Learning from Failures at Home

 "Your home should be a place where your children can fail and learn from their failures."

-from Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours by Dr. Kevin Leman

I am reading through Dr. Leman's book right now and am really enjoying it. I read the above quote a couple of days ago and have had it on my mind ever since.
I have been thinking about what it means as a parent for my home to be a place where my children can fail and have so far come up with three things that I think are important in order for my home to be a place where the children can fail and learn from their failures.

1. My children need to see when I fail. Human beings are flawed, sinful beings. I make mistakes, fail to accomplish things, fail to have the right attitude. I certainly don't think parents need to tell their children all the ways they fail all the time but I also don't think parents should put on a persona of having it all right all the time either. My children need to know that I fail so that they can know it's ok that they fail too. They also need to see me exemplify how I learn from my failures so that they, too, can use their failures as a means to grow.

2. My children need to know what failure is. In order for a child to know he has failed he needs to know what is expected. There needs to be a standard. An absolute. And if it's not met - if they fail - the standard cannot be lowered to spare their feelings of failure. (Obviously if you set the standards unrealistically high then you would lower them, but that, I believe, is a different matter.)
I don't think any parent wants to see their child not do well at something, let alone have the child feel like they didn't do well at something, but if the standards we set out for our children continually get lowered because we don't want them to fail they will never learn from their failures. They will never get better.

3. My children need to know that they are loved when they fail. My love for my children is not based on their performance. I want them to do well. I want them to grow and to learn. But when they fail at something my love for them does not change. I do not expect them to fail, but I know that they will.

What do you think of the quote?
And what are your thoughts on creating a home where children can fail and learn from their failures?

Sleepy Sun Book Review

We had the privilege of receiving Sleepy Sun by Mari Hanson in the mail last week for us to review. This is a bedtime book for young children, available on www.amazon.com for $14.99.

I have read Sleepy Sun to the boys several time over the last week. Judah adores the illustrations and tells me he wants to "go there" - pointing to various places depicted in the images. The illustrations are vivid and imaginative.

The text itself is simple and soothing. In telling the story of places the sun has shone it opens up for a great dialogue with young children that the sun shines in more places than just their own backyard. In the Sleepy Sun some of the places that the sun shines are on children swimming, skiers swooshing, a great big city and the dessert - I love that different weather/seasons are incorporated in the book as well as different places around the world.

We love introducing our boys (age 1 and 2) to new books and I am always on the lookout for new stories to read to them and because of that I was excited to receive this one to review. I enjoy this book because it had encouraged Judah's imagination to start thinking about the sun and when we are out he tries to find where the sun is.
Paul, however, does not enjoy this book as he finds it too short and too simplistic.

I think the book makes a nice addition to a child's library, however I do feel like the book is overpriced.

This is a Mama Buzz review. The product for this review was provided free of charge by Mari Hanson and all images were provided by Mama Buzz.

Book Review

100 Bible Stories 100 Bible Songs, written by Stephen Elkins and illustrated by Tim O'Conner is a delightful children's book that I would recommend for children 4 and under.
As the title suggests, this book has 100 different Bible stories or Biblical principles from both the Old and New Testament. There are 2 cds that accompany the book and there is a song that matches each story.

The layout of each Bible story is impressive. Each story is titled and gives the Biblical reference for the story. In the New Testament stories it references each of the Gospels that the story comes from. I really like this feature, more on that in a moment.
The layout also includes the title of the song that matches with the story, a colorful and detailed illustration or two and a three sentence run down of the lesson from each story.

This book reads like a devotional book for young children. It is in no way a Children's Bible, and what I LOVE about them referencing the scripture is that it sets it up for a very easy devotional time for children.
The scripture passage can be read straight from the Bible (they only give the reference, so you need to look up the actual passage in your own Bible.)
The short story from 100 Bible Stories 100 Bible Songs reiterates in a very simple way what the scriptures said and the illustrations go along with each story really well.
Finally, there are the three simple sentences that really drive home the point of each story.

If you are super organized you could play the song that matches the story, but I am not that organized. I have played the cds to the boys and once we have learned them all I can see us singing the matching song when we read the story, but I do not ever see myself going through the effort of playing the one song from the cd when we read the story.
I'm just being honest folks! It's cute in theory, but would be too much work.

The one warning I would give with this book is that in simplifying the stories for children, the stories and lessons were sometimes too simplified. Which is another reason why I love the idea of the references being highlighted on each page - you can go straight to the scriptures and read from there first.

My only other 'complaint' is that the first cd had the wrong song titles for the song playing when I was looking through the titles in my Media Player. The songs match the index in the book and the label on the cd, it is just in the Media Player they are labeled incorrectly.

I was impressed with the book and the boys have both enjoyed listening to the stories and looking at the pictures and Judah has already started singing some new songs he has learned from the CD.

Book Basket

Judah loves to listen to us read him books, but it hasn't always been this way.
When he was almost a year and a half we decided that we wanted to commit to reading him books every single day - but he wanted nothing to do with them!
So we started out by locking him in the room with one of us and we'd read several books out loud to him while he played.
It took a bit of time, but he eventually stopped playing and sat on our lap as we read him his books. He (and now Wesley!) get read at least three books a day, so we love when we find unique children's books!

Here are some of our current favorites for our 2 year old and 11 month old:

Would You Rather Be A Bullfrog is a great conversation book - it is full of "would you rather be this or be that?" questions.
Judah would rather be a butterfly than a bullfrog. And he would rather be the color green than the color purple. Just if you wondered.

The Foot Book is so fun to read! Not only is it fun, but Judah's got his left and right down... at least when it comes to the feet :)

Heedley Pecked Me in the Eye is fun. I have mentioned it on here before, and we still love it! It's a story about a chicken that pecks someones eye that he mistook for a worm. Seriously. Who thinks of books like that?! I want to get more by the author.


Guess How Much I Love You. *sigh* Our kids have no choice but to love this book. Paul bought it for me just before we got married, how sweet is that?! I grab Judah's ears when I read him this story, because that's how the bunny starts the book, and because it makes him laugh.

A Fly Went By - whew! This is almost a tounge twister book! It's a super fun, fast pace rhyming book... well, I suppose it would be slow paced if you read it slow, but when you've got a fly and a pig and a fox and a cow and a ton of other animals running past you - and running fast! - you can't really read it slowly. It's soooo much fun to read!


Where the Wild Things Are. This book gets read to the boys every single day. I bought it just over a month ago, and have maybe missed a handful of days reading this one. I just LOVE this story and Judah likes to yell "BE STILL" to the Wild Things. They are making a movie of this book coming to theaters this summer and I can't wait! It'll be a mommy/son date :)

Daddy Could I Have an Elephant is another fun favorite. A little boy wants a pet, so he asks his daddy for an elephant and slowly works his way down to smaller and smaller pets until his dad says he can get a dog. I love that the boy is never rude to his father and I also love that his dad explains in very realistic terms why he can't have the bigger animals - an elephant would get stuck getting into the apartment, a gorilla would climb out the window and down the wall and visit unexpecting neighbors, a sheep would BAA at bedtime, etc. It's a cute book with a great dialoge between father and son!

By far my favorite book is one my sister wrote - and illustrated! - for the boys. It's a collection of two short stories involving penguins and a whale and with names like Wiggle, Pickle, Plop and Peploe you can't help but giggle along with the story!
She gave it to the boys for Christmas and I think it's one of the greatest gifts ever!! Hopefully she'll be adding to the short story collection (hint hint!)

Those are a few of our favorite books! Check out some more BOOK BASKET suggestions at The Happy Housewife.

What We're Eating Now

I like to try out new things, and almost every time I am at the grocery store pick up something new for us to try out. Most of the time it works out well for us, but this week my choice wasn't so hot! Literally.
Cool Soup.
I know that cold soup is good, but this stuff in the drinkable bottle is gross. Even Judah wouldn't drink it when I tried passing it off as a "special treat."
He took a sip and said; "It's icky momma. You drink it." We're raising a generous boy, eh?


I did have great success with something new I tried creating - Mint Chocolate and Cayenne Pepper covered Strawberries. They're delicious!

I melted mint chocolate chips and mixed in a generous amount of cayenne pepper, stirred it all up and then dipped the (washed and dried) strawberries in the chocolate.
The pepper specs showed up in the chocolate once it all dried, and I think it looks so pretty! The flavors go surprisingly well together.
I only made up 8 of them, just in case the were "icky." But yummy they were, so I will have to try this again soon!


And then of course we have a tried and true favorite food in our house: Cheerios! Wesley adores them and I think would eat through an entire box in a sitting if I let him. Judah grew out of his Cheerio stage, but is back into them again now that Wezzy loves them so.

I once heard the advice that if you were looking to buy a present for your child that he would use/play with a lot, buy him something that his sibling would adore - it works with food too :)
If we want Judah to eat something all we need to do is tell him we're going to feed it to Wezzy and he says "OH NO!! I eat it!" And he does. :)

Bringing Up Boys - Review

Nicole asked me:
"I was looking at the Dobson book, is there different stuff in it that you wouldn't find in a normal parenting book?"

So that prompted me to write a review on the book.

I finished Bringing Up Boys by Dr. Dobson and I would highly recommend it to any Christian parent raising young sons. I found the book to be easy to read, full of stories and examples and at the same time insightful and informative. I think it is an excellent and relevant resource for raising boys in this culture.

There is a consistent encouragement throughout the book that in raising our sons our goal should be to raise men. The importance of instilling confidence in our sons and surrounding them with good role models is emphasized, as well as the importance of a father/son relationship.

While Dr. Dobson very clearly states that not all boys fit your stereotypical image of a boy (and that it is normal and healthy), most of the book is dedicated to describing what one would generally define as a stereotypical boy. That was perfectly fine for me, as Judah is as boy-ish as I think he could possibly be and Wesley is definitely headed that direction too! I love my boys and all their wild, creative boy-inisms, and reading this book has only served to make me all the more excited about what is to come.

I really enjoyed what Dr. Dobson had to say about the education of boys and how schools, in general, are geared more towards a girls learning enviroment. It was also insightful what he had to say about the effects the media has on boys with how they portray men - in fact it made me rather squirmish thinking about the undertones in just about every kids movie Judah has seen. Sometimes it is subtle othertimes not so much, but almost every movie the man is made to look like an idiot and the woman is the smart, fit, attractive, always right one. That was one of the most convicting things about the entire book to me, and we were already careful and limited with what we allow him to watch.

I haven't read many other parenting books - in fact I can't think of any other parenting book that captivated my attention to completion - so I can't compare it to the advice given in other books. While it is very much a common sense book, it digs deep into the psychology of boys, how they defer from girls, how to approach them and encourage them as boys and so, so much more.
I found the solid Christian values that are encouraged and the ideas that are given to be encouraging, informative and refreshing.

Not only do I think this a book well worth reading if you are a Christian parent, I think it is a book well worth owning.