My Top 5 Favorite Parenting Resources

Motherhood is hard. We are all agreed on this. But there are ways to make it a little easier. Tips to have at hand so we feel like we know what we are doing...at least some of the time.

When it's just me and the boys I can get plenty self-conscious about my parenting abilities, like anyone else, but then I occasionally go out in public and realize that it could be a lot worse.

I have several sources I turn to that help me feel like I have it together...most of the time, actually.

So, what I offer today are my secrets, or at least the sources of my secrets in the hope that it will help and inspire all you other wonderful mothers who have not discovered these wonderful books. It is my wish that you may find something here to help you be a better parent today.

 

1. The Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp

This is a great starting point, whether you are expecting your first or your last or simply have need of skills to soothe crying babies in what ever setting you may be in.

I read this book as a "textbook" for an Infants and Toddlers class I took in my last semester of BYU-I before I had a baby and graduated. I felt like a pro-Momma with this under my belt before Jon was born. We still had our learning curve when it came to breastfeeding and dealing with cloth diapers, but I could swaddle like a champ.

Dr. Karp's premise with this book is that human babies need a "fourth trimester". Other animal babies come out and walk and "talk" right away. Our babies get pushed out before their heads get too big, ideally. That certainly doesn't mean that they are ready to take on the big, wide world all at once. So, Dr. Karp introduces his "5S's" to simulate conditions from within in the womb to help soothe the baby when outside of the womb to help with the transition.

These work people. So much so that I had people wonder if my baby ever cried because it sure seemed like he never did out in public.

To be brief, the 5 S's are Swaddling, Side-lying, Shushing, Swinging, and Sucking. When I was using these "in the trenches", as it were, like trying to get a newborn to sleep when they have other ideas, I'd have them swaddled, laying on their side on my knees so I could lean over them and make ocean sounds right into their ear while my knees did the swinging, and they sucked on my thumb. (My babies preferred the taste of me over plastic, so we didn't really use binkies at all.) To be fair, this was still a test in patience because it may have still taken a good 15 minutes for them to really fall asleep, but (eventually) fall asleep they did.

2. The Happiest Toddler on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp

It of course makes sense that when I saw this sequel at a book swap, I was sure to grab it. I just finished reading it, to be honest, but I use this everyday and more so on Sundays as a Nursery leader. (It's probably why I haven't been released yet.)

In here, Dr. Karp lovingly calls toddlers "cavemen" and explains that parents have to act as diplomats of the current century. This involves connecting with respect and using "Toddler-ese" to help prevent tantrums or lovingly stop them in their tracks.

My favorite tip was the "Fast Food Rule" (or FFR) for communicating with little ones. He calls it this to bring to mind how the person taking your order at a fast food restaurant repeats your order back to you before they tell you your total price.

The FFR has two parts: First, whoever is most upset (usually the toddler, but this works in "grown-up" situations as well) talks first; the other person listens, repeats back what they are told, and only then do they take their turn to talk. The second part uses "Toddler-ese", tone of voice, and mimicked emotion to hit the toddlers "sweet spot" to get their attention and let them know that you understand how they feel. That part is key because when a toddler is upset they are feeling more that thinking so just trying to be rational with them first is not going to work.

I still have troubles with playing up the emotional part of the FFR (thank my T4 for that) but using short, repetitive sentences (the Toddler-ese in a nutshell) with some reflected feeling really works.

Dr. Karp also mentions knowing your child's temperament and realizing you may have a personality mismatch and that does right into my favorite tools.

 

3. The Child Whisperer by Carol Tuttle 

Now, I'll be honest: I haven't fully read this book yet, but I already have a thorough working knowledge of Carol's Energy Profiling System through Dressing Your Truth. So I still feel like a "child whisperer" with what I have to go on.

Knowing the Types of my children has been such a blessing. I know Jon is a T2 so I know that when he gets upset he will probably cry and need hugs to calm down. If I didn't know David was a T1 our breastfeeding experience would have been more frustrating for me with how easily distracted he can be. As is, I feed him where it is quiet and just enjoy his smiles when he unlatches for a moment here or there because he wants to tell me he loves me with his eyes .

I look forward to using my knowledge with future children and I feel confident that I can handle all the Types in my children as they come around.

 

4. The Child Whisperer Podcast by Carol Tuttle

Until I do finish reading the book, I can gain more insight from Carol's podcast of the same name.

(Note: The link shows the podcast through iTunes but I'm pretty sure I've been able to kind it through other podcast listening apps.)

I enjoy listening to podcasts while I do household chores, and I'm up-to-date on all my other podcasts, so while I wait for new episodes I listen to Carol Tuttle.

With access to the full archive of her material, even from before it was The Child Whisperer Show, I've been able to get more of the nuanced flavors of the Types from Carol's content as well as when she takes live callers and answers their questions.


My favorite episodes so far (go through the above link) are "How to Parent True to Your Nature", "Is your perception of your children hurting them?", and "How do you measure your success as a parent?".

 

5. Dressing Your Truth by Carol Tuttle 

I find where Energy Profiling is concerned, it's a bit like the oxygen masks on an airplane: you put yours on first before you help whoever is near you. Meaning, it's a bit hard to parent true to your Type if you don't know your Type.

Knowing my Type and dressing my truth does make me a better mom because I feel better in my own skin. It goes with the saying of "If mom's not happy then no one's happy." Conversely, when mom's happy everyone is happier. Dressing my truth makes me a happier person because I know myself, I know my tendencies and how to manage them, and I know how to make the most of my personal gifts.

With this knowledge I am bien dans ma peau. This is a knowledge I feel that everyone should have. I truly believe this would make us happier as a people and (possibly) lead to world peace. Who knows? We can dream big.

World peace aside, I'd settle for happier families to start with.

I hope you find these resources as useful as I have in becoming a better parent.

The Beauty We Saw: Our Road Trip

 

One of the perks of being married to a teacher is that we have summer vacations! For our first we took on the craziest of a month-long road trip. Our primary motivation was to see family, but Charles took the opportunity to call it a tax write-off because he happens to teach geography and we took lots of photos for him to use in his classes.

We started Memorial weekend and got back at the end of June. Somehow we survived in our little blue Buick with two babies and no A/C. Wow.

Memorial Day was spent with Charles' dad in Nampa, ID before we headed up to Ephrata, WA to see my family, including my return-missionary sister and soon-to-be missionary brother. (I wrote about them here.) 

The (visually) fun part started when we headed over to Lummi Island, WA to see Charles' uncle who basically paid for our honeymoon because he hadn't been able to come to our wedding.

There was no bridge to the island, but we were lucky in that we got to the ferry right on time. It seems that this was Charles' first time on an island. We could see Canada from the island as well. 

First we got to see Uncle Klay's property. He showed us this really old tree and mentioned how it likely was part of the Native American burial tradition of tying the deceased to the base of the tree so their spirit could soak into the wood. Needless to say, they stopped doing that when the White Men came around. 

Then he took us down to the beach that was basically just across the street. Most of it was a cobble beach rather than sandstone. I didn't get a picture of that because of the unstable footing. I was focused more on staying upright with a baby strapped to me at the time. But the part with tidal pools was a sandstone beach. As a geologist, Klay was able to explain how we were able to see the strata in the stone. It was cool, but I'm not a geologist to be able to explain it here. 

We didn't stay for very long because we had our hotel in Oregon already reserved and needed to get there at a decent bedtime. 

The nest day our big event was going to the Devils Punch Bowl beach. This was probably my favorite part of the trip.

The water was a bit cold, which would normally be a huge turn-off for me, but we were still able to get our feet wet and the cliffs were fascinating to me. Plus, I could watch waves all day and be happy. 

Our first day in California we were able to hit one of the big redwoods and drive through San Francisco before we got to our hotel in Anaheim. That was our last long day of driving.

I got the best souvenir that day: a baby redwood tree. Unfortunately, it didn't like coming home from Arizona and kinda died. Fortunately it came with a guarantee that we were able to call in and now I have a redwood sapling coming to me. 

We didn't stop in San Francisco at all, but we were fascinated by the detail in the architecture that we were able to see with just driving through. And it reminded us that we would like to see an opera at some point. 

You'd think that with staying in Anaheim, we should have gone to Disneyland, and I will say that we did think about it and made the appropriate reservation and had space for one day doing that planned. But then we decided that Jon is too little to remember and so we decided to wait on that. Honestly, we were happy just having a day off from driving instead. That was Thursday.

Friday we went to the aquarium in Monterey which was probably the boys' favorite day.

We were greeted with a tube of tiny, translucent jellyfish. I tried circling them in the picture. Hopefully that makes it easier to see. Jon loved seeing all the fish and animals as well as all the interactive areas. We spent a very happy three hours in there.

Next was Vegas! We only walked the part of the Strip that I care about: Paris and the Bellagio.

I love all things French and we would've actually stayed in Paris, but our plan got shifted enough so when we went to shift our reservation they didn't have an opening. Next time. C'est la vie.

I also love the fountain show at the Bellagio and our timing was such that we got to see two, bracketing our time inside. I had to see the glass flowers on the ceiling, the conservatory echoed our time at the aquarium, and we had to get some gelato.

Then we headed over to Arizona to spend a week with family there. While we were there we hit a few sights as well.

We went to the zoo in Phoenix. Jon loved seeing more animals and it was exciting to have the lion roar while were there and the alligators were being quite active too. Then we saw the San Xavier Mission down by Tucson. It was my first time at a Catholic mission, so it was interesting seeing all the carvings inside. Charles enjoyed learning about this oldest mission in the area. It is the oldest because it was built using more native techniques so it has withstood the elements better than the others have.

On our way home we stopped by the Montezuma Castle National Park. It was very interesting and I wish we could've stayed a bit longer to learn more about it, but it was hot. This was the Monday after the the fourth hottest day on record in Phoenix, so we didn't want to stay outside for very long.

From there it was just a straight shot up through Utah to get home.

We basically just flew up the state, but we were still able to appreciate the geology and all the texture there. I also didn't know that the Manti Temple was just there by the road so you couldn't miss it. The Manti Temple is also one of my favorite "castle" temples.

But our favorite site by far was when we came out of Logan Canyon and could see all of Bear Lake.

Montpelier is just out of frame there to the left. So we still had another hour of driving to get home because of all the little lake towns we had to drive through. But now we are home...for now.

Marriage: Complements and Coming to the Lord

 
"Mawwage is what brings us togewah today."

(I had to do that.)

This month is our five year anniversary, so it seems appropriate for this month's testimony post to be about this third "M" (Motherhood, Missionaries, and Marriage).

Our love story is pretty basic. We met at college, got married, finished college together, and now, here we are, learning how to "adult" together.

After we got married, we had the opportunity to take a college class together. As a Religion requirement in the BYUI curriculum, we took the "Family Foundations" class together. To this day I look back on that class as one of my favorite and I'm using my class material for my jumping off points today.

The main material of the class is based around The Family: A Proclamation to the World and our text book was a collection of readings from our latter-day prophets to expand upon the teachings of the Proclamation.

In rereading the articles pertaining to marriage specifically, I found two themes that I'd like to share my thoughts on. It's nice because each has a pertinent graphic to go along with them.

The first is the idea of how men and women complement each other within the marriage relationship. The image of the Yin and Yang helps in visualizing this.

You'll notice that each half is the same size and they embrace each other more than a simple circle cut in half with a straight line would.  They also have a piece of the other within themselves. To me, this encompasses the meaning of "complement". Together, both halves become part of a perfect circle which they cannot do alone.

That is what marriage is meant to be.

Thinking of the parts that we share and how Charles and I complement each other, I can't help but think of our Types. Charles is a 3/4 and I am a 4/2. Sometimes it's funny to see how his secondary 4 comes out stronger than my dominant 4. In some things he has a keener sense of needing things to be clean and the paragraph in Carol's book about Type 4s and driving is spot-on for Charles.

The Type 4 things that we share are our loyalty to family, the strength of our personal convictions, and being strong authority figures in our respective circles of influence.

We also complement each other very well. His Type 3 push to get things done helps inspire me and helps me move on when I get stuck in a rut. My secondary Type 2 reminds him to be more gentle at times and my Type 4 comes in handy when things need to be done with more thoroughness (like helping him edit his blog).

Together we are trying to be the best parents we can be while helping to "parent" each other in our own growing processes. Another way to say that is that we nurture each other as well as our children.

Before I move on to my second theme, I'd like to add a quote from President Spencer W. Kimball:

In his wisdom and mercy, our Father made men and women dependent on each other for the full flowering of their potential. Because their natures are somewhat different, they can complement each other; because they are in many ways alike, they can understand each other. Let neither envy the other for their differences; let both discern what is superficial and what is beautifully basic in those differences, and act accordingly.

My second theme is that of coming to the Lord through the marriage relationship. I've already talked about how motherhood helps me to be more Christlike, but marriage does this as well for both of us.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the focal point in a covenant marriage relationship. Please notice how the Savior is positioned at the apex of this triangle, with a woman at the base of one corner and a man at the base of the other corner. Now consider what happens in the relationship between the man and the woman as they individually and steadily “come unto Christ” and strive to be “perfected in Him” (Moro. 10:32). Because of and through the Redeemer, the man and the woman come closer together. (Elder Bednar)

Charles and I are part of such a covenant marriage relationship because we were married in the temple. And, in fact, we had the above image in mind when we picked our wedding date, which is July 21 or 7/21.

Apparently, in Hebrew, 7 is the number that represents perfection, hence July, and then we multiplied 7 by 3 because of the three entities involved in our marriage (him, me, and God), so 21.

We are still human and sometimes it seems that the metaphorical length of the legs of our triangle are longer than at other times, but that is part of our journey. Remember, we are only five years into this and we covenanted to be together for eternity. Bumps along the way were part of the package deal that we signed up for.

The times when the triangle seems smaller and we become closer are the times when we are able to use the Atonement (think "at-one-ment") to forgive each other and become better individuals. It just so happens that those times are usually after a big "bump" came up in our road. This just shows that trials are really to be used to make us stronger.

So, Happy Anniversary to us!