I do not need time to myself in order to be a good mother. In fact, selflessness is the whole point of mothering. However, I have nothing against spending some occasional time away from my children. For instance, twice a month I get together with other homeschool moms for coffee and dessert. We all feed our hubbies and kids and then disappear, leaving the daddies in charge of bedtime. You can't convince me that I should feel some type of guilt for leaving my children with their daddy. Most of the time though, I get my social time in while my children are with me. I'll meet with a friend or two and we'll chit chat for a couple of hours while our kids play together. I'm very picky about who I do this with, in order to guard the influence my children are around.
Once a week, we have a date night swap. One week, we babysit; the next week, we have a date. Kyle and I also have frequent home dates, when we send the kids upstairs to play together while we have a date in the living room. We may order out and enjoy our dinner just the two of us or we may just sit and have tea and dessert together. Not even the kids' occasional cries of how much they want to be with us make us feel guilty for our date nights. Our marriage is the most important aspect of our parenting.
I did feel guilty for leaving my children with people I didn't really know in order to go to work though, and I only worked part-time. God has not called me to be the provider for my family. He has called me to be a keeper at home. While my salary gave us more financial freedom, I found it very unfulfilling to be outside God's perfect plan for moms.
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
-Titus 2:3
-Titus 2:3
7 comments:
What a sweet picture!!!
Yes, very sweet photo!
Thank you for sharing. What you are describing is exactly what I'm asking about. When I used the term "me time", (reminds me of Wayne in "Fireproof"! That's our favorite scene!), I think part of what I also meant was some quiet time. Do you have quiet hour/time built into your day? Perhaps for all of you?
Like I said previously, I'm not into going off all the time, leaving my children with whomever. We are VERY picky about who watches our children; it's usually my parents or a couple I know whose kids are grown. What you have described sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and I was just wondering if you did do the very sort of thing you shared.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I believe that some organization and training would go a long way in what I feel at times...that I have got to just pull back and regain some sort of balance/sanity inside my head!
I nap every single day. :D
If I don't fall asleep (which is very rare), I just stay in bed reading until naptime is over.
Ginger,
What are the children doing while you are napping? Do they rest/nap as well? What do the older children do?
Thanks,
Beth
Lydia and Daniel nap. The big kids have quiet play time. We have a schedule: Mondays they watch a movie, Tuesdays they play board games, Wednesdays they can play x-box or Webkinz (we have an internet filter to keep them off sites I don't approve of), Thursdays they play with toys, and Fridays they have rest time when they look at books.
The schedule keeps them from getting bored and allows me to avoid the incessant: Can we do ___ today?
HTH! :)
oh we do the 'quiet time' but I love the idea of having a different activity each day to mix things up a bit for them.
Thank you Ginger. I am ever so glad to find some one else who does "date nights" at home.
We don't "do" baby sitters. But we do have a date night at least once a month when we put the kids to bed, cook a meal together or buy in.
Again, thank you for the encouragement.
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