Creative Parenting~Guest Post

 

This post is brought to you by Tia at www.homemadelearning.com and a big round of applause for her… she broke her hand and still managed to email me! Happy healing Tia! Not only does Tia have beautiful kids, she’s a real mom with a beautiful spiritual side. Enjoy the post! Love, JL~

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Creative Parenting ~

Remember how I mentioned that I’m not creative? I’m ready to modify that a little bit.

It goes like this: I do have limited creativity, but when my life is in a complicated state, I use all of my creativity maneuvering through it.

For example, a new baby. I love babies. Babies are darling, I could just eat them up. They are worth every bit of work they take, and then double that. But, you have you admit that they can often be complicated. Especially if there is also a toddler thrown into the mix.

Many days, I find that it take every drop of creativity in me just to figure out how to get both the crying baby and the screaming toddler to sleep at the same time. (Because you must realize that if they do not fall asleep almost simultaneously, the still-crying one will wake the other one up. This job is no small feat.) I’m happy to report that I have managed this.

More than once.

I tried to find pictures of other daily, creative accomplishments that I manage. Like, encouraging the older kids to do their chores as fast as childly possible without hollering at them. Or, making dinner from scratch with the last three things left in my fridge before a farm day or a shopping trip. Or how about loading up and buckling four children into the car (over and over again) because I have to take all of them with me to run errands.

But, it seems that the only creative moments in which my hands are free enough to take pictures of my accomplishments are when I’ve just managed to get the babies to sleep. So, here’s one more picture of it, just for good measure. Just to prove that I have moments of creative genius daily.

I love this talk by Elder Uchtdorf. He talks about creativity and how it’s not all about music, art, and crafting. All of us have the power and opportunity to be creative, in one way or another. He speaks of creating smiles, of writing thank-you notes, of nurturing children. That’s not a cop-out, people. I’ve found that it takes a lot of creativity to get out of the ruts we sink into in every day life. It takes creativity to stay calm in moments of chaos or crisis. To guide or teach children in ways that we were not taught or guided ourselves. It takes creativity to make yourself be more than you feel like you can be when you drag yourself out of bed at 6 am in the morning.

Here’s to creativity. In all of its many forms.

How were you creative today? Come on, you can think of something—be creative