It's mail Monday

I can't tell you how important it is for soldiers in training to get mail at mail call. I'm not one for writing letters and totally not one for applying a stamp and getting mail to the mailbox (thank goodness for auto bill pay) but I've made a habit to write. Take a minute and jot a note and mail it! If you need a solider to write please message me! I started writing three extra notes, putting them in small envelopes and sticking them in his big envelope. The plan is for him to give them to fellow soldiers who might just need a pick me up letter. With my first letter I included a red pen and told him he could work on his writing skills by correcting my misspelled words and grammatical errors. He could spend hours adding commas to the letters (bc I refuse to use them bc my thoughts never pause in my head!). If your kids say they are bored or have nothing to do please give them a pen and paper or napkin or ......  Write a soldier and change a life! You may be the support or smile they needed that day! 4 weeks down and 16 more to go. Dante, You Amaze Me!

More to come!

Please visit our mission trip excitement. I will update this blog in the next month to include all the bible verses I love.

www.whenblessed.com

Hebrews 13:5 

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.".

Train up a child in the way he should go......

Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it. - Proverbs 22:6

Dear Jack - my spunky nephew who always says, "i don't like baseball" you allowed us to talk you in to
playing one season of little league with Coates. I thought as the season went on and games were won you  would finally stop saying , Auntie, you know "i don't like baseball" but it never happened.  I thought when school got out and late practices were not a big deal you would stop saying, Auntie, you still know "i don't like baseball", but I was wrong. I thought after spending the morning throwing you BP in my favorite maxi dress (see photo) that your reply would be different but I was wrong. Today I watched you, Coates and your Brew Crew teammates play for the American Little League Bball Championship and you won. I knew today after going 3 for 3 with the game winning walk of double , after the coaches lifted you in the air like superman during their celebration and after you were awarded the MVP of the game that you were sure to never again say "I don't like baseball". When asked by Pa & Grammie if you still didn't like baseball you said with a smile on your face as you held your MVP trophy, "I hate baseball".  I guess you did change the wording a bit but I don't think I've won the challenge yet.

Dear Jack, you may still dislike playing baseball but today my sweet nephew you made others fall in love with the game by the way you played. I can't wait for one more week of baseball with you and Coatesie and then I guess I will come watch you play basketball (until next baseball season!)

 - Love Auntie!

  

Trust in the Lord with all your heart...

I've been blessed to spend the last two weeks with my sweet Abi after swim camp. Proverbs 3.5-6 pulls at my heartstrings when I think of all the praying we did four years ago. Jeremy had graduated from Auburn and was offered what had seemed like the perfect job about 6 hours away in Florida. If they would have taken the job it would have supported the family and Sachi would have been able to be a part time PT and spend more mom time. I prayed all that week for the Lord to show them his path  and selfishly prayed it would be one to keep them here where I could spends summers with Jonah, Abi & Luke (who call me Aunt Amber, even though I'm their 2nd cousin). To no surprise the Lord spoke and they listened! Today I watched Abi do a front flip as she attempted to dive off the diving board (see youtube video here!), baked triple chocolate chip cookies (that i sent with her so i wouldn't eat more junk), listened and watched as she and Coates talked about what kind of momma bird they would be. Abi asked when I thought the momma bird would stop checking in on the babies, and Coates replied, "if she is like my  mom she wouldn't ever leave them alone!" I'm not sure if that was a compliment because I'm always there for him (even when he tells me he doesn't need me) but I'm taking it as one.  The Lord is everywhere and today I saw it is the eyes of a beautiful curly haired princess who calls me Aunt Amber. I love you sweet Abi for many reasons, but the most important is because I love your mom!

 

Baby Bird Watching (nest is on top of the fan - above all the glorious bird poop)

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 

In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight." (NASB) 

Emotionally Strong Boys! Raising Cain

How do we help our boys express their feelings and grow up to be unafraid of them? How do we help them understand that they can be masculine — and have feelings too? How do we help them survive the tests of masculinity intact and on their own terms? In the bookRaising Cain, co-authors Michael Thompson, Ph.D. and Dan Kindlon, Ph.D. present the following strategies, designed to help parents nurture and protect the emotional lives of their boys, to respect their interests and needs, and help them grow up to be caring, intelligent, successful men.

Strategies from Raising Cain

An excerpt from the book, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, by Dan Kindlon, Ph.D. and Michael Thompson, Ph.D.

• Give boys permission to have an internal life, approval for the full range of human emotions, and help in developing an emotional vocabulary so that they may better understand themselves and communicate more effectively with others. "The simple idea here is that you consciously speak to a boy's internal life all the time, whether he is aware of it or not. You respect it, you take it into account, you make reference to it, you share your own. There is something of the prophecy fulfilled here. That is, if you act as if your son has an internal life — if you assume that he does, along with every other human being — then soon he will take it into account."
• Recognize and accept the high activity level of boys and give them safe boy places to express it. "Many parents of boys do embrace the physicality of boys… some do not. Most teachers of boys also love boys; some, unfortunately, do not. Boys are tremendously sensitive to adults who do not have a reasonable tolerance level for boy energy, and when they do sense that a person has a low threshold of boy tolerance, they usually respond to it as a challenge...Boys need to learn how to manage their physicality to do no harm, but they need not be shamed for exuberance."
• Talk to boys in their language — in a way that honors their pride and their masculinity. Be direct with them; use them as consultants and problem solvers. "Because boys are miseducated to fear excessive feeling and vulnerability, it is important to communicate with them in a way that honors their wish for strength and does not shame them… Is communicating with boys sometimes difficult? Yes, it often is. Is it impossible? Almost never. Only with the most angry, contemptuous, and suspicious boys is conversation impossible. If you are willing to ask consultative questions, put your emotional cards on the table, and not be disappointed by brief answers, you can communicate with boys. "
  • Teach boys that emotional courage is courage, and that courage and empathy are the sources of real strength in life. "Popular movies aimed at boys seem to prize only one kind of courage: standing up to a physically larger opponent. The willingness to fight an enemy, to outwit a dinosaur, to defeat an alien monster, to look into the eye of a villain with a gun, is the media's definition of male courage...Most important, boys need models of emotional courage in their own lives, not just in the media. We need to recognize and identify for them emotional courage in the lives of women and men, in our families and in the lives of children and others around us. In life and art, we need to provide boys models of male heroism that go beyond the muscular, the self-absorbed, and the simplistically heroic. Many adults display emotional courage in their work or personal lives, but rarely do we allow our children to witness our private moments of conscience or bravery."
  • Use discipline to build character and conscience, not enemies. "Sooner or later, everybody gets into trouble, whether as a result of his impulsivity, his activity level, or just because he's human: it is a normal part of growing up. We believe boys need discipline that is clear, consistent, and not harsh. The best discipline is built on the child's love for adults and his wish to please. If that impulse is respected and cultivated, children will continue to be psychologically accessible through their love and respect. If they are unduly shamed, harshly punished, or encounter excessive adult anger, they will soon react to authority with resistance rather than with a desire to do better."
  • Model a manhood of emotional attachment. "Boys imitate what they see. If what they see is emotional distance, guardedness, and coldness between men, they grow up to emulate that behavior...The loneliness of men has to be addressed in the lives of boys. Boys need to be encouraged to initiate friendships, maintain them, and experience the conflicts that arise in male friendships from different levels of athletic skill, from teasing, and from competition for the attention of girls. Too often boys lack both the resources and the will to resolve those conflicts and preserve friendships."
  • Teach boys that there are many ways to be a man. "Very few boys or men are tall, handsome, athletic, successful with women, endlessly virile, and physically fearless...Boys suffer from a too-narrow definition of masculinity, and it is time to reexamine that message...We have to teach boys that there are many ways to become a man; that there are many ways to be brave, to be a good father, to be loving and strong and successful. We need to celebrate the natural creativity and risk taking of boys, their energy, their boldness. We need to praise the artist and the entertainer, the missionary and the athlete, the soldier and the male nurse, the store owner and the round-the-world sailor, the teacher and the CEO. There are many ways for a boy to make a contribution in this life."
    (Reprinted with permission from Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon, Ph.D. and Michael Thompson, PhD. Copyright 1999, 2000 by Dan Kindlon, Ph.D. and Michael Thompson, Ph.D. Reprinted by arrangement with Ballantine Books, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.)http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/emotion01.html

The Search for Masculinity

Figuring out the rules of masculinity and trying to live up to them is part of every boy's childhood. Most boys find the "tests of" masculinity scary and hard to pass. And some boys find this process especially painful because they feel they don't have the right skills and interests to be successful at being a boy.

"Parents are often baffled by why boys work so hard at being boys,"says Michael Thompson, Ph.D., host of the PBS RAISING CAIN documentary. "Sometimes they wish their boys could just be themselves' and not constantly measure themselves against the societal standard of masculinity. But boys do this, whether you like it or not (as girls do with femininity). Only in time do children develop a sufficiently independent identity so they can say with confidence and pride, 'That's not me. This is who I am.'"

Children come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and abilities. They grow up to develop very different passions and talents. But according to Thompson, they all share one thing: "Every child has to come to grips with society's image of what is masculine and what is feminine. These expectations begin to influence them the moment a child is born, when parents pick up their baby girl and say, 'Isn't she sweet, isn't she beautiful?' They pick up their sons and they say, 'Isn't he handsome? He's going to be a big, strong boy.' These messages continue when boys and girls start to play separately at around age three, and both the boys' group and the girls' group begin to define what boys do and what girls do. And these gender expectations can be tough on boys who don't fit society's model."

So how can parents help their boys make it through? "It doesn't help boys to pretend that standards for masculinity don't exist," advises Thompson. Instead, Thompson and our other RAISING CAIN experts recommend you start by supporting and appreciating your boy's struggle, reassuring him that some stuff doesn't really matter, while acknowledging why it's important to him. It also helps to discuss, dissect, analyze and put in perspective what the search for masculinity is all about. "It doesn't help boys to pretend that standards for masculinity don't exist, because boys will look at you like you're crazy. They know the rules and you can't give your child a waiver even if you want to,"notes Thompson.

"Gender expectations are socially constructed, ruthlessly enforced and powerful," adds Joseph Tobin, Ph.D., author of Good Guys Don't Wear Hats and Professor of Education at Arizona State University. "We should talk with boys about the reality of gender expectations, and help them brainstorm about how to negotiate this problem. If a little boy is struggling to feel adequately masculine by acting tough, it's not helpful to criticize or mock his interests. The fact is that all men struggle with this issue and none of us has it figured out."

http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/masculinity.html

Boys In School

Some boys thrive in school. There are more "boy geniuses" than "girl geniuses" and there are more boys in the top 1 percent of the IQ scale than there are girls.

But many boys don't fare as well — and for the majority of them, school may not be as a good a fit as it is for girls. "There is no single boy experience at school because there is a wide range of boys —and some take to school and some don't," says Michael Thompson, Ph.D., co-author, Raising Cain. "But for the average boy, school is not as good a fit as it is for the average girl. More boys have problems with attention and focus than girls. Because of their higher activity level, boys are likely to get into more trouble than girls. And they are not given enough opportunities to move around — both in actual physical activity and in how they learn — because they spend too much time sitting and not enough time learning by doing, making and building things."

The statistics tell an alarming tale:

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics:

• Boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to flunk or drop out of school;
• When it comes to grades and homework, girls outperform boys in elementary, secondary, high school, college, and even graduate school;
• Boys are four to five times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD);  
• Women outnumber men in higher education with 56 percent of bachelor's degrees and 55 percent of graduate degrees going to women.

According to the U.S. Department of Education:

• Boys make up two-thirds of the students in special education and are five times more likely to be classified as hyperactive.

Parents of boys — stay calm! While the statistics are disturbing, they don't describe every boy — or necessarily your boy — but they do raise concerns about many boys' school experience. "The odds are that if you come from a family that values education, your boy will be successful in school and will go on to college. Most boys do. However, the average American boy is struggling in school," advises Michael Thompson.

http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/school.html