Each night before the next school day I write Maddie’s school work for the morning and she knows that every school morning after she is done doing her chores she is to look at her list and get to work right away. Once I have breakfast wrapped up and coffee has begun working through my system I then begin to work with the twins. But, today is Monday, and I have learned some things about Monday, but some times I ignore what I have learned and in true Robin fashion I am reminded the hard way why I have our schedule set the way I do.
I have learned that for our family Monday mornings are best eased into, it is best to start the week with a subject Maddie is enjoying and understanding well. This reduces the tears Monday’s can often bring. However, today, Monday, I jumped into it like it was a Tuesday and I was quickly reminded why I try to leave Monday as our cleaning day. As we worked on handwriting today all three the kid’s were in tears that their handwriting was not neat enough and all three of them where sure they would never be able to make their letters neat. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit rushed in and gave me a big dose of patience I was not feeling! Thankfully the Holy Spirit in this moment of melting children ran in and ministered to a mama who wanted to throw in the towel. I could have thrown up my hands and said, we’ll try again tomorrow. But, some times I don’t throw in the towel, because coaching, mentoring, and teaching my kid’s to press through the hard times, the times they don’t think they can do something is important, because they learn that there is reward and success at the other end. But, they also learn something even more valuable to me, they learn to be patient with themselves. They learn it’s ok to make mistakes and they learn what it takes to make something right after it hasn’t gone so well the first time.
Today, however, I did shorten our lessons, and then I moved onto getting the kid’s rooms back into shape. Hanging jackets and dresses, putting shoes in order, and putting new bed clothes on all the kid’s beds. This is more the Monday I have come to realize my kid’s are the most successful at. We are working together to get our house in order and my kid’s have come to appreciate that our house in order gives our brains order. They have come to realize and appreciate that when I ask them to work, I too am working right beside them. I am also right there beside them coaching them through putting the fitted sheet on the bed first, how best to hang a dress on a hanger, and showing them how working together to get a job done works faster and better than working alone.
So for us our school on Monday’s looks like learning life skills and some times I forget that learning to make spaghetti is an important life lesson too. I forget that learning to keep your room dusted is an important life lesson and with a family that has allergies this is an even more important lesson to reinforce. I have also learned from listening to my kid’s and watching them that they not only prefer clean up Monday, but they enjoy clean up Monday. Because we are all working together for a common goal, we are all so excited to show daddy our clean house at the end of the day. For some reason it is hard for me to come to peace with what works for our family, yet to go outside of what works for us ends up more frustrating for all of us.
Easing into Monday some how allows my kid’s brains to be ready to jump into the rest of the week with both hands ready to sit down and absorb the math they need to sit down for or the spelling words they need to be able to sound out and spell. Teaching life lessons today to prepare and train them to be adults for tomorrow.