One of the books on my rather aggressive Lenten reading list is Raising an Emotionally-Intelligent Child by John Gottman. The book was published in 1997 and I actually read it shortly after that, mainly due to my interest in emotional intelligence.

I haven’t completely re-read it yet, but I have done a little reviewing. Based on research, Gottman says there are four styles of parenting — Dismissing, Disapproving, Laissez-Faire, and Emotion-Coaching. Those are fairly self-explanatory and the good one is pretty obvious.

A small part of the description of emotion-coaching is that an emotion-coaching parent …

• respects the child’s emotions
• does not poke fun at or make light of the child’s negative emotions
• does not say how the child should feel
• does not feel he or she has to fix every problem for the child (52)

The benefit of emotion-coaching is that children …

learn to trust their feelings, regulate their own emotions, and solve problems. They have high self-esteem, learn well, get along with others (52).

Gottman writes, “Emotion-Coaching parents serve as their children’s guide through the world of emotion” (63).

We want to be emotion-coaching parents, but we also know we have some growing to do. Due to the transition of bringing Sarah home from Korea, the last few months have been, and continue to be, pretty challenging. Reviewing/Re-reading this book comes at an important time (maybe Sarah was giving us a hint after all!).

Gottman describes five key steps that are part of the emotion-coaching process …

1. Become aware of the child’s emotion.
2. Recognize the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching.
3. Listen empathetically, validating the child’s feelings.
4. Help the child find words to label the emotion the child is having.
5. Set limits while exploring strategies to solve the problem at hand.

The book includes a self-assessment to help parents determine their parenting style (81 True/False questions). There’s also a self-awareness assessment to help you take a look at your own emotional life (84 True/False questions).

The book also offers a lot of practical guidance. And the final chapter describes what emotion-coaching looks like with children from infancy to adolescence.

It’s a good book for parents and those interested in emotional health/intelligence.

We have a pile of books in one of our rooms, including the books I’m trying to read during Lent (incidentally, I’m way behind!).

We’ve noticed recently that there’s one particular book that Sarah seems to be fascinated with. Maybe it’s the colors. Maybe it’s the fact that there are pictures of children on the cover. Maybe it’s a hint!

The book is Raising an Emotionally-Intelligent Child.

 

Sarah, who has been with us for about 4.5 months, turned one year old today. She continues to do well, and we are very grateful to have her in our family!

Unfortunately, even though today was our day off, the day got off to a rocky start. Sarah, who usually sleeps till around 9:00 a.m. got awake at 5:30, before going back to sleep a little while later. But the commotion got Ethan awake — a little before his normal wake-up time. So, from the start, nap times/routines were off.

Sarah and Ethan napped during much of the hour-plus drive to Williamsburg where we planned to celebrate Sarah’s first birthday with family and friends. While Sarah was a bit reserved with her first birthday cake, she still managed to make quite a mess.

It was a nice celebration and Sarah somehow managed to stay awake till the party was over. She (as well as Ethan) fell slept for most of the drive home. Sarah, who is usually not awake for more than two or three hours at a time, was awake today for around seven hours by the time we headed home around 9:15 tonight.

More than likely, Sarah will sleep very late tomorrow as she recovers from all of the excitement AND lack of sleep! After celebrating Ethan’s Gotcha Day last month, Sarah slept till at least 11:00 a.m. the next day, if I remember correctly.

Here are some of our favorite photos from the afternoon and evening …

 

My sermon last Sunday focused on Jesus’ time in the Garden of Gethsemane (“olive press”) found in Mark 14.32-42.

In the midst of the agony Jesus was feeling, he was also greatly concerned for Peter, James, and John, who were supposed to “keep watch” with Jesus. I love the question Jesus asked his friends when he found them sleeping a short distance away …

Simon, are you asleep?

Their sleepiness was understandable. It was late (probably after midnight) and they had just completed an extra intense Passover Seder. Jesus had warned them throughout the night his suffering was about to begin, and that in the process, one of them would betray him, one would deny him, and they all would desert him!

That would have been a good time to stay alert!

Jesus said …

Stay awake and pray that you won’t give into temptation!

Jesus asked his friends to keep watch, to stay alert, to stay awake … to live ready.

I’ve always remembered a quote I read a long time ago by Smith Wigglesworth …

Live ready. If you have to get ready when the opportunity comes your way, it will be too late. Opportunity does not wait, not even while you pray. You must not have to get ready, you must live ready at all times.

I wonder how often God asks us if we’re asleep. Jesus, who wanted his friends to be alert that fateful night, also wants us to be on guard and to pray that we won’t give in when we are tested.

Peter learned that lesson the hard way. Years later, he challenged Christ-followers in a letter …

Be on your guard and stay awake. Your enemy, the devil, is like a roaring lion, sneaking around to find someone to attack. (1 Peter 5.8)

It’s an important lesson for us, too. We must stay awake, be alert, be on guard, and live ready!

As I mentioned a few days ago, Leadership Network held a free online leadership event today called, Aha!, a 4-hour (plus) series of videos from around 40 different presenters talking about their aha! moments.

I had the event running on my computer (to the TV) the entire time, but I didn’t catch nearly all of it (other tasks and/or kids). But I think the quote that struck me most came from Pete Briscoe (Bent Tree Bible Fellowship), who shared his aha! moment …

I am no longer working for Jesus. I’m walking with him.

This was a great reminder that our call to serve and lead must always be grounded in a relationship with God. Nothing is more important than our relationship with God!

Dale Dawson talked about passion and stated …

And Jon Ferguson (Community Christian Church) offered six great questions for coaches/mentors to use with people they’re coaching/mentoring …

1. How are you?
2. What are you celebrating? Where are you winning?
3. What challenges are you experiencing?
4. What do you plan to do to solve these challenges?
5. How can I help you?
6. How can I pray for you?

I’m sure there were some other impacting statements as well, so I’ll try to catch some of the videos after they are posted in the near future. I’ll edit this post to add the link when it’s available.

We have blogged a bit about our journey through the ordination process of The United Methodist Church (see our last post or Our Journey Toward Ordination for the longer story). We are currently working through the final stages of this process, having been commissioned as Provisional Elders in June 2009. We are on target to be ordained as Full Elders in June 2011.

There have been some changes at the denominational level (reducing the final stage from three years to two) and at the conference level in recent months/years. With the formation of the new Susquehanna Conference (from the Central Pennsylvania and part of the Wyoming conferences), some new changes have recently been made.

We just learned yesterday at an informational meeting with the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry that a couple of the current requirements (creating a Bible study and writing a leadership paper) are being replaced with an Ordination Project. We think this is a good development and improves the process!

The Ordination Project is essentially a project that we initiate and/or lead in the church. It has to be something new, something innovative — hopefully something we’d be doing anyway! We will have to write a reflection paper on it as well as give a 15-minute multimedia presentation at next year’s Board of Ordained Ministry interviews (March 2011).

We were told that since this is beginning with our class of ordinands, that we are “guinea pigs.” I prefer “trail blazers.”

Fortunately, since we’re caught in the mid-year crunch (future classes will have two full years to plan and develop their projects; we have less than a year), we can go as far back to when we were approved for Commissioning (March 2009).

While we’ll need to put some more thought into it, it’s likely that one or both of us will do something with our journeys through the Five Practices.

The next step for both of us, though, is to write proposals for our projects. We have several months to submit them, but we want to do so as soon as possible.

We will have quite a bit of work to do and/or seminars/retreats to attend over the course of the next year, but one year from this week, we anticipate our final interviews with the Board of Ordained Ministry. Upon approval, we will be ordained at annual conference in June 2011.

I am grateful for my time at Asbury Theological Seminary for the doctor of ministry program (2004-2008). It was certainly worthwhile … and formational.

One of the statements that has shaped me the most came out of one of the three required courses, “Theology of Ministry,” taught by Dr. Stephen Seamands (author of Wounds That Heal, among others).

Seamands taught the following statement (subsequently published in Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service) …

I have entered into the ministry of Jesus, to the Father, through the Holy Spirit, on behalf of the world.

It’s a great statement. It’s both humbling — it’s God’s ministry, ultimately — and motivating. It’s been a great reminder over the course of the last six years!

(Incidentally, I think the fact that this statement is so memorable/impacting, speaks to the importance of “sticky statements”; see One-Point Preaching for more on sticky statements.)

Recently, I was reflecting on my journey, specifically as it relates to formal (ministry/leadership) education. A long time ago, I came to believe that the highest goal of education (for me, at least) was formation, not knowledge acquisition, or the diploma at the end of the program.

Formation is a goal of all personal growth (reading, seminars, etc.), of course, but a formal education setting offers an extra intensive personal growth environment.

This may not apply as well to more technical kinds of education, but the focus in ministry education isn’t just the content (Bible, ministry, and leadership); it’s also about being shaped/formed into the kind of person God can use for a lifetime in ministry. It’s more about character development and formation as a person than it is about attaining all the knowledge you’ll ever need (which isn’t really possible, anyway).

In my Master of Divinity program in the 1990s, the goal could not have been to learn everything about the Bible. In fact, I had only three specific Bible courses (Psalms, Ezekiel, and the Johannine Epistles) in addition to broader courses on the Old Testament and the New Testament.

While part of the goal was to learn as much as possible about the particular topics I got to focus on, the more important goal was to learn how to learn/study, so that after graduation, I can make the most of lifelong study of the Bible.

Now, it’s also possible that I came to this realization as a way to make me feel better about how little I actually remember from all those years of studying! Seriously, I know I remember some things, but I also know there’s simply no way to remember everything I learned. There *has* to be a higher goal!

It’s been a while since we’ve posted an update on how Sarah is adjusting (last two posts were Family Leave Report and Checking in on Sarah).

Sarah has been with us a little over four months now, and all along, we’ve been saying that she is adjusting really well. The two areas that were perhaps the most challenging were riding in the car seat and going to sleep at night. She’s doing a lot better in the car seat, although our lengthier trips are few.

Our biggest challenge in the past four months was getting Sarah to sleep at night. In the earliest days, Sarah would often cry (and sometimes scream) herself to sleep at night, up to 30-60 minutes. Nothing seemed to work. We’d usually hold her till she fell asleep, but as soon as we’d lay her in the crib (or even move toward it), she’d wake up, and not be happy about it.

The transition was similar for Ethan but, if we remember correctly, Ethan’s transition (i.e., going to sleep calmly at night) was much quicker. It has only been in recent weeks that Sarah has been doing well at night (she has long done well for morning and afternoon naps; nighttime was always the challenge).

For a while there, it seemed like it was taking forever to get her to this point, but in hindsight, three to four months isn’t really very long in the grand scheme of things, I suppose.

The current challenge with Ethan’s sleep is that he’s been getting up much earlier ever since we returned from Korea (6:30 am +/- an hour). They go to bed at the same time (7:30-8:00 pm), but Sarah sleeps much later (around 9:00 am or so). We’re hoping that the beginning of daylight saving times helps Ethan sleep a little later (we miss having more productive time before the kids get up in the morning)!

In spite of these challenges, though, we have been extremely blessed that both Sarah and Ethan normally sleep throughout the night! We’ll say it again, we are extremely blessed!

Here are a few photos of Sarah from today …

 

Last fall, Leadership Network offered a free online leadership event called, The Nines (see my posts, The Nines Marathon and More on The Nines). Now, they are offering another online event called Aha!.

Aha!, which is expected to last about four hours, will focus on fresh ideas in the church coming from about 40 different presenters. The free event will take place Wednesday, March 3, 2010 beginning at noon Eastern.

According to the site, pre-registration is required. This time around, you can pay $20 for some extras, including full speaker notes (in advance).

It should be good.