Well since I have been up at the crack of dawn I decided to use this quiet moment in my house for the challenge of writing a profile.  This morning I heard one of our roosters crow for the very first time, so had to go outside & have a look.  Being a mother, I was woken up by the distant noise, thinking it was my daughter crying out to me in her sleep.  When it wasn’t her, I had a bit of a scare thinking someone had left a crying baby on my doorstep.  Wrong again, thank goodness.  Can’t say it was a particular touching experience checking out the crowing rooster, out on the dew covered grass in the chilly morning air, having the dogs cover me with fresh morning dog saliva, but I’m awake now.

Firstly I’d like to say something about mothering/parenting that is on my mind & that I constantly have to ‘deal’ with.

It’s when I get it wrong.

I do get it wrong, often.  I do make mistakes, daily.  I do need to repent, regularly.

My career choice as a mother was always first in line.  It was paramount in my life that the day I was blessed with children, I’d be at home to raise them & have a wonderful life with them.  My memories of my own mother staying at home with us were enough to convince me it was what I wanted.

But that desire alone doesn’t make me the ultimate mother or expert care-giver.

I’d like to think of a good mother as someone who never ever stops trying.  Life throws at her all types of difficulties, such as, exhaustion, different child personalities & needs, marriage issues & family politics & your own personality, upbringing & the things you carry from that into your own life.  All of these have played a huge part on my ability to parent affectively & the way I know is right.  All of these have worn me down & tried me in many ways.  But all of these issues, I have given my all, & still do give all I can to overcome them & to be the parent I know that I can be.

I’d like to think of a good mother as someone who looks to those around her for help, support, encouragement & guidance.  Who asks questions & takes advice.  Who researches ways to improve & changes her old habits to create effective new ones that are better.  Who honestly tries to look at herself when there is a problem & tries to find what is in her to overcome it.  Who isn’t afraid to admit she is wrong, she made a mistake & she is sorry.

I’d like to think of a good mother as someone who gets down on her knees to pray for help & guidance.  That uses the spirit to help her determine right from wrong in parenting, & when she finds out something is wrong, she doesn’t do it again.  I’d like to think of a good mother as someone who parents with the Lord & relies on him for that extra counsel when so often needed.

I often think of the gospel principle which teaches us that family life, marriage & children, prepare us for Celestial Living.  I find as I go through the months & years that, that principle is so true.  We are being refined & perfected as we ‘get it right’ as I like to say.

You may think that I have a done a lot of bad things as a parent & so need to reflect on the above.  I am not a bad parent; I am just me, trying to be a better me.  I take parenting very seriously & know I have an eternal responsibility in being a mother & I sincerely believe that I am the biggest factor in determining how my children turn out, since I am with them the most, so I am just trying to get it right.

But some of the things I have found success at, I do really well & I’d like to share them with you.

I try to share with my children lots of parts of my personality.  I like to give them bits of me, & they just love to love what I feel passionate about.  You can really influence for good what your children love & treasure, by sharing with them what you love & treasure.  Because they love you so much & so unconditionally, they often will love it too.  I love to awaken the creativity in them.  I love to arouse their senses with new experiences & watch them grow.  I love to be there & experience these with them.  I love to hang out with my children & laugh & have fun.  I do need my quiet times alone as well, but when we are together, I love to have fun with them.  I always wanted my children to be my friends & to be able to talk to me, so I am always aware of that when we are together.

I have shared with my children my love for different music.  Having no natural musical talent, I love to delve into various types of music & feel what it has to offer.  From a very young age, I introduced them to musicals, music without lyrics, music from many different cultures & music I grew up with, & we have moved, danced & created with that music over & over again & still do.  It has given us much fun & joy at home, moving to rhythms & appreciating others talents.   Most times we have some interesting type of music playing.  This is something I do well.

I have shared with my children my love for books.  It’s one of my great loves & now theirs too.  From a very young age, I have read them books without pictures, classic child novels, & through years of listening, they are great readers & read a diverse selection of books.  Because of all this listening, without pictures, it has also made them good scripture readers.  For part of our reading routine, I have always included scriptures & always had success because of the other reading we have done, & vice versa.  We make going to the library a weekly event & enjoy the experience together.  I like to borrow an interesting selection of books, to open our eyes & give us new experiences.  The other week I borrowed a big book called ‘Extra Extraordinary Chickens’ & it had lots of pictures of all the weird looking chicken breeds from around the world.  I got this book for the very purpose of sitting with my kids & having a laugh at all the funny pictures.  We did just that & it was a big hit with all the kids – young & old.  We have a book of the week display stand that the kids get to choose some interesting book to put up that we like to look at during the week.  Books have opened up our eyes to so much, enlightened our brains & opened our hearts up to each other as well.  This is something I do well.

I often don’t have much money to spend so we go driving.  In the school holidays I love to pack the kids in the car, have some snacks, put on a good CD or listening book & we go & discover a new town.  The kids love this.  We check out suburbs we haven’t seen before & drive down new streets & look at the world around us.  It may sound a little silly & boring, but we really enjoy this & it gives us stuff to talk about all day & reflect on later.  They always request we do this a couple of times each school holidays.  This is a something we all do well.

I try to make them aware of nature, animals & plants & the environment around them.  I use this for teaching & talking a lot.  We recently went on a holiday to the Blue Mountains.  It almost drove me nutty, some of it, because as we were discovering the world around us, each of my 4 children would constantly say, ‘Mum, come here & look at this’.  This is what I do to them all the time, but with 4 of them doing it specifically to me, ALL day, I had to tell them to stop as it was doing my head in!  But I knew it came from me always teaching them.  This is something I do well.

I try to be their best teacher; because they believe everything you say & hang on your every word.  They take up your attitudes & bad habits, as well as your interests. 

Because I don’t have a lot of time or money or resources, I try to just use my own interests & what we have around us & to create an interesting childhood.  I don’t want to over indulge them in material things, but have them appreciate the simple things in life & learn what they can from what they already have.  It works well & I think I have pretty all round balanced kids.  Well it’s a work in progress isn’t it?

I believe that the work I put in with my children now will either come back with negative or positive returns when they are older.  So I’m trying my hardest to ‘get it right’ now, so my family can enjoy the blessings of our good investment in years to come with happy, healthy & complete adults.