Thursday, February 25, 2010

Life Wheel Part One - Family

I chose FAMILY as my first area of my life wheel to focus on improving. We already do have an amazing family life but there is always room for improvement.

First my objective: To have a happy, healthy family and provide a memorable childhood for each of our children. To be active in the development of our children through education and show examples of our core beliefs and family values. To incorporate the importance of extended family. To exercise tradition in respect to holidays and celebrations. To raise respectful, loving and caring children.

Both Blake and I like to be active in raising our children. We both came from loving families but had parents who weren't as involved as we would have liked. My parents both worked full-time and had my brother when I was 7 years old. A lot of focus was on the "baby" in the house and I was left to sort of grow up on my own and then become my brother's caregiver when mom and dad had to work. Blake grew up in a large house (5 kids) where his mom stayed home while his Dad worked long hours but his mom was sooo busy cooking, cleaning and caring for multiple children that one-on-one time was very rare unless it involved work.

We both try to do activities with our kids each and everyday even if its for a short while like playing a board game or reading a book. We also plan to take an annual vacation somewhere with planned activities for the whole family.

Each winter we plan on enrolling each child in one activity either skating lessons or possibly hockey for Zack next year. During the summer swimming lessons are mandatory and not negotiable in my eyes as we have a pool. Besides we live in an area where jobs are few and far between for teens that if our kids get their lifeguard status they will have something else going for them at that time. And that's it for extra-curricular activities. Some parents push their kids too much (we see that now with Zack's skating lessons for Pete's sake) and we don't want to do that to our kids. Our goal is not to push the kids but encourage them through THEIR interests.

Celebrating holidays etc., is another area we want to improve on. We do celebrate the major holidays like Christmas and Easter but the smaller ones like Valentine's Day were getting bypassed. This year we celebrated and had fun! It's another great way to spend time with the kids and show your love and appreciation for all family members.

The hardest part is incorporating extended family for us. We live about an hour away from my parents to the west and and hour away from Blake's Dad to the east. We are usually very busy traveling and its hard to get together. Also all of my extended family lives out East many of whom have never met my husband! This July we are taking a road trip with the kids to visit and hopefully the kids will understand how things people fit into our lives.

We try our best to be a untied front with discipline but it gets difficult when my stepdaughter Jenna is here. I tend to be the one who disciplines more naturally because I am with the kids more and it's my personality to be a bit bossy I guess...Blake on the other hand wants to have fun with the kids because he's been away from them all day and lets things slide a bit. All discipline in regards to Jenna should be coming from him the biological parent as if it comes from me it will tend to hurt our relationship as stepmother and stepdaughter over time. We are working on it.

All in all I think we are doing okay in this area. Our kids are still young 5,4,&2 and I'm sure greater challenges lie ahead. We will try as parents to be as open and honest with our kids as possible and let them know we love them each and everyday.

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