different ones. My motivation in sharing these things is simply to encourage you and to give you some idea of what this lifestyle could look like, but it’s up to you (and your husband!) to decide what thoughts, if any, you’ll implement in your home. With that in mind, let’s get started.

When we have a tiny baby, discipling mostly means modeling God’s faithfulness by letting him be with us all the time. We try to put him where he can see what we’re doing and talk to him and sing to him as much as possible. And if he’s struggling, I try to lay my work aside. This can be REALLY hard sometimes. But I always remember that my baby has an eternal soul. My first child wanted to be held all the time, so I know what it’s like to not even feel like you can sit down and eat. Sometimes housework isn’t going to get done. Sometimes we may have to eat frozen pizza for dinner. But what I invest in my baby is forever. I once read a wonderful line in an article by Tamera Eaton, entitled, A Wasted Day? It said, “I don’t plan on taking my dirty laundry with me to heaven, but I do plan on taking my children.” My baby needs a mommy who’s going to disciple him by showing him consistent love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance more than he needs a dust free environment or an uncluttered nursery.

As our babies have grown, what the principle of discipleship has meant for us is that we’ve made the commitment to include our children in our day to day work just as our Heavenly Father graciously lets us bumble our way through participating in His work. Since I’m the one home with them most of the time, that mostly translates to including the children in my day to day work. I make a real effort to keep them in the same room with me all the time. If they’re truly too young to be involved, I at least let them get their hands messy, so to speak. If they can’t fold laundry yet, I let them have some small towels to wad up in a ball. And an older baby in a front pack or sling can help put laundry in the washer or empty the silverware tray from the dishwasher into a drawer. As soon as they can stand up reliably by themselves I let them start helping a little in the kitchen with dumping in ingredients and stirring. And toddlers can try their hand at washing dishes or scrubbing potatoes or carrying things in from the car. And while I’m doing all these things, I can be singing hymns with them, talking to them, and of course, answering lots, and lots, and lots of questions, questions that would never come up if they were in the other room watching a video.

Is it impossible to be efficient in this kind of arrangement? Well, yes and no. What I’ve discovered is that when I succumb to the overwhelming urge to do something “efficiently” and try to leave my children in another room playing by themselves, they always make the biggest messes. These are the times that they tend to break things, draw on the carpet, take toys away from each other, and generally make it impossible for me to work efficiently! As Proverbs 29:15 says, “a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” I find it actually saves time in the long run to include my children whenever I can.

Another commitment we have made is to always worship with our children. We have decided that even if we go to a church one day that has these things that we will never place our children in church nurseries or Sunday school classes, not because they are fundamentally evil, but because we feel they can be a case of the good getting in the way of the best. WE are the ones responsible before God for the training of our children. We don’t want to give up that responsibility, that privilege, to anyone. We also don’t want to send the message to our children that we can’t worship God with them around. And they soak up an awful lot! My oldest, when she was three and a half, was already asking questions about the sermons she was hearing. Even very young children can learn to sit quietly in church. And before you know it, they’ll be participating. At our little meeting, we have a family whose two oldest boys are ten and twelve, and they’ve been answering questions in the whole group discussion time for over a year now.

Another thing we’ve done is to think long and hard before we get a babysitter. We view it as a sign that we have our children’s hearts that they want to be with us, to go where we go, and do what we do, and we don’t want to undervalue or diminish that desire. We do go out on a date by ourselves every once in a while, (but we take along any baby who’s still exclusively nursing), and my husband and I take turns going to the gym a couple nights a week, but on the whole we take our children everywhere, even out to dinner or to “grown-up” events like adult friends’ birthday parties. This, of course, necessitates a lot of extra training, but since our children are going to spend most of their lives interacting in an adult world, we figure the sooner they learn how, the better off they’ll be.

One other major commitment we’ve made that I would seriously encourage you to consider is homeschooling. I personally think it would be extremely difficult to really disciple my children if they were away from me six or seven hours a day. Frankly, I can’t imagine how I could obey the Lord’s command to talk of His commandments when I sit in my house, when I walk by the way, when I lie down, and when I rise up, if my children weren’t with me when I was doing all those things. Not everyone can homeschool, of course, but if you have the chance, I wouldn’t pass it up.

This path that I have described is far from easy. In fact, if you decide to try any of it, it will probably often feel like the hardest kind of parenting imaginable. We’ve been working alone all our lives, and our flesh likes to remind us how easy it would be to go back to doing things that way. I know I fail so often in truly being open to my children, but the days when, by the Lord’s grace, I manage to do all these things I’ve shared are the happiest and most peaceful of my life.