June Notes - Parenting in Stressful Times

Here are my notes from the meeting-some not coherent. If I have time, I'll clean them up.

Yelling at them when they're little cuts off communication when they're teenagers.

Quoting Melissa Kimball, "a new parent." As in, "she needs a new parent," and handing baby to your spouse.

Environment in home --> the Spirit.
(Sorry about that shorthand. I think Chelsea J. was talking about how she and her husband were able to keep calm and even be sweet to each other during dinnertime when their kids were losing it. She was talking about maintaining the Spirit in her home, that that was her goal. And I think she said that sometimes we lose sight of that goal, but that working together as a team with her spouse helped.)

Pray to handle things better.

Master yourself. Discipline yourself to stay checked in when people in your family need you the most. (When you really want to check out.)

Pray for a softer heart towards children. "I need to know better who my children are -and Heavenly Father can help me know that." Lorraine.

Pray for patience. (Chelsea basically said if you don't, you're crazy...or something along those lines. I better start doing that more often!)
Pray for love. (to have Christlike love for children & spouse) -helps you have patience. helps you give them the benefit of the doubt.

"Let's make a memory." April talked about how this was her goal each day, that the memories her children take with them are important. Remembering this helps focus her mothering.

Keeping routines help make us feel better.

Get out of the house. Kate said that she tries to have somewhere they need to be by 10:30 each morning. This ensures that her day gets started and she's up and running without getting sucked in to time wasters or things that aren't as important as spending time with her kids.

Read your scriptures.
Quoting Tricia Hobbs: Put the Lord's time first.

Talking about trials or tragedies:
These things happen. They're going to happen to everybody. There's nothing you can do to change that. But you can change your attitude. You can change your testimony. If you strengthen your testimony, you can have hope through hard times and look forward.

Trials are sometimes the blessings we're asking for, or the way to the blessings we're asking for.

He gives us things that are bigger than ourselves - positive and negative, so we can turn to Him. (For example: our own infinite worth, trials, our children, sometimes callings, etc.)

It isn't going to be perfect. Come to terms with that. (applies to relationships, to me, to circumstances.)

Self-mastery in the small things, or in the chronic & on-going, or re-occuring. (Kaylyn didn't say this, but something she said made me think this.)

Say an only-gratitude prayer.

Find something to laugh about, to laugh hard about.