Lesson: Patience and kindness are essential to each other

There's a reason that folks say patience is a virtue. It's because, at times, it can be so hard to come by. That can be especially true when you spend all day every day with young children. Even the most patient of parents is going to have times when they've just had it up to here with something the kids are doing, or not doing, or whatever.

Once in a while, when my husband spends an unusual length of time with the kids (on his own or not), he shakes his head and tells me, "I don't know how you do it." Well, the answer to that is relatively simple, even if putting it into practice isn't always quite so easy. My "secret", if you want to call it that, is that I discovered a long time ago that I was a lot better at being patient if I made it a point of being polite to my children. Instead of giving orders right off the bat, I will ask nicely for the kids to do whatever I want done. I always say please. If they fuss and whine about it, I just repeat the request ... KINDLY. I don't argue, I don't reason, I just repeat the request ... usually word for word. Now, I'll admit, there are times when I get exasperated with them, and times that I finally just have to demand that they do what they're told. It happens. I'm no more amazingly patient than the next parent. I just know what works for me.

There's a two-fold reason I try to be polite to my children. To begin with, I don't want them to think that all Mommy ever does it order them around and get angry with them. I want them to remember their childhoods and their time with me as something that was a very loving and secure environment. But more than that, I want them to understand that it is important to always try and be nice to people, no matter how we may feel about what is happening. Ok, so your brother took one of your toys and whacked you over the head with it ... yes, that wasn't a nice thing to do and it hurt, but you need to try and BE NICE. My grandmother always called it "being sweet". "Be sweet!" was her parting admonition to us whenever we left their home. When my husband and I were dating he asked me one time why I was so sweet. I pondered it for a split second, and then said, "I guess because my Grandma always told me I was supposed to be!" I don't know how accurate that was at the time, but it's just what I thought of when he asked.

If I'm having a particularly difficult day with the kids, I'll try to take a time-out for myself, even if it's just a few minutes. Then I'll take a deep breath, calm myself down, and admonish myself to "be sweet". It seems to help me a lot. And for that, I suppose I should say "Thanks, Grandma!"

Lesson: If folks want to give you something, be polite and take it

Now I'm not suggesting that you have to take everyone else's garbage. I've got more sense than that, and so do you. What I AM saying, is if someone offers to give you a sack full of clothes or toys, take them!  "Eeew", some folks say, "I'm not putting my kids in second-hand clothes!" My question is, WHY NOT? First of all, how fast do your kids outgrow clothes? Especially if they are younger than a year old? The answer to that question is often "before I even realize they've grown into them!" Uh-huh ... and how many times to you think the prior person's bundle of joy wore them? Probably not more than about 6. So the clothes are practically new, and you are perfectly capable of washing them just like you wash your own clothes. "Yeah," you say, "but they belonged to someone else!" I'm sorry, but I have to laugh. Don't try to tell me that you NEVER in your life borrowed clothes from your parent, sibling, cousin, friend or someone you knew. EVERYONE in their life has worn someone else's clothes at some point. What's the difference? Personally, I get more than half of my kids' clothes from outside sources. Some of it is given to me, and some of it I get at Goodwill or garage sales. And since I have three boys, it gets a lot of use. A year or two back my sister-in-law brought some things over that were given to her by a co-worker. The lady must have had a son about a year older than my middle child. I probably got 8-10 sacks (and I'm talking 30-gallon trash bags, mind you) stuffed full of stuff. About 2 of them were toys, and the rest were clothes. I sorted through the toys immediately, one night after my kids went to bed, and kept about 2 or 3 things. Most of it was stuff they already had or stuff I wasn't interested in letting them have. I packed all of the rest of it right back into the sacks and took it to the nearest Goodwill store the next day. The clothes were amazing! I don't know anything about the nice lady who donated the stuff, but I know that she primarily shopped places like Gap Kids and The Children's Place, and she had enough clothes to keep triplets well dressed. I've now got about 6 big totes full of size 3T clothes ... my middle son never did even get a chance to wear them all, and now they are waiting for my younger son. Brand name clothes to fill a closet, and it was all FREE!

Long story short, I guess my point is this. if people give you something, smile and say thank you. It makes them feel good to be helping and to get stuff out of their hair, and it doesn't take long for you to go through it and decide if it's something you can use or not. If it is, great! If not, pack it right back up and donate it to someone else, or put it in that yard sale you're planning. Generosity, whatever the source, is a good thing!

Lesson: The National "Back To Sleep" campaign will make you completely insane, especially if it's your first child

I was like most first-time Moms ... I wanted to do the best of everything that I could for my first child, and stressed over the things that I felt like I didn't know. I read everything I could get my hands on, and while sometimes that was helpful, sometimes it wasn't. Case in point: the national "Back to Sleep" campaign, which stresses putting infants to sleep on their backs as a safety measure. Let me say up front that I think this is an important thing to do, and I believe that it has been a major factor in reducing the instances of SIDS (otherwise known as crib death ... where an otherwise healthy infant stops breathing and sometimes dies for no apparent reason) across the country. I have ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT that knowing the information is both helpful and necessary. That being said, be aware that knowing it will make you completely insane, especially with your first child.

It gets drilled into your head from the first moment you start reading parenting magazines and/or talking to your doctor and various other agencies ... the baby needs to be sleeping on it's back otherwise it might stop breathing and die. You put the baby to sleep on it's back, just like you're supposed to, but the program has done more than that ... it causes you to freak out about anything and everything that affects your child's breathing. Their first cold ... nose is gunked up ... THEY CAN'T BREATHE! Panic time! Was that a cough? Do I need to stay up half the night? You'll find yourself sitting by the crib in a dark room just making sure the little one is still breathing. You'll freak out the first time the baby sleeps through the night, because something MUST be wrong! It's a nerve-wracking state to be in.

The one bright spot is that it seems to be at least some easier as they get a little older, and with each successive child. At least that's been the case with my three. I still worry about their breathing at times, because my family has a history of childhood asthma, and I suffered with it myself. Still, when my third one came along, I was pleased to find that when he had a cold I just plugged in the humidifier, angled the mattress a little bit, suctioned the gunk as well as I could, and put him back to bed. I suppose you live and learn ... it was one of those first Mommy school lessons.

Lesson: If you've had almost no sleep the night before, your kids will be up and raring to go before 7 am.

This is the one that started it all. I'd been up nearly all night one night recently with a case of food poisoning, and by the time morning rolled around I was exhausted and feeling weak, and wanted nothing more than several solid hours of sleep. So what happened? Well, since it's summer, the sun came up before 6 am. And since I have young children (and especially, perhaps, because I have boys), they were up almost as soon as the sun was. Now, we have a rule in our house ... as long it is light outside the boys are allowed to get up IF they play quietly. If they start making noises and waking other people up, they get to go back to bed. It's a good theory, but is really lost on my children. Telling them not to make noise is like telling them not to breathe. It just ain't gonna happen. Such is Mommyhood. So, I got up, but I got up thinking about Murphy's Law (you know ... the one that says if something can go wrong it will), and the lessons I have learned and am still learning in Mommy School. What better name for it, I wondered, than "Mommy School"? After all, it is nothing but on-the-job training from the minute you are first handed your little bundle of joy. You never learn it all, you just make mistakes and try again as you go along. "Wouldn't that make a good book?" I wondered ... the "Lessons I Learned in Mommy School"! Ok, so I'm not writing a book, but maybe this is a way to remember all those little lessons for myself, and maybe I can entertain someone else along the way. Welcome to Mommy School!