"The Hurried Child" by Dave Elklind

As much as I hate to admit it, I've decided this is the book I need right about now. I've been following this ladies awesome blog and she mentioned this book in her last post (I get a little bored at work when my doc. is not in.) I swear she posted about it just for me! The book talks about how a hurried child is a stressed child and how young children tend to percieve hurrying as a rejection...yep this book is for me. Here lately I feel like my patients are all but gone, and I just want my kids to be able to do things by themselves and not need my attention every second. I feel like all I say to my kids in the morning is HURRY HURRY HURRY, mom needs to be to work. I'm hurrying their lives away and truth is, they do need my attention every second and they deserve it. I want them to need me every second, I love them with my whole heart and love nothing more then being called "mom." I dont know what I would do without them. I have been praying for patients and for the lord to help me be a better mom. The kind of mom my kids deserve instead of the mean stressed out mom thats always telling them to hurry.

It was my birthday a few days ago (yes it's true, in 2 years I'll be the whopping three zero) anyway McKall was at the kitchen table coloring and Wyatt was being his wild man self and taking the crayons and coloring "pictuos" on the table. I was upstairs getting some bills taken care of and Chandler was fixing my favorite, BLT's (we hate cooking bacon inside so he went outside to do it.) McKall started yelling and crying so I went downstairs to see what was wrong. She had the meanest look on her face and was getting mad at the crayon box because she couldn't get it to close. She threw it across the room and said, "stupid thing." Then she swept all the crayons onto the floor with her hand. I immediately got mad and started yelling at the top of my lungs. I picked up all the crayons off the floor and threw them in the garbage. Then I grabbed the paper she was coloring on and went to throw it away but something told me to save it. Later that night as Chandler and I were walking up stairs to bed, I had the paper in my hand and he said to me, "isn't that cute?" I looked at him and said, "what?" He said, "that little birthday card McKall made for you." I looked at him and couldn't fight the tears. I turned it over and on the one side she had drawn some cute little balloons. I felt so bad, my heart was broken. I told him what happened and how mad I got at them. I asked him why he thinks McKall acts that way and gets so mad at the littlest things. Then the "so called" light turned on...HELLO Marianne. I realized that the way I have been acting lately has had a big impact on my sweet little girl. I'm stressing her out. I wanted to wake her up so I could tell her thank you and how sorry I was but she was sound asleep so I layed down by her and watched her sleep for a bit.

It's time for a change at the Mitchell's. A change in my attitude towards my children. A change in the way our house hold is ran, and the word hurry is now a bad word at our house. We've started having family prayer together and I can see a change in just the few days we've been doing this...it's an awesome feeling! I love my family more than anything. I hope and pray I can be a good mom and wife, have patients, take time, and not have any regrets of my kids' younger years. So my next purchase will be this book. Hope it's a good one, I'll let ya'll know!! P.S. Yikes, this is a long post, sorry if it's horribly boring and sorry there are no pictures either. I do have some fun ones of our St. George trip coming soon!! :)