Weekend Kindness
Reaching Others Through Kindness

Want to build a better relationship with your children, regardless of their age?  Here are 5 things that, if you start them today, you’ll see your relationship improve:

1. Be the kind of person you want your child to become.

If you go back through my childhood memory book, you’ll find a blank at the bottom of every grade that you’re supposed to fill in with what you want to be when you grow up. If you were to look at all of those blanks you would see that they are filled with exactly what I am now– and what my father was growing up.

Your children are impacted by who you are, what you do, and how you treat others. That’s why it’s important to think about who you are through the prism of what they will become. What you do today with them can inspire them or cause them to rebel.

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Friday night found us watching Pollyanna together…the old Disney version starring Hayley Mills. Now, we all agree that dear Pollyanna wouldn’t recognize a “real problem if she tripped on it”. *smile*

Be that as it may, this is such a great movie for families. Pollyanna exemplifies the “best” in our hopeful striving to teach our children the “good~better~best” lifestyle.

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We all have them– habits that is.  We have things that we do that totally annoy our spouse and they’ve let us know it. Be it something that is as big as smoking or picking your nose to the small things like snapping your gum or chewing with your mouth open, this week we’re encouraging you to promise to change that habit! You know that you’ve been promising for quite a while– now surprise them by actually following through!

Promise to change a habit that your love has been wanting you to change.

So what are you waiting for– make the promise and keep it!

The Complete Husband
By Lou Priolo

When last we were together on this topic, we were talking about maintaining a spirit of unity.  From there, Priolo goes into talking about how a husband can love his wife, and starts off with an amusing story of a man who comes to his pastor because he believes he loves his wife too much.  The obvious question is, do we love our wives as much as Christ loved the church?

From here, he differentiates between love the feeling and love the action– when the guy said that he loved his wife too much he meant the feeling.

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So, Saturday I sat down with my two oldest and watched 3-2-1 Penguins on Qubo (NBC).  This week’s adventure had them talking about envy– the green eyed monster, and I got to thinking. Next to selfishness, I believe that this is one of the biggest things that we have to deal with as parents when it comes to our children. He’s got it, and I want it.

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Each and every day presents us with a chance to make a difference in the lives of those around us.  We impact each person that we interact with on different levels, and the strange thing is that most of the time we don’t even think about how we will interact– even though if we did we could dramatically improve our relationships.

With that in mind, I want to ask you this question: What will you do this weekend to say “I love you?” It could be to your spouse, your family, or some friend, but if we start to ask the question now we should have something in mind so that when the time comes we actually have a better chance of making a difference in someone’s life.

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I’m so happy to have been invited to be a writer for Weekend Kindness. The invitation came at just the right time, since I recently decided to stop updating my regular blog (you can search the archives at For Better, For Worse, For Life).

I am a freelance writer and editor; I teach high school English at a University Model School; and I am in my eighth happy year of home schooling my two lovely daughters.

I’ve been married to my dear husband, Pete, for just over fifteen years, though it’s amazing how new it still seems sometimes. He’s a rocket scientist (yes, really), though we’re praying that somehow, someday, he’ll get to move permanently into vocational ministry. We’d like to put that MDiv degree to use–hey, it took him seven years to earn it!

As you can guess from the title of my own blog, my main focus in nonfiction writing is marriage. Sometimes I write about anecdotes from my own life with Fabulous Pete; sometimes I share a quote about marriage that I either agree or disagree with; sometimes I comment about marriage in today’s society–particularly the sad state of marriage among Evangelical Christians.

I am honored to join these other writers at Weekend Kindness, and I hope to make fun, encouraging, thought-provoking contributions to the site.