Organize This! Helping Your Child Let Go and De-Clutter

By Stephanie Calahan (Calahan Solutions, Inc)

Often when I am giving presentations or working with work-at-home moms, I’m asked this question:

Q:  Isn’t it easier to just get rid of a child’s toys?  If I see that they are not playing with them, what is the harm in just making them “disappear”?

Give a man a fish and he will have food for the day.
Teach a man to fish, he has food for a lifetime…

When my son was about 2 years old, we started teaching him how to make choices about his belongings.  He was very into picking toys, books, clothes, etc. that could go to another kid that did not have as much as he did.  He was excellent and empathetic, and we thought, "Wow, this is going to be easier than we thought."

At about the same age he was a complete and total Elmo fan. He had all kinds of Elmo things.  There was one in particular -- it was a simple stuffed Elmo.  Nothing fancy to him, but Elmo was his best buddy and went everywhere with him.

Well, over time, he of course, lost interest in Elmo.  When he was about 5 years old, we were in his play room in the basement going through his things.  Out popped Elmo.  Since he had not played with stuffed toy in at least a few years, I suggested that Elmo should go to a new home.  This is somewhat of how the conversation went...

"NO!!!!!"  he screamed, quite passionately.  "I don't want him to go...." he whimpered.

So I tried to reason with him first...

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One Word At A Time: Sacrifice

By Ginny (MAD21)

Something happened last week that made my heart ache. I was sitting in the waiting room while my girls were in gymnastics class. The room is usually pretty chaotic with kids running around and parents coming and going. I was concentrating on my book so I wasn't listening to any particular conversation going on around me. But suddenly I found myself tuning into a woman sitting near me. It was one of those moments when it seems that everything slows down and the room goes quiet except for the thing that got your attention.

I looked up to see who was talking. It was a mother I had seen there before. She is one of those ladies who once she starts talking to you, you are committed to listening to for the duration of your time together. Don't get me wrong, she's a nice lady, but she obviously loves to talk and will do so as long as she thinks she has someone's attention.

We had all been in the waiting room for some time, probably about half an hour. The woman had been talking to the lady sitting next to her and to anyone else within earshot. I vaguely remember hearing about car repairs and sick kids, but that isn't what really what made me take notice of their conversation. I'm not sure what they were talking about that led them to this particular topic, but she began to describe an experience she and her family had when visiting a church.

I didn't hear why they were at the church, but it seemed like a recent visit. She liked having her young children go to Sunday school to help teach them morals. I think this is what initially got my attention. As a person who has worked in Children's Ministry for years and is passionate about planting seeds of faith in their hearts, this really bothered me. I'm glad the mother likes to take her children to Sunday school, but there is more to God and faith than good morals. However, that wasn't what upset me.

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God Is... Loving and Approachable

By Jay Cookingham (Soulfari)

The parable in Luke 15 shouts with the love and compassion the Father has towards us. See if you can spot the lessons He would love for us to learn from this story.

"So he got up and went to his father. "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.""

See how the father was expecting his son’s return! You don’t see people a long way’s off unless you are watching intently for them to appear. Day after day he continues his watch until one day He checks again and sees a figure, one he is familiar with. He is so excited, that he starts to run! He could have waited until his son reached him; after all he is the father and the one wronged. The father risks a loss of respect to run to a son considered lost, spiritually dead to the family, and does not hesitate a moment.

Here’s a point that I find wonderful, the son could also see his father coming after him! Imagine him practicing his lines; wondering about the response he’ll receive by his return. His head is bowed, he’s dressed in rags and he still reeks of pig dip. He lifts his head just a little and from a distance he sees his daddy trucking down the road towards him. Soon daddy is all over him, throwing his arms around him and kissing him. Dressed in rags, dirty and foul smelling, his father doesn’t wait until his son is cleaned up to embrace him with compassion. He was on a roll now and wasn’t about to stop.

“And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.”

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Every Day Life: Smells

By Lara

I was rushing around my kitchen this morning trying to pry frozen pieces of chicken apart so I could extract the wax paper that separated them. I was also feeding the cat, opening blinds, taking medicine, and fixing my breakfast. When my frozen waffles popped up from the toaster, I stopped everything I was doing.

That smell. Eggo waffles crisp and brown from the toaster. It took me back to my grandparent's kitchen. I was six or seven eating breakfast with my grandfather. Every morning for as long as I can remember he ate one waffle and one scrambled egg for breakfast. I felt the sun on my face through the window. I heard the coo coo clock in the dining room. I saw my grandfather reading the paper and eating his breakfast with the dog wagging her tail under the table expecting the "last bite" of waffle. I heard the birds chirping out the back door.

The flashback didn't take long, but I was surprised at how vivid it was and that it took such priority in my thought processes.

Smells can have such amazing emotional ties to people, places and experiences. It got me thinking on my way to work, "What other smells affect me so powerfully?"

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The Gospel According to Seuss

By Michelle (Graceful, Faith in the Everyday)

When my son Rowan settles on a favorite book, he likes to read it five, six, ten times in a row, night after night after night. Most recently it’s been The Lorax. I glimpse him heading toward the bed, cornflower blue cover of The Lorax wedged under his arm, and I grit my teeth and commence meditative breathing.

I admit, I don’t love Dr. Seuss. All that silly rhyming and nonsensical tongue-twisting syntax. The googly-googs and the moodly-woobs, the wiffle-wambas and the schissle-schambas. It’s all just too much for me. Really, after a long day of work and dishes, laundry and homework, epic dust-bunny battles and sorting stacks of mail and backpack debris, I’m expected to perform linguistic cartwheels, too? I’ll be frank:  I’ve been known to slide The Lorax, Green Eggs & Ham and The Birthday Bird beneath the dusty, crumby underbelly of the couch, where no man or child dares go. I’ve also carted a few in the Seuss oeuvre to the Goodwill. Let some other mother, the one with infinite patience and a more limber tongue, deal with Thing One and Thing Two.

Last week, though, during the 101^st reading of The Lorax, the good Doctor got me thinking. In between descriptions of Brown Bar-ba-loots and Truffula fruits, I read this:

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