Children

One of my playgroups that I am in was offered a free parenting workshop that is an 8 week study on how the child developes, positive discipline, raising readers, etc. I signed up for it, not really knowing what to expect or how it would go, or even what I would learn. J and I talked about it and we both agreed that because it was not being offerend thru our church or a Christian organization I should expect to hear more "wordly" views on the topic, and I could make the choice to continue to go, or quit, or go and just ignore the fluff that we didn't agree with.

She started off by saying each week some may learn or not learn from that days lessons, but that she hopes everyone can gain something from the class by the end.

The first excercise she did was to write down your "ideal child", my answer was the "the one that God choose for my husband and I." It is truly how I feel regardless of the days I want to pull my hair out. I know she was given to us for a reason, and we are to raise her and our next one according to Gods word. I figured I would be the only one with that answer and out of 7 women there was one more who said the same thing. Everyone else had extensive lists as to what they would want in their ideal child. As I listened I thought are parents setting their children up to fail if they have this idea of an ideal child? Who knows what the right answer is, and I am not saying we may not set our children up to fail with some of the things we do, but I just felt that making extensive lists as to what you want your child to be like isn't necessarily right.

She then asked us, "Okay write your own strengths and weaknesses out." Of course my weaknesses were much longer than my strengths, and she made a good point that we should be able to point out our own strengths because our children are always watching. We then discussed the 8 different intelligences (which to be honest I didn't know there were 8), and we were asked to identify with at least one and no more than two, and then we discussed why we felt we were that style and if/and how our families encouraged us with that intelligence. It was really neat to see that as we went around each of us were not surprised with what the others intelligences were.

It will be interesting to see over the following 7 weeks how the class goes (don't worry I will write about it).