Motherhood: Be the Light in Their Eyes by Erin Patrick of My Nuggets of Truth

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Often times, the bleak cold days of winter are the most challenging days of motherhood.  It’s not as easy as it is on warm days to send the kids outside into the cold.  They have to be bundled and unbundled in lots of layers.  They tend to get sick more and they need lots of extra supervision.  But we don’t like to see our children stuck in the house bored and getting the doldrums.  Moms tend to feel that it’s their responsibility to provide the fun and joy that lights up their children’s eyes.  Trying to come up with engaging, warm activities during the winter season is a challenge for even the best of moms.

Motherhood: Be the Light in Their Eyes by Erin Patrick

I had 6 children at home scanning a large age range.  Snow days and weekends were great opportunities for me to put on my thinking cap and come up with creative ideas that all of my children would enjoy, regardless of their age.  I struggled, as do most moms, with thoughts that in order to be a great mom, I had to come up with amazing new ideas all the time.  Little did I know that if I would have just asked a few of my friends, I would have found out that they felt the same way, struggling to be the best mom they could be.  Lord, help me if Pinterest would have existed then.  I would have seen all the wonderful creative pins of things other moms were doing and felt like a complete failure.

 

Comparison to other moms will steal your joy and rob you of precious moments with your children.  Instead, call your friends, put your heads together and share your best ideas on fun activities for the kids to do.  Now that my kids are grown, when I listen to them talk and laugh about special times when they were little, it’s never about the ingenuity or the expense of the activity.  It’s always about the family time we spent together laughing, learning new things and being surrounded by love.

 

The things we did were really quite simple and inexpensive.  They were easily enjoyed by all 6 kids, regardless of their age.  Here are a few of the things that we did when the weather outside was frightful

  1.  Light the fire place, roast marshmallows and make smores.
  2.  Go to the library.  I NEVER let computers and video games replace books!
  3.  Visit the local museum.  Our museum has free admitance on the second Saturday of each month and they provide crafts and activities for kids of all ages.
  4. Go bowling!  On outings like this, I counted on the older kids to help with the younger ones.  It’s always great to delegate!
  5. There’s always roller skating and ice skating.  These are great activities to use up all extra energy.
  6. Take lots of pictures of your activities and make a scrapbook.  (There were no such things as photo books when my kids were little.  I would make those now.)  The kids  would love to help make those.

These are just a few of the happy memories we made as a family.  See, they’re not extra creative or expensive or even brilliant ideas; just great ways to get your kids out of the house, put smiles on their faces and brighten up cold winter days.  Be confident that you are the best mom for your kids and all they want from you is a hug, a smile and happy memories.  Never doubt that your children will love any efforts you make to make  their world a special place.

 

ABOUT ERIN: Erin Patrick lives with her husband in the midwest. She has raised 6 children and has 3 grandchildren. Erin has been writing for several years, including an inspirational blog, articles for online magazines and content for other websites. She is currently developing a line of inspirational greeting cards using her own photography and in the process of writing 2 books.

Follow Erin at her blog, Nuggets of Truth on FacebookTwitter, and Pinterest.

 

This post was written by Erin Patrick of My Nuggets of Truth exclusively for Bonbon Break Media, LLC

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