Tools to Build your Family

Recently, I posted my first video of my new video series, "Tools to Build your Family."

The first in the series is the key tool, "Be Consistent." Many of the moms and dads I've interviewed stated this was the wisdom they learned when their children were young.

I have so much to say! With all the research done in areas of behavior, time management, decision-making, etc. to help parents, it will be easy to make short videos of helpful advice.

The series will complement the 7 small books, only 59 pages each, I've written to reach today's parents and grandparents raising children.

So check it out, subscribe, sign on to Google to leave a comment. Let me know what you think. We all have wisdom to share to make parenting easier.

Today, I watched the television show CLEAN SWEEP. I had heard of the show but had yet to desire to see other peoples’ clutter and the problems accompanying it. The feature was the winner of the Messiest House contest in 2008. Unfortunately, I easily related to the three women living in the house, a mother and her two adult daughters.

Unwanted change can be difficult to accept. Clutter is created when we fill up our lives to replace something or someone. We replace our emptiness through shopping, furniture and other stuff. In one year’s time, my mother’s life underwent several changes:
• She lost her mother to cancer,
• her oldest daughter (my sister) moved from California to Germany (military husband) taking my mother’s only grandchild,
• my other sister, and only other sibling, married and moved hundreds of miles away, and
• I married and moved a couple miles away, same town.
By the end of that year, my parents’ three-bedroom house filled with furniture. You could barely walk around the rooms. Most of the furniture came from my grandmother’s home attached with sentimental value. It was many years before the furniture began to leave the house (to make room for visiting grandchildren).

A few months after my mother died, I moved to another town due to my husband’s job transfer. I welcomed the excuse to remove myself from the memories of a lifetime. Until then, I had always lived in the same town as my parents. The move provided a great opportunity/excuse for my husband and I to declutter. We had previously maintained a home for our blended family of five children. A few times a year we might have all five, plus a daughter-in-law and grandchild. By the time we moved, we only had one permanent, half-a-week child living with us (shared custody). I maintained supplies for bedding for the possible blizzard that would find us all housebound (never happened, although the blizzards did). Donating the bedding to the Goodwill pulled at my heart, but I followed through.

I’m still a packrat when it comes to my office and all the print outs of Internet research to help me with my books. I can’t just keep the files on the computer because computers crash and are unreliable. Paper is forever. That’s what my husband fears.

Family & Medical Leave Act not so great for new dads

In 1993, the U.S. Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act. It allows workers to take time off work to care for family members or themselves. They get their job back when they return. Sometimes pay is received during the time off, sometimes not. It is wonderful for an adult child who has to tend to an ill elderly parent. Great for a spouse to care for a sick spouse. New baby? Great for mom but not so great for dad.

Sure, the first week is helpful for the new mom and to bond with the baby. After that, it becomes a drain and all the dad can think about is when he can escape to his job. Jobs are mostly reliable as to what is expected of you for the day. You don't have to listen to crying babies all day and all night. Your time is your own, not controlled by a little tiny being that needs to be held, soothed, fed, burped and cleaned up.

With a new baby in the house, you can always recognize the worker who is a new dad or mom by that exhausted look on their faces as they muddle about doing their job. Most employers accept this. After about 3 months the baby should be sleeping through the night and mom and dad will return to their normal selves.

Consider this if you are going to be a new dad: How much time do you really want to take off work? Can you handle chaos from an 8 pound version of you? Will the noise drive you up the wall seeking normalcy? I'm not being chauvinistic when I say moms are more nurturing and can usually handle it better, realizing there is a wonderful rainbow at the end of the first few weeks.