Happiness and March - It's all about the Kids

Have you started your own happiness project?  Have you read Gretchen Rubin's book?  It's never too late to start.  Head over to her blog and read all about it.  

This month is "Kid Month." Spring is coming, Winter is ending (HOPEFULLY), Spring Break is a few short weeks away.  And March is Oldest's birthday month.  March is a month that changed my life forever with her screaming smiling arrival.  As I'm sure you'll get tired of seeing see this month, I get quite nostalgic about how she changed our lives that March.  

So that makes it the perfect month to focus on my children.  Appreciate them more.  Love them more openly. Yell less never.  Read some parenting books.  

My resolutions for March:

1. NO YELLING.  Seriously, talk about one of my greatest sources of unhappiness - yelling at the kids.  And it's so reactive, so knee-jerk.  I hate that I do it.  I feel terrible after I've done it.  And even though I'm afraid my head might explode this month keeping from it, I'm NOT YELLING.  I have a game plan - counting, leaving the room, finding my happy place. 
2. Read two books - Siblings Without Rivalry and Best Friends, Worst Enemies.  
3. Finish our family mission statement.
4. Have family meetings on Sundays and a family night one weekend night.
5. Polite night at Sunday dinner.  Like over-the-top polite to make it more fun.
6. Buy scrapbooking software.  I have to face facts that I'm not going to do it by hand  - I'm about 4 years behind.  Online photo albums from here forward - anyone have advice on getting hard copy pictures, awards, etc memorialized?
7. Listen.  Reframe.  Believe their feelings.  I borrowed this one from Gretchen.  And if I remember correctly, this is from the same authors of Siblings without Rivalry - Faber and Mazlish.  It's so easy to brush aside the very real feelings of a child, but my relationship with them will be much better if I can truly listen and believe the feelings behind the words.  
8. Virtually TV free for the whole month (yes, this is our Lent promise, but I think it dovetails nicely into a month of focus for the kids, don't you?).  By virtually, I mean they get one show a day - between them.

So there you have it.  Any thoughts?  Tips?  Does anyone out there succeed at not yelling at their kids ever?  If so, what's your secret?  Will it count if I call it "talking emphatically" like my mom used to say?  

Me:  Stop yelling at me!

My Mom:  I'm NOT yelling, I'm talking EMPHATICALLY.  

Me:  Oh.  There's a difference?  (That one was in my head - BUT I knew when to shut it - something Oldest hasn't grasped yet - hence the need for Resolution #1).

Next week on My Happiness Project?  February's tally.  

Family Mission - Yes or No?

In my online book club, this week's habit from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, is "Start with the End in Mind."  (Visit Simple Mom for more info or to join.)

What does that mean?  In two words - family mission.   I liked the idea, at least until I tried to start a discussion at dinner Tuesday night and was met by less than enthusiastic responses around the table.  Except Youngest, who did run around the room enthusiastically, yelling, "Famwy mithon!"

It was a discouraging exchange with all of them, frankly.  Maybe because I just did a successful and fulfilling mission and strategic plan for another organization and expected everyone to jump with joy at the idea.  I left dinner bereft, thinking maybe we don't really need one after all.

I finished this week's chapter last night and read the following quote:

With proper involvement in the process of creating a mission statement, you'll find that it will overcome the fear of parenting, of being decisive.  . . . You won't get into the state of collusion that many parents do wherein they feel validated by the weaknesses of their children and look about for friendly, sympathetic allies who will agree with them and massage their hearts and make them feel that they're okay and it's their "bratty kids" who aren't.  Page 95, 7 Habits.

That's a pretty compelling reason for me.  And Husband, after I read it to him.  So we're back. Let the mission planning begin.  

What about you?  Do you have one?  Have you ever thought about it?   

Motherhood is not for Wimps

As soon as I read that quote, I knew I'd found the perfect book club.  The book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families and the book club can be joined online at Simple Mom.

I decided to join an online book club for 5 reasons:

1. I've never been invited to join a "real" book club (cue violin music for Poor Missy).
2. I haven't had the wherewithal, for a variety of reasons (courage being one), to start my own.
3. I have sitters way too much as it is anyway - do I really want to spend more time away from my family?
4. This first book dovetails nicely with My Happiness Project and Missy's Maxims.  
5. The first book has been sitting next to my treadmill, just crying out "read me, read me!" for over a year. Serendipity?  

So here we are - Week One.  And the quote of my title today was coupled with the sentence, "Through it all I've learned that parenting is basically a life of sacrifice."  How true both of these statements are!  Though I think I'll alter "Motherhood is not for wimps" to "Parenting is not for wimps."  I've always thought, and my communications with blog visitors has affirmed, both parents make many sacrifices for their children - most of the time.

The other quote I want to tease you with so you join the book club too give you before I shoo you over to Simple Mom and the forum you can join (anytime - you can jump in part way through  - if you don't have the book) is this one:

"[L]ike the 'road less traveled' spoken of in the Robert Frost poem, it's the road that makes all the difference.  Despite the priority that American culture clearly places on individual freedom, immediate gratification, efficiency and control, there is literally no road laden with as much joy and satisfaction as the road of rich, interdependent family living."

Page 20, 7 Habits of Effective Families.  

Powerful, isn't it?  It resonates with how I often feel over our parenting choices - the feeling of being a salmon swimming upstream against the current of mediocre parenting.  A feeling I haven't shared with many because, well, we are on a path that's not traveled by many.  And it's a path that, while I am sure it's the right one for us, is still lonely at times.  

It's one of the reasons I started this blog.

Before you leave today, share with me what you think of the quotes I've shared with you.  How do they make you feel?  Are you trying to take your family down a different path than the norm?