Actually the title is, "Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches" but I find the second part rather funny. This cute 102 page book is by Rachel Jankovic, mother of FIVE children aged FIVE and under. Holy cow. Her goal in writing the book was to provide encouragement to other mothers because she needs it, too.
A friend of mine passed along this quick read and it was fabulous. It is short, funny, insightful, and thought provoking. Parenting is hard, but well worth it and this book points out ways to deal with the hard stuff and delight in it at the same time. While I'm not even sure two children are in our future, five seems outrageous to me. And they are all so young. But, this mom has some great things to say about managing her home and treating each little person like the individual they are. There are 20 short chapters in this book and I could probably talk about the lesson in each one because I really enjoyed them all. However, if you are a mom of a little person, I think you should read this book and I don't want to ruin it for you.
The best lesson I took away from the book was that I am raising my daughter to release her someday. It is hard for me to even fathom Aria as an 18-year-old headed off to college, but when she reaches that point I hope I have helped her become a strong, confident young woman who can make her own decisions and live her life according to God's will for her. Right now I have authority over her and must discipline her to help her learn how God wants us to live. In the book, Jankovic talks about making sure your child(ren) understands why you are disciplining in line with God's authority. For example, God tells us to love others. That is why we do not hit our friends (or mommy, daddy, the dog, etc.). It is not because "Mommy said so" or because I have some power over her. Through discipline, I should be teaching Aria how I live my life under God's authority so she can someday live completely under God's authority and not mine.
Another chapter that really hit home was "Growth Spurts." Before reading this book I had already learned the lesson of not getting too comfortable in the "normal" with an infant/toddler because pretty soon it changes. But this chapter put a nice perspective on it. A lot of times I do find myself complaining, "Why won't Aria just.....sleep, eat, stop screaming, use a spoon, etc." When really, I should be seeing it as a growth spurt. Something in her life is changing and developing and I need to foster it. According to Jankovic, I need to be praying about how I can help them in this new phase, how I can make it fun, and how to appreciate their new needs. That makes a lot of sense to me. I should embrace each stage we come to, difficult, fun, or exhausting as it may be. As it says in the book, if I have the right attitude, most likely it will transfer over to Aria.
Those are just a couple of the big ideas I loved in this book. I highly recommend it to all mothers of young children! Definitely a 10 out of 10!
2 comments:
Glad you liked it! I thought it had a lot of little nuggets of great ideas.
I think Levi might be having an independence growth spurt, maybe instead of be frustrated I should try and figure out ways to foster his new desire to control his world in healthy ways! Thanks!
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