Well we passed another birthday. I didn’t want to give this one much fanfare.  Not because of who’s birthday it was, but because ladies never want to tell you their age. Although a milestone, it just isn’t a NICE milestone.  It was my wife’s birthday! 5/30 Happy Birthday Hon!

The “day of” wasn’t much, just a dinner out with the family, cards and small gifts. Last weekend she went out with a few friends and went to the day spa for toe nails, finger nails, facials and fun. They all had a good time.

While my wife was having fun with the girls, our oldest daughter and I were sitting on a bed in the emergency room at the Hospital. She decided that she didn’t want to breath too well when she woke up in the morning. We gave her a breathing treatment that she would normally get in the winter and it didn’t help right away. So we decided that I should bring her to the emergency room. I get the truck and put her car seat into it and rush back upstairs to get her and off we go.

Little kids always get fast treatment at an emergency room. So into a room we go..within 5 minutes! They check her out and decide that she should get an x-ray. She was a champ! After that was another breathing treatment while we waited for the medication. After the meds final arrived we had to wait until the doctor checked her heart rate. Well they didn’t tell ME what they needed so Suzanne and I started a little tickle fest! Quite fun really, it was nice seeing her in a good fun mood after seeing all of the fear on her face that morning. After I was yelled at by the room nurse, my daughter had to lay still until her heart rate dropped to normal. Then we were free to go! WooHoo!

Neither of us had breakfast and needed to eat something so my daughter got to choose! She wanted a hot-dog. Luckily down the street was one of the BEST hot dogs in the south bay. Happy Hound in Los Gatos! Wow was that a good dog. Then to the toy store and coffee for me. Soon after we left coffee, she fell asleep. Poor kiddo. Already a hard day and still not the end. Off to pick up the little one and then home. That was all before 1pm! WHAT A DAY!

This weekend will be a great one. Our local FCC Chapter, Families With Children from China, will be having our annual campout. 260 campers and over 55 kids under 5 years old. A lot of fun. So if any readers out there are at the campout, look me up.

I have written extensively in the past about the different forms of discipline that my wife and I use to guide our family. Today I would like to highlight one of our reward systems that helps us to encourage our kids and positively reinforce them when they are behaving well. Right in the heart of our house is our dining room table. You can’t really go to any other part of our home with out going past it. On that table we have a jar labeled ‘Good Things Jar’. We make this jar a focus in our daily lives.

The goal is to fill the ‘Good Things Jar’ by doing good things.
So whenever we see our boys spontaneously displaying good behavior we make a big show and praise them by letting them place between 2 and 5 “gems” (dollar store glass rocks) in it, depending on that particular action. For instance, if we are at a friend’s house and they says “please” and “thank you” on their own that merits gems. When we are the park and it’s time to go and they don’t whine or complain about leaving, that gets more gems. And when they work as a team, they get lots of gems.

So what happens when the ‘Good Things Jar’ gets filled?

They get to go to Chuck E. Cheese’s for a day of pizza eating, game playing, and obstacle climbing fun. This past Friday was one such day. They finally filled the jar and off we went to see Chuck E. Cheese and they loved it! My oldest boy even bought a pirate patch with his ticket winnings. He wanted his little brother to get one too, but I told him he already has one (we patch his lazy-eye everyday). He just said, “Oh, yeah.” It was funny…

It may not seem like much but my kids love the ‘Good Things Jar’. They love when they get to put the gems in and they especially love enjoying the results of their rewards. I hope our ‘Good Things Jar’ can give you some ideas that can help to positively reinforce the good behavior your little ones display. They sure need it and it builds their little spirits up so they can develop the quality of character that will be admired and followed when they get older.

I would love to hear about any of the rewards that you use in your home.

Sometimes it’s the little things you teach your kids that can really help them in life and even help them find their way back to you. I never thought about it before, but Misty has always taught Colby little things that at first seemed like it was really nothing. But then after finding out why, it makes a lot of sense. I won’t go into detail, but she has always taught him the correct name for his body parts. When she explained why, it was clear why.

Recently she has taught him our actual names and not just mommy and daddy. Sometimes he gets a kick out of it. We will be driving somewhere and from the back I hear “Hey Darrell” followed by a lot of giggles and laughs. He gets a kick out of it and so do I. I took a couple of days off over the Memorial Day week and we went to the Cincinnati Zoo. We had taken Colby when he was just under a year old, but he didn’t remember any of it. He has wanted to go again so we decided this spring would be a good time. I get discounted tickets from work and figured taking a couple of days during the week would be better for everyone to avoid the huge crowds. Colby couldn’t wait. He couldn’t decide what animals to see. He would tell us he wanted to go see the elephants and then before we got there he would say he wanted to see something else. The whole trip was fun and we went swimming at the hotel that night.

After going back to church the next week, Colby told the ladies there that he went swimming with Darrell Jordan. Everybody got a kick out of it. One lady looked up at Misty and asked if that was her husband. It’s cute and I laughed, but it wasn’t until I told the story to someone else that the real importance came to me. She said she didn’t know how many times she had seen a lost kid in a mall or store somewhere and the employees ask the child their parents’ name and all they could say was mommy and daddy. How important is it that a child knows not only their full name, but their parents and siblings as well.  Colby can also give Misty’s cell number and our address.

Now I hope that Colby never has to use this information because he’s lost or something worse, but if he does, I know he’s in a lot better shape than a lot of kids.

The other day my parents took us to the circus. I knew this was a fairly costly endeavor for them. We had a great evening out and our girls were captivated by the different acts. But as we were leaving my mother said to them that they needed to be sure to bring their own children to the circus.

The point really wasn’t so much about the circus itself as it was about creating memories. She was encouraging them when they had families of their own to be sure to create special memories for their own kids. That was very good advice.

Making memories does not always have to be an expensive endeavor, either. It can be the simple act of spending time with our kids doing something special. As parents, we need to remember that the time we have with our kids is limited and truly precious. We need to be sure to give our kids our time and provide them with memories that will not only stay with them but have an impact on them the rest of their lives. This is part of the legacy we can leave as parents.

Hopefully my kids will grow up remembering their dad as someone who wanted to spend time with them, play with them, and even be somone who was always there ready to listen when they wanted to talk about whatever was on their minds.

If I’ve learned anything as a father it is this: I can never spend too much time with my kids. 

My wife and I have always been big believers in public school, and now that our kids are in the system we believe in it more than ever.

Part of it is that we don’t trust ourselves to teach our children all that they can learn from a school. As a case in point, before my oldest son entered kindergarten we spent most of our time focusing on his literacy skills, so he entered as a very advanced reader.  Unfortunately we didn’t spend as much time on math, so while he knew the basics, his math skills lagged.

Then something interesting happened: thanks to his teacher he discovered that he loved math. As good of a reader that he is, and as much as he enjoys all that goes along with reading and communicating, he loves math more. Sure, if we homeschooled him he’d have the core math ability, but he certainly wouldn’t have been able to explore it as much as he does and will.

Then there is the socializing. Lunch and recess are just as important as the classroom. Over the years in schools and daycares, he’s learned to accept that not every family looks like ours, not just from us telling him or from books, but from being friends, close friends, with kids of different religions, races, ethnicities, etc. Some kids are vegetarians, some kids have two mommies, some kids have one parent. All this is just part of his day and his life.

Being among kids his own age, as opposed to his younger siblings, has had a great impact on his maturity. Often when I see him with younger kids he can become whiny and start crying at very simple things, but put him in a room full of 7-year-old peers and that just doesn’t happen. My son is about to finish first grade and the advances in both his intellectual curiosity and maturity are too long to list.

But almost just as important as his own education is ours. There are so many things we didn’t know or fully appreciate until helped by a teacher. It’s how we isolated problems with his writing ability and how we helped get past some of his ‘meltdowns’. Are these things we could have conquered on our own? Sure, over time. But each year he grows is a new experience for us. We’re not always sure what constitutes ‘age-appropriate behavior’ for a kid his age, and at each stage we run into the same problems. Teachers, good ones, help parents negotiate that as much as they help the children. Then there is the community of parents that develops naturally around a school. He’s introduced us to more people than we’ve ever met on our own in a decade of living in this neighborhood!

The last part is on us: to stay engaged in all of our children’s educations. They will only take it seriously if we treat it with the same seriousness in the home. We do, so they do. Because my son sees us reading, he reads. Because he sees us writing, he wants to write.

Will we have problems and disagree with some teachers? I’m sure. But then the onus is on us to make the most out of his education.