A Secret to a Better Day with Little Ones

If it’s 10 o’clock in the morning and you’re already pulling out your hair with your little ones, let me pass on a secret to you.

After 35 years of parenting, it’s actually the thing that I can trace back to our kids’ early beginnings of the security and stability that they possess to this day.

Are you ready for the big secret? Here goes!

Excuse my corniness, but

Fill their little love cups 🙂

It’s like young children wake up on empty each morning and need to be filled again. Not empty of energy, but empty and in need again of your physical touch and focused attention.

Cuddles and hugs first thing in the morning go a long way toward a good day! Fill them up with the assurance of your love for them before their little day begins and you’ll see what a difference it can make.

It won’t be long and they’ll bounce off your lap happy and ready for a new day. Secure in your love for them, they can go about cheerful and relaxed.

Well, at least for 20 minutes.

All children are unique in how often they need refills, and in what form a refill is best received. But if you can observe your children and catch them before they fall apart or start causing trouble, and give them some more of your precious focused attention – in the form of a hug, a whisper, a tousle of the hair and a smile – whatever your child responds to best, you could avoid many stressful, tearful moments in your day.

Really, just a minute or two or five first thing in the morning and then here and there throughout the day is all it will take to change your day.

And maybe change a life.

Filling those little love cups each day adds up to security and stability and independence in life. It really is the secret that I see as the beginning of our own adult kids’ strong beginning to life.

Yes, there were other things we did to help grow that security and build into their lives. Those would be the thirty things I am presently blogging about.

So why do we mothers miss some of these opportunities?

Really, there are just two main obstacles:

Maybe you’re running on empty yourself in the mornings. If so, give yourself at least five minutes (preferably longer) before the children wake up so that you yourself can be filled and renewed by God.

And then really, who doesn’t have that next load of laundry to face or the next whatever. Sometimes it can seem more expedient to “stay on schedule.”  If this is you, give yourself permission to slow down. Take five minutes here and there to show love to your children — doing what God cherishes most and, in fact, what we are actually doing for Him.

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. Matthew 25:40.