Teaching Principles

This little boy turned three months old yesterday!  Can you believe it?  I can and I can't.  Time is a strange thing!  Coy Boone is doing great!  He is a lot of fun, happy, and healthy.  We spend most of our time together and have a lot of sweet moments.

My other boys Val (22 months) & Guy (age 12) are still totally in love with each other and the new baby.  I'm excited for them and happy that Guy finally has a boy crew to run with, despite a major gap in age!  

It's certainly been a huge learning curve to figure out how to parent a young man now.  It always seems to take time to adjust to new stages of life, and I'm still not sure what surprises he's going to throw our way from day to day, but I'm grateful to know that the Lord knows our kids even better than we do, and I know He's there to help when I don't know how to approach things.

This was proven again to me this week when I had a situation that needed to be addressed.  I wasn't sure what to say or do, and I was pretty sure I didn't have the answer within me, so I prayed for help.

As I did so, the answer came that I needed to teach principles (as opposed to simply reiterating policies) and that that would be the best approach for all of the children.

Last week, in my FHE report, I talked about how Family Home Evening has been such a powerful tool for our family in uniting us.  This week FHE, while not being quite as light-hearted, was definitely useful as we learned principles that if applied will help our children grow in character and their understanding of Jesus Christ's Atonement at work in our lives.

I know that by taking my questions to the Lord, He was able to help me respond with wisdom and love and to help my children use their agency to grow, mature, and change for the better, as we all must do in this life.

Oh, parenthood!  You are such a mixed bag!  But I am learning as I go!  I am sure that you are too!

Ok, one last order of business!  

I have a post up at Power of Moms' blog this week.  If you have a moment, please drop me a comment over on my post called "Total Eclipse of the Fun."  They do a great job of creating a positive conversation about Motherhood, and I'm sure my readers would have a lot of great things to add to that conversation, so go check it out!

Now, bring on February!