Do you have a child or teenager who is facing physical or mental challenges? This post by Greg Lucas is sure to encourage your heart. It also gives valuable insight into how to be a better parent and maintain your sanity while facing the difficult challenge of helping a disabled child. And even if you do not have the responsibility and privilege of caring for a child with special needs, this post had beautiful insight and hard-earned perspective that you will not want to miss!
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The “Do’s”
The "Don't's"
By Chalsey Dooley It was just a little thing, that smile on my baby's face, but it changed my perspective on life. As he woke and looked up at me, he was looking at what mattered most in the world to him—me! He didn't care that his diaper needed changing or that I was dressed in mismatched pajamas, my hair a mess. He just loved me and loved being with me. He didn't need perfection; love made it all right. That moment of holding him and taking in those rays of love clarified something I'd been thinking about earlier. The lack of perfection in life has always rubbed me the wrong way. When someone said or did something that irked me, I'd often argue my case against it in my mind. Why do there have to be things like personality clashes, carelessness, inconsideration, injustice, pessimism, putdowns? These things are real, and they are wrong! I wish these things wouldn't exist. If everyone, myself included, could just get their act together, my life could be one of blissful perfection. Perfection, I reasoned, was the only thing that could ever relieve my irritations. But I also knew that could never be. This was real life. I needed another option. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that what I really wanted was for the world to revolve around me—my wishes, my feelings, my preferences, my priorities. Something had to change, and this time it had to be me, regardless of the faults of others. But how? I'd tried before. Then that morning, as I held my baby, a whisper of a thought came to me. Would you want your baby to be perfect right from the start? After pondering that thought, I couldn't imagine something I'd want less. If he'd been able to walk and run the day he was born, I'd never get to see the look of thrill and accomplishment on his face when he took his first steps, and I'd also miss that special feeling of holding him in my arms, knowing that he was completely dependent on me. If he had been able to talk perfectly from the time he was born, I'd never experience the joy of hearing him speak his first word. If he knew everything that an adult knows, I'd never get to see him overcome with wonder at some new discovery and I'd never have the fulfillment of teaching him something new. So many things I'd miss. No, his imperfection makes him just perfect. I wouldn't have him any other way! What is it then, I asked myself, that makes his imperfection different from the other imperfections around me? And the answer came. It's love. That was it! That was what I was lacking. That was what I needed more of in order to cope bravely and cheerfully when confronted by problems I wished didn't exist. Think how much you'd miss if you and everyone around you were perfect from the start. You'd miss the unpredictability of life that adds the sense of surprise; the joy of forgiving and being forgiven; the strong, abiding bonds of friendship that are formed through adversity, and the positive character traits that are formed much the same way. Adding negative thoughts to a negative situation, I realized, never brings positive results. I determined then and there to look for and find the positive opportunities and experiences that are hidden behind the mask of imperfection. When my baby couldn't sleep later that day, I decided to make the best of a difficult situation by putting my new lesson into practice. I put what I had been sure was best for him and me on hold, and my husband and I took some time to sing and laugh with him. It was a perfectly happy moment that we all would have missed had everything been "perfect" that day. Originally published in Activated Magazine. Used with permission. A group of social scientists asked this question to a group of four-to-eight-year-olds: "What does love mean?" The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. See what you think. "Love is that first feeling you feel before all the bad stuff gets in the way." "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth." "Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs." "Love is when someone hurts you, and you get so mad but you don't yell at them because you know it would hurt their feelings." "Love is what makes you smile when you're tired." "Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more. My mommy and daddy are like that." "Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen." "If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate." "When you tell someone something bad about yourself and you're scared they won't love you anymore. But then you get surprised because not only do they still love you, they love you even more." "There are two kinds of love, our love and God's love. But God makes both kinds of them." "Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well." "My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night." "Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken." "Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsome.” "Love is when your puppy is so glad to see you even though you left him alone all day." "Love cards say stuff on them that we'd like to say ourselves, but we wouldn't be caught dead saying." "You really shouldn't say I love you unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." A powerpoint courtesy of Tommy's Window, with good food for thought. It's so easy to let monotony take over and forget how fleeting childhood is and how fast it is gone. Children are so precious and we should treasure them and enjoy being with them every single day. [This is a short fictional story that was originally published as part of an educational seminar. It explores the positive influence that teachers can have on the future of their students, and the lesson applies to parents and caregivers as well.] It had been a long and tiring day—the usual case for me as the principal male mathematics teacher in what was then known as a secondary modern school situated in London’s East End. The pupils attending these schools generally majored in manual or artisan courses, what you would nowadays call vocational, rather than academic subjects. Anyway, a group of them had been required to stay back for detention, which was scheduled each Thursday, and went for an hour and a half past the school’s official closing hour of four o’clock in the afternoon. On this particular week, it had fallen to me to supervise them, and I was as peeved as the detainees were at not being able to clock out at four and go home. It was left up to the supervising teacher to provide or suggest activities while they sat at their desks, so we let them do what they wished within reason, as we generally felt no constraint to put in more work hours. The more conscientious teachers would catch up on correspondence and such like, but most of us would usually sit behind the front desk and read the newspaper. With my brain and nerves often being overloaded at this point, I was usually content to do a crossword or stare out of the window. That day, I watched the sunset. Every fifteen minutes or so, however, I dutifully patrolled the gangways between the desks and looked over the students’ shoulders to make sure there was no monkey business going on. That is when I came upon fifteen-year-old Pamela Lumley with her face in her hands and her elbows on an open exercise book. She was a working-class girl from the back streets of Bermondsey and attended my fourth form mathematics class. Her detention was a consequence of having been apprehended for smoking a cigarette in one of the school lavatories. “Is everything alright, Miss Lumley?” I asked her, not expecting an answer nor even wishing to be bothered with one. She looked up at me with snivel nose and red-rimmed eyes; she had evidently been crying. “I just can’t get it, sir,” she whined in her nasal cockney twang. “Get what?” “This…” She pointed a dirty fingernail at her dog-eared, grimy exercise book and the opened pages of smudged, pencil-scrawled numbers bordered with pitiable attempts at patterns and flower sketches. I deciphered that among her fanciful doodling she was attempting to solve a mathematical problem. “It’s ‘omework, sir,” she said, pulling at her teased coal-black hair. Having long given Pamela Lumley up as a lost cause, I hardly even checked her daily work anymore, let alone her “‘omework.” She had only a few more months to go, anyway, and she would leave school; graduating, I judgmentally presumed, to a life on child-welfare benefits. Mathematics, and it seemed almost any other academic skill, was just not her talent. “Well, just keep muddling through, Miss Lumley,” I said and looked at my watch. Over an hour and ten minutes yet to go. Suddenly to her and my surprise, I impulsively snatched up her exercise book and returned to my desk, where I casually flipped through the illegible graphite muddle of Pamela Lumley’s tortured world of mathematics. I stopped at the page on which she had been working. It was still wet on one spot where a tear had fallen, smudging the green guidelines. You may assume it would be easy, considering my eloquence, but I cannot adequately describe what I felt in that instant. It was as though Pamela Lumley’s world opened before my eyes and every painful scratch of her grubby, stubby pencil formed a hieroglyphic tapestry of her life in a Bermondsey backstreet hovel with a divorced distraught mother on prescription drugs. At the time, I would have recoiled from describing what overwhelmed me as supernatural, but now I am convinced it was. I did not know why, but I so wanted to weep that my heart ached, yet Pamela was watching me expectantly from her desk. “I need to step out for a moment,” I announced with a lump in my throat. “M-Miss L-Lumley, will you temporarily monitor the class?” I found myself saying to her shock, as well as that of the rest of the detainees and especially mine. Her face lit up. “Why of course, sir. ” I locked myself in a lavatory stall, sat down and sobbed. I could not understand it, but I felt stupid and vulnerable, yet wonderful at the same time. I must have sat there for about ten minutes, silently philosophizing to myself in an attempt to dissect this emotion. My analysis seemed to be in vain, until I suddenly saw myself as I was before this epiphany: lofty, cynical, wittily sarcastic and erudite with a sophisticated corner on knowledge. It was a discomfiting sight, and it was easy for me to hate myself and—I sadly concluded—for others to regard me with no less abhorrence. Nevertheless, I stepped out of that stall determined to retain this strange throb in my heart. Avoiding my reflection, I washed my face and returned to the classroom. “Did everyone behave, Miss Lumley?” I inquired with a smile. “Oh they was all little darlins!” she chirped with a giggle. “Good to hear it. Okay then, come up here and let’s take a look at this problem.” Pamela’s face fell; it appeared as though she would burst into tears again. Yet she bravely strode up to the front, and I motioned for her to pull up a chair next to mine. “I’m so sorry, sir,” she said. “But it won’t do no good to explain. I just won’t get it.” “The solution is probably very simple,” I said softly. “See this flower you’ve drawn here? What’s it called?” Pamela Lumley’s eyes lit up. “A Canterbury Bell, sir. But that has next to nothing to do with the mathematical problem.” “I know,” I said. “And this here is obviously a crocus.” “Yeah.” “And this one?” “That’s a Bleedin’ Heart, me mam’s favourite. But… ?” “And I notice you’ve drawn this particular one numerous times but you’ve scribbled through it.” “Oh yeah. That’s a Gypsophila, me favourite. Can’t get it right, though. The shape of the petals, see?” I nodded. “Actually sir, I have a hard time with gettin’ the petal shapes right on most of ‘em. The Bleedin’ Heart is easy, of course.” “I’m no artist, mind you,” I said as I opened my desk drawer. I rummaged inside it until I pulled out a small stencil template of geometric shapes. “But it seems the design of this particular petal is based on the trapezoid. See?” “Ooh, right.” “And this one has a rather hexagonal shape to it—you know, six sides. This one of course, is a rhombus—a diamond.” “That’s true, sir. Simple when you look at it like that.” “You obviously love flowers, Miss Lumley.” “I do, sir. Don’t ‘ave any, though. Don’t ‘ave a garden and the ‘ouse is dark.” I turned back a few pages in her exercise book. “Here it seems you are trying to make a design using these two.” “Yeah. Me mam was goin’ to buy me an embroidery kit for me birthday, but it ended up she didn’t ‘ave the moolah. She was right broke up about it. That was fine, I didn’t take it personal. But I was going to embroider a table mat with the Gypsophila intertwining around the Bleedin’ Heart and give it to her for Chrismiss.” “I see.” “Anyways, sir, once I get a job, after I leave school, maybe I can scrape up something.” “Very well, Miss Lumley, you may return to your desk,” I said, noticing that some tittering and whispering was going on among the detainees. I handed her the template. “Here, you can have this. Hope it helps you with your project.” She beamed. “Thank you, sir.” * * * Late July presently came upon us along with the end of the school year and for most of us, spirits were high with anticipation at the six weeks of summer holidays. For the few departing pupils, however, this anticipation was often mixed with some trepidation at the prospect of acquiring full-time employment; Pamela was one of those few. I was locking up my desk on that last day of term, when Pamela tapped on the glass window of the empty classroom’s door. I indicated for her to come in. Tears were in her eyes as she approached me. “Just w-wanted to say bye, sir. And thanks for everything.” Everything? Since that day of detention, I had manifested only discreet interest in her evident progress at sketching flower design by merely nodding my approval when passing by her desk where she, with the geometric template in plain view, would leave her exercise book open for my perusal. But for the occasional smile and a nod, we communicated little. “Good b-bye, Miss Lumley. I wish you all the best and … umm … good luck with your choice of career.” “Ta, sir. Looks like I got something lined up as a cashier at Tesco’s. At least for the time being. It will force me to brush up on me sums, if nothing else!” As we stood in uncomfortable silence, I stared at my half-open briefcase and I could not renege on a decision I had made that morning. I reached into the case, pulled out a large ribbon-wrapped package and handed it to her. “You can open it now, if you wish,” I mumbled. “Or wait until you get home.” Curiosity conquered the girl’s initial hesitation and she tore at the wrapping. Her mouth fell open. “I don’t know why,” I said, as Pamela shook her head and gaped in astonishment at the gift. “But it took no mean courage to stand in the local sewing craft shop explaining my need to purchase an embroidery kit for a ‘friend’!” “But, s-sir. You d-didn’t ‘ave to.” “I suppose not, Miss Lumley. Actually, I bought it that very weekend after your detention, but could never quite muster up the pluck to give it to you. It just sat in this drawer the whole time. Maybe I was tempting circumstance, but I resolved to give it to you today on the one condition that by your own volition you came to wish me farewell. Failing that, I most likely would have posted it to you eventually.” Pamela’s pale, pinched countenance wrinkled and she burst into tears. It was a while before she was able to speak. “Thank you, sir. I shall t-treasure it for life.” * * * The following year, due to a condition regarding the buildup of water around my heart, my doctor advised me to move out of London. Consequently, I took a post as assistant headmaster in a comprehensive school up near Aberdeen, Scotland, where I continued for twenty years until my retirement at sixty-two. A pretty good life stretch, I thought, considering the dire predictions of medical advisors. Anyway, an odd “coincidence” happened on the very day of the end of my term of office in the education administration. I had attended a small gathering to celebrate and toast my “departure” at a nearby pub, where I benefited from, I am happy to say, the sincere appreciation of my teacher colleagues and a number of departed students who had attended my classes within the past decade or more. I was touched to the point that my heart began to hurt much like that day in that East London Secondary Modern School, and I had to excuse myself. Edith Standwell, a younger female colleague graciously drove me home to my one-bedroom flat overlooking the town square. She asked if I needed help, and I hesitated at first—being a confirmed bachelor all my life. Nevertheless, I changed my mind, as I felt compelled to accept her offer and allow her to aid me up the stairs. To my surprise, stuffed in the letterbox was a parcel, and I waited until we were inside my flat before opening it. The parcel contained a small hardcover book and a letter. Concerned for me, Edith Standwell made sure I was comfortably seated in the armchair, and waiting warily by, offered to make some hot cocoa. I accepted her offer, indicated where the ingredients were, and began reading the letter. Dear Sir, This might come as a surprise—it’s been about twenty years I would say since you left our way, and I was thinking that you was probably retiring soon. Well, to be honest, I didn’t even know if you was still alive, pardon me bluntness. Anyways, I went by the old school the other day and I got your address from Mr. Wills, the old geography teacher who’s the headmaster now. Anyways, I wanted to send you a book that just got published about embroidery and flower design, written by yours truly (with lots of help from an editor, of course. Me spelling and grammar still leaves a lot to be desired). Now ain’t that a turn-up for the book world? Pamela Lumley has a bestseller in W. H. Smith’s! Well I do, sir. They even wants another one, but I think I’ve said me piece. Anyways, I put a dedication to you after the title page ‘cos after all, this book wouldn’t have been possible without you. Curious, I took my first look at the book and its title--The Floral World of Pamela Lumley, and I opened to the dedicatory page. As I read, my heart surged again with that wonderful throb and I smiled. …and so it is to him, a mathematics teacher who saw this floral world beyond my clumsy scrawl, I dedicate this little book. Without his encouragement, it would not have been a reality, and to him I am ever grateful. - Pamela Lumley – Story by Jeremy Spencer. © The Family International. Children seldom turn out the way we expect. Then again, neither did we. *** Difficult children, like difficult laundry, can turn out great if given special attention before the stains set. *** Share your strength with your children when they are young, and they will share their youth with you when your strength runs out. *** Of all the things we give a child, our words must be the most carefully wrapped. *** Children are like water: Bottle them up and they stagnate; let them run wild and they make a mess; guide them and they bring life to all they touch. *** Love does to children what sun does to flowers. *** If parents do only two things—love their children and pray for them—God will more than make up for everything else. *** If we try to spare our children every disappointment and difficulty when they are young, we rob them of the opportunity to learn and mature and grow strong enough to face and overcome disappointments and difficulties that will come when they’re older. *** Show your children love, tenderness, gentleness, patience, and respect, and they will treat others likewise. *** Train your child as if you were preparing a prince for his future reign, for he will grow up to be one of the forces that shapes the future of mankind. *** Look for five things on which you can compliment your children today. *** You can’t take it for granted that because you know you love, appreciate, and value your children, that they know that. Tell them so! *** Love has creative power. In the home, love does its magic by engendering unselfish acts and helping each family member to see the others in a positive light. *** It’s easy to inadvertently make children feel unloved or unappreciated, but a little forethought and courtesy can have just the opposite effect. *** You will never regret spending time with your children, but you will regret it if you don’t. *** Maintaining an open line of communication with children when all is going well will make it easier for them to accept constructive criticism or even reproof when it’s needed. *** A few minutes of quality time with your children at the start and end of each day—a hug, a story, a prayer—will go a long way toward helping them feel loved and secure. *** Parenting has never been easy, but all loving parents have one great thing going for them from day one: their children love and look up to them more than anyone else in the world. *** While your children are a gift from Heaven, they are also a work in progress. It’s your job to help them grow into loving, responsible adults. Excerpted from "Mottos for Success" desktop quotebook, by Aurora Productions.
Love has creative power, and in the home love does its magic by engendering unselfish acts and helping each family member see the others in a positive light. Everyone wants to be understood, accepted, and loved for who he or she is, and the home is a God-created environment where these things can thrive. There are also things that work against love in the home—enemies of love, if you will. Disagreements between children and parents and sibling rivalries are a couple of the obvious ones, but there are other problems that are more subtle and therefore even more dangerous—selfishness, laziness, indifference, criticalness, nagging, taking each other for granted, and thinking and talking negatively about one another, to name a few. These usually begin with small, seemingly innocent incidents—finding excuses to not help out, squabbles over petty issues, little putdowns and sarcastic remarks—but unless you recognize these as attacks on your family’s love and unity, they will develop into bad habits that will take a terrible toll on your family. It’s not enough to simply save the moment by sending the feuding parties to their separate corners, silencing the sarcastic, or pressing the shirker into service. That’s dealing with the symptoms, not the root problem, which is a lack of love. The only thing that will cure a lack of love is love itself, so ask God to bring more love into your home. Then cultivate that love through loving thoughts, words, and actions. *** Children remember things very clearly and are directly affected by their parents’ attitude and how their parents feel and think about them. So if you’re constantly speaking faith and positive things about your child, either to him or to others, and if you’re thinking positive things about your child, this will have a good, faith-building, positive effect on your child, and he’ll become more like what you think of him and expect from him. But if you are thinking or speaking negatively about your child, either directly or indirectly to him, it will have the effect of making him think negatively about himself and hinder his happiness and self-esteem, his performance, and the way he sees himself. Faith begets more faith; positive attitudes foster more positive attitudes in both yourself and those around you. It takes faith in someone to bring out the best in them. © Aurora/The Family International. Used with permission. As every parent knows, raising a child is not cheap. However, most of us tend to forget just how much we get in return. This presentation is a good reminder that the cost of having and raising a child is nothing in comparison to how much we get back. Enjoy! Courtesy of Tommy's Window.
A successful young attorney said, "The greatest gift I ever received was a gift I got one Christmas when my dad gave me a small box. Inside was a note saying, 'Son, this year I will give you 365 hours--an hour every day after dinner. It's yours. We'll talk about what you want to talk about, we'll go where you want to go, play what you want to play. It will be your hour!'" "My dad not only kept his promise," the attorney went on, "but every year he renewed it. That was the greatest gift I ever received. I am the result of his time." * * * Some time ago, a friend of mine scolded his three-year-old daughter for wasting a roll of gold wrapping paper. He became exasperated when the child tried to decorate a box to put under the tree. Money was tight, and the gold wrapping paper was expensive. Nevertheless, on Christmas morning the little girl brought the gift to her father and said, "This is for you, Daddy." He was embarrassed by his earlier overreaction, but his aggravation flared again when he found that the box was empty. "Don't you know that when you give someone a present, there's supposed to be something inside of it?" he lectured her. The little girl looked up at him with tears in her eyes and said, "Oh, Daddy, it's not empty. I blew kisses into the box. All for you, Daddy." The father was crushed. He put his arms around his little girl, and he begged her forgiveness. My friend told me that he kept that gold box by his bed for years. Whenever he was discouraged, he would take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love of the child who had put it there. - Anonymous *** I received the perfect gift last Christmas—the love of a little child. On Christmas night, when it seemed that all of the gift-giving and festivities were over, I was tucking four-year-old Jade into bed and praying with her for the night when out of the blue she said, "Daddy, I love you more than all my toys and things!" My heart skipped a beat. A few nights later, we were visiting relatives when I needed to check my email. I found a place to hook up to their network, but there wasn't a chair handy. No problem. This would just take a minute, I told myself as I sat on the floor and started up my laptop computer. Just then Jade came running through the room, tripped, and fell right onto the computer, sending a million colored lines across the screen. As each person present assessed the damage, I heard comments like, "That's going to be expensive to fix!" and "Too bad it's no longer under warranty!" When Jade realized what she had done, she started crying. I picked her up and hugged her. "Don't worry, Baby," I whispered in her ear. "I love you more than all of my things!" - Gabe Rucker © Activated Magazine. Used with permission.
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