26
January
2007
by Meredith Efken
I walked into our study yesterday, where my oldest daughter (just turned 9 years old) was supposed to be working on her school work at the computer. What I saw instead made me want to scream.
Against all our computer rules, she was on Google video, watching a video that had a very questionable title and that had the tone and mood of the sort of explicit material you hope to God your child will never stumble across. She had headphones on, so I have no idea what new vocabulary she picked up, but the images themselves were enough to make my heart stop.
When she realized I was there, she looked quite guilty, and shut the browser down with a muttered “Sorry mom.” But I knew I couldn’t leave it at that.
I was tempted to yell at her, and punish her in the hopes that she’d never try something like that again. I felt angry at whoever had produced the video and at Google for allowing something like that on their search engine. And I felt angry at myself for not having our computer locked down so tight she’d never end up exposed to such trash.
But I think God put a restraining hand on my heart because my words came out gentle and calm. “So what did you think of that video?”
She stared at me, obviously not expecting this response from her admittedly dramatic mother. Then, she said, “I didn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“They were mean to each other.”
“Really? What happened?” I was fearing her reply.
“These two girls were going out on a date and they slapped a waiter.”
Hmm…at least it didn’t sound like the video had shown too much yet. I think I got there in time to prevent the worst damage.
“How do you feel about that?”
Her face crumpled into tears. I pulled her onto my lap and held her, comforting her. She said, “I feel awful. It was a horrible video!”
The upshot is, she wanted to look up “dates” on the internet because she thinks dating sounds interesting. And she got way more than she could handle. We talked about how she needs to be a lot older before she’s ready to date. She agreed she wasn’t ready right now.
I made her look at me. “Listen to me. If you ever have questions about dates, boys, kissing, etc. don’t go looking on the internet for answers. You come to your mama. I promise I will never lie to you.”
And we talked about how there was lots of good stuff on the internet, too. (Evidently, she’d also watched a video of a baby goat being born, and thought that was fantastic.) But that she needed mom and dad to help her learn how to stay safe. I told her there was a lot of dangerous stuff on the internet, and if she couldn’t follow our rules about using the internet, then we’d have to protect her and keep her safe by not allowing her to use the computer at all.
I also told her I think God made sure I caught her, in order to rescue her. She agreed that she’d gotten in way over her head, and she even thanked me for pulling her out. But she kept crying. I think what she saw damaged her innocent little soul. We prayed together that God would repair the damage, but my heart aches to think of it.
So now, she’s grounded from computer use for a week. And when she comes back to the computer, she will find some new safety features in force, thanks to her computer-programming daddy.
I’m glad I didn’t yell at her. She already was suffering from her foolishness, and didn’t need further punishment. But part of me wishes that she’d gotten on some harmless kids’ site and that I’d had to yell and punish. It would have hurt her far less than what actually happened. I think she’ll be okay. I’m just glad I caught her in time.
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: On Being a Parent, Stay At Home Parents . 
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25
January
2007
by Meredith Efken
This blog exists not just to provide a way for you to get to know me. It’s also for me (and my readers) to get to know you. So why not become a Violet Voice by posting on my blog?
If you look at the top of the right sidebar, under “Pages” you’ll see a link that says “Tell Your Story!” This gives you all the information you need to be able to post your story on Violet Voices.
It’s pretty simple. You register, and put in your personal information that you’d like to be upgraded to a contributor on the blog. Then you log in and post your story. I assign it to the category for you, proofread it, and get it ready to post. Then I fit it into the posting schedule.
I’m especially looking for young moms and dads, and those who are involved with international adoption. But if you like the blog, and you want to be a part, you are welcome to do so.
Please let your voice be heard!
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: International Adoption, On Being a Parent, Stay At Home Parents, Women's Voices . Email This Post
23
January
2007
By Meredith Efken
I came across this last week–my latest release, @Home For The Holidays, is available as an e-book! I had no idea! But somehow it seems terrifically ironic and appropriate for a book told all in emails to be available in electronic format. Don’t you think?
Anyway, if you are a stay-at-home mom, or a stay-at-home dad, or any sort of parent, or anyone who loves a good comedy, you might give this e-book a try. Personally, I’m still attached to my physical pages and the feel of a nice hard-copy in my hands. But I think it’s cool to think that readers can take my book along with them on their PDA or Blackberry or laptop, too.
If you decide to give it a try, let me know what you think, okay?
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: Stay At Home Parents, Women's Voices . Email This Post
22
January
2007
by Meredith Efken
Found this CNN article over the weekend on what female celebrities go through in order to look so great for the red carpet at the awards ceremonies.
My thoughts:
1) ELECTRICAL TAPE??? They use electrical tape? THERE???
2) They PAINT ON muscle definition???
3) What would it be like to have an entire team of stylists at my command to make me look like such a fantasy?
4) Tape and underarm botox aside, the dresses and shoes are still….MMMMMmmm good! 
What do YOU think?
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: Women's Voices . Email This Post
16
January
2007
By Vasthi Acosta
Recently I went to hear best selling author, Karen Kingsbury, speak at a book store. Her books tug at your heart and make you laugh, cry and hope the story never ends. At the event she shared how she chose the path to become a writer.
In college she was floundering, not knowing what to do with her life. Then her journalism teacher (Let’s hear a cheer for teachers!) pulled her aside and told her, “Never stop writing, and come work on the student newspaper.”
Those words set her on her path.
The words of wise counsel.
Recently on an online writer’s forum, the topic of discussion was ‘who encouraged you to become a writer’. It was astonishing how many remembered someone in their youth who spoke words of light into their life. Many gave testimony to how they still treasured those words and those who spoke them. Others spoke of mentors who gave them words of advice, encouragement, teaching and hard truth.
More words of wise counsel.
Pinpoint a time in your life when someone encouraged you, offered you wisdom, opened up an opportunity, named your talent. Each one poured into your life wise counsel.
God speaks many languages — one of these is wise counsel. Sometimes the words may be hard to hear. Other times they are the exact words you least expected. Or words that confirmed what you already knew.
But when they come from God, they are always the words you need at your moment of need.
If you are struggling today, lost in a maze, don’t know where to turn — seek God’s face. Ask Him to speak to you through wise counsel.
He is faithful. He’ll bring into your life the person who will share His wise counsel.
He who has an ear, let him hear . . . (Rev. 2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22)
Written By: Vasthi Acosta
Posted under: Women's Voices . Email This Post
11
January
2007
By Meredith Efken
I don’t know about you, but when I first became a mom, I read all those books about the different phases I should expect my child to go through. I learned about the baby stage, the toddler stage, and then I got to the Terrible Twos, Preschool stage, Kindergarten stage, and so forth.
Is it just me, or is the only stage that mentioned much about tantrums the Terrible Two stage? I mean, when my little sweetie started pitching fits and screaming around age 19 months or so, I was PREPARED! I knew it was coming, and everything I read said I’d only have to endure it for about a year or so. Just be firm. Use time out. Etc. No sweat. I could handle it.
Well…age THREE came. And the tantrums stayed. This surprised and dismayed me, but my mother finally told me that “threes are often worse than twos.” And that by age four I’d have my darling back. She was at least partially right. Four was better than three. But we still were getting far more tantrums than I would have expected.
Kindergarten came, and we started home schooling. The tantrums REALLY picked up then! I couldn’t figure out what was going on! It had to be my fault. I must be doing something horrible wrong to cause my daughter to throw fits. I felt awful. I was a Bad Mom.
I noticed, however, that over those past few years since Terrible Two, the cause of the tantrums had changed. She would get frustrated about a new skill she was having trouble with. Or her routine or expectations would be upset. Or she would get caught and get into trouble. It seemed like any time she experienced any strong emotion, it would overwhelm her and be expressed as rage.
It was pretty scary, actually.
I finally had to adjust my thinking about how I was dealing with her tantrums. They weren’t because she is spoiled or selfish. They were a matter of her lacking the ability to deal with her own emotions. So instead of ignoring her or putting her in her room like we used to do when she was two, I started working with her on the idea of self control. So when she did start to get frustrated or when she did become angry, I started telling her she needed to excuse herself and go to her room to get self control.
The problem has always been that I didn’t really know how to help her find that control within herself. Sometimes, after she would stomp upstairs and start screaming and throwing things, I would go up after her and just hold her to calm her down. But more often, I was too angry myself to be in a comforting mood, so would just let her thrash it out on her own.
The only way of controlling myself that I knew of was to simply stuff my feelings inside and not express them. I know from personal experience how unproductive that method is. So I let her rage, feeling helpless and a failure.
I wish I had found this article during those times. It draws the clear distinction between the Terrible Two type of tantrum, and the type of tantrum my daughter was dealing with as an older child. And it offers a lot of good advice about how to deal with especially the latter. It’s something not enough parent books address.
My daughter is nine now, and hasn’t had a tantrum in months. I fear we may be trading in tantrums for teenage attitude far too soon for my comfort. But I’m glad to see that she is learning to not let her negative feelings overwhelm her. I just wish I had known better how to help her through those times.
But at least I’ve come to understand better what was causing them. A lot of very intelligent, gifted children struggle with the intensity of their own emotions. And she has the added challenge of coming to terms with some unpleasant aspects of her own personal history–adoption, abandonment, etc. Looking back now, it seems it should have been obvious to me what was going on, but I guess I have to give myself the luxury of having to learn some things the hard way.
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: On Being a Parent . Email This Post
10
January
2007
By Meredith Efken
Having challenged myself with my last post about making changes in my own life to create more peace in my home, I sat down over the weekend to work out a “New and Improved” daily schedule for my children. I know that if I have things planned out for them, then that helps me find time to do MY work–whether it’s blogging, writing, editing, or whatever.
I know this…and yet I tend to fall off the wagon with it on a fairly regular basis, and the bump from the fall hurts! (WHY I do this to myself, I’ll never figure out…) So after things get to be absolutely intolerable, and the girls are running around pecking each other like nasty little hens, and I’m feeling like the world has become one of those spatter paint spinners gone mad, THEN I realize that it’s because I’ve allowed any semblance of structure to fall apart. And it’s time to…
Get Back On A Schedule!
I hate schedules. I really do. I think it was probably because we had lots of them when I was a kid, and they were a source of stress and tension. I understand now why my mother felt they were necessary, but I’ve always been rather reluctant to utilize this tool for myself. However, you get to a point after so much lunacy that you are willing to try anything, and that’s where I came to on the issue of structuring my children’s day.
I started with a timid, vapid schedule. “In the mornings I will do school. In the afternoons they will take naps or have quiet time, and I will work.” Yes, I can hear all you experienced mothers laughing! It was like our nation’s first try at the constitution. Too wimpy to be useful.
So gradually I ramped up. Two hour slots eventually got whittled down to one hour slots. And miracle of miracles–it really did work! And to keep things from getting tense and making the schedule feel like a prison sentence, I’ve told my girls that this is a guide only. A tool to help us. And if we get off the schedule, IT’S OKAY! I won’t get mad, and they needn’t freak out either.
I’m proud to say my newest schedule is in HALF HOUR increments! And it is working quite well. We’ve gotten more accomplished in the past three days of school than we did all of December, and I have gotten eight hours of editing done and several more hours of work on my own writing projects.
It amazes me what a workable routine can do for the amount of peace in a home. My children actually are much happier when there is a routine. I guess I was the bizarre one for not liking routines as a child. And while I’m still not routine-oriented by nature, I have come to appreciate their usefulness as an adult.
Oops, my blogging time is almost over (according to my schedule). Better scoot!
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: On Being a Parent, Stay At Home Parents . Email This Post
5
January
2007
By Pattie
Yep, I’m a resolutions girl. Every year, without fail, I make a list of ways I’d like to improve, things I’d like to accomplish or finish, and promises I make to myself and to God.
In fact, making new resolutions is one resolution I keep each year!
This year was no exception. I made my list. I tried to make it as realistic and reachable as possible, but I still went above and beyond what I will probably be able to accomplish. And that’s okay.
I’d like to think I learned something valuable about myself in 2006 that I carry into 2007: I set myself up for failure far too much.
It’s true. I do. Then I beat myself up for it. It’s a vicious cycle.
Therefore, for 2007 I’ve decided to work with my procrastinating, perfectionistic personality as it is. Instead of trying to change who I am into someone I could never hope to be, I’ll try to accomplish my goals in spite of my shortcomings. My theory is if I work with who I already am, I’ll be more likely to succeed.
Ask me in a year how it worked.
Written By: Pattie
Posted under: Women's Voices . Email This Post
4
January
2007
by Meredith Efken
I want my home to be peaceful. I want to teach my children to be peace makers. I’ve had to learn that it starts right here with me. I have to be at peace and a peace maker before I can ever hope to transmit those values to my children.
I’m sure most of you can’t relate at all to what I’m about to share…but I’ve had a hard time learning to manage and control my temper. When I feel angry or frustrated, my initial tendency seems to always have been to lash out–yell, criticize, be sarcastic, accuse. Such responses hardly make for a peaceful interaction with the other person. (I know, I know…shocking!)
I still have my days when, despite my best intentions, I do choose to give vent to frustrations and anger. But I’m doing a lot better. Here are some of the things I’ve done that have helped me learn to manage those negative feelings in a more constructive way:
1) Choose to respond more slowly. I’m intuitive, and I tend to act and think at the same time. But when I force myself to slow down, I give myself a chance to think about the consequences of my initial response. The age-old advice to take a deep breath and count to ten is classic…because it really does help.
2) Whisper instead of shout. Gotta be careful with this one when dealing with the kids, because whispering can actually come across far more threatening and sinister than even yelling. But when I catch myself raising my voice and deliberately re-tone it down a few decibels and a few pitches, it’s amazing how much more in control I automatically feel.
3) Ask myself WHY I’m feeling angry. That may seem like an odd question to reflect on, since it should be perfectly apparent why I’m mad. But when it’s a question of “Why am I reacting so angrily to the fact that my daughter has spent all afternoon NOT cleaning her room?” it really becomes a great question. If my anger is really just about the messy room, then it’s rather irrational. A messy room might be an irritant, but it shouldn’t make me blow my top.
But I’ve discovered an uncomfortable truth about myself. Usually when I’m angry, it has little to do with the situation at hand. And it often has little to do with the person I feel angry at. It has to do with…ME. In the case of messy rooms and procrastination, I had to face the fact that I was angry with my daughter because I dislike the same “hate to clean my room” trait in myself. I felt ashamed of my own messy habits, and felt out of control because my house is messy when everything in my upbringing and in my culture says mess is BAD. So I was projecting that self-shame and self-dislike onto my daughter by expressing my anger at her.
The same sort of things happen with many other irritants that come during the course of an average day of mothering. Things that really–in the scope of life–are neither crucial nor matters of ethical or moral importance, things that don’t merit righteous indignation, much less regular, everyday indignation…these were the things that tipped me over the edge. And when I faced up to the real roots of my anger in these situations, I was able to deal with it on a deeper, more lasting level. This has made a HUGE difference in how I view my anger responses.
4) Make changes in my thinking or lifestyle to relieve those deeper issues. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of facing up to the problem–like my hang-ups about having a messy house. I took a good, long look at that issue. And I decided that there’s no rational or moral reason to beat myself up for not being a perfect housekeeper. It’s all cultural. As long as I’m not posing a health risk to myself or my family, there’s no point in my feeling shame or anger for not keeping better order. I cut myself some huge, much-needed slack. In doing so, I found my anger melting away. Now, I’m able to deal with my messes, and those of my children, in a much more pragmatic, matter-of-fact manner. It’s quite freeing.
Other times, I’ve had to make changes in my lifestyle–whether it’s eating better or getting more sleep. Exercising. Or it might just be taking the time to pamper myself a bit–get a massage, or a pedicure. Treat myself to a new book or a cup of chai. If I’ve worn myself ragged, then it’s foolish to expect that every-day irritants will not overwhelm me.
Sometimes, I need to rethink how I’m structuring my day. If I’m yelling at the kids because I’m feeling stressed because I’m not getting done what I need to get done, then it’s a good sign that I need to rework the schedule and try something new. When I let myself get creative about finding solutions, I’ve almost always discovered that things weren’t as hopeless as I thought. And that, of course, means…no more reason to yell.
There’s lot of other suggestions for how to manage anger. Learning Peace has a good article. So does AngerMgmt.com. It takes a bit of self control and discipline, and a willingness to be honest with yourself. But I know from personal experience that progress is possible.
And it DOES bring peace into your life and into your home. At least, it did for me.
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: On Being a Parent, Stay At Home Parents . Email This Post
2
January
2007
by Meredith Efken
Happy New Year! I was pondering what to write about for my first post of 2007. Goals are SO passe, everyone does them at this time of year. And anyway, that’s not what I discovered is on my heart.
We live in such a violent world. A world where you push first before the other person can shove you. Where “preemptive strikes” (euphemism for starting wars) and picking fights has become common wisdom. This is a world that glorifies the bloody, romanticizes fighting, where being tough and uncompromising is considered virtuous.
It’s a culture where listening and negotiating is considered a sign of weakness. Where humility is scorned and soulful reflection and deliberation is mocked. Act now, hit hard, don’t retreat, and never apologize–those are the messages being hurled at us from every direction.
Even in our Christian communities, this lifestyle of aggression and violence is being accepted as normal, and even embraced and admired by some. As a novelist, I see this trend in our Christian fiction–sex and bad language are still taboo, but there is almost a no-holds-barred attitude about violence. You can stack the bodies to the ceiling, and even place decapitated human heads on your kitchen counter, but we are incensed by overt sensuality or cussing. Many of our leaders send us the message that violence is necessary, that working for peace is a liberal, unChristian thing to do. Some even believe that wars and death and violence are good and to be celebrated because this is a sign of the “end times” and should be encouraged.
How far we have wandered from the teachings of Jesus! The one who talked about turning one’s cheek, who taught that ones who make peace are blessed in the earth. The one whose birth was announced by angels proclaiming peace on earth! This Jesus, that we strive to follow, was a person of peace, of love. When we follow the way of violence, we are combining ungodly elements of our culture into our faith, and this corrupts our faith.
So this year, I want our family to become better peacemakers. I’ve been reading about how to teach kids to manage conflicts and anger, and how to make peace. I’ll post on what I’m learning and what resources I’m finding in the coming days.
To me, this IS living out my faith in Jesus. This is following Christ. What I hope is that when people come in contact with me or my children, they will come away feeling a deeper sense of peace and calm, an oasis amid the desert of violence that has become our world.
Written By: Meredith Efken
Posted under: On Being a Parent . Email This Post
