Being a "Yes" Mom.

Our Motherhouse Board member Vicki Harkness sent this wonderful story on her own posting recently. We thought it was a voice to be shared. Hope you enjoy it!

Written December 9, 2007

I have read before about being a "yes" mom. I love being a "yes" mom but it is something I have worked at and didn't come that naturally to me in the beginning. I love coming up with creative ways to be able to say "Yes" to my son. Sometimes I fall back on old habits and want to just say NO. No can be so much more easier, but YES is liberating. It feels good to me and my family. It does however take creativity and patience. For example, my son likes to utilize all the rooms down stairs for his creations and play. I really don't mind. It's fun to see him at work. Yes, it makes it difficult to walk around but he's being creative. I don't want to stop that. I am fortunate to have help each week to clean the house, but before they come the toys and such need to be put away in order to clean. It's a rhythm that we follow each week, same day approximately same time. Before becoming a yes mom I would just say, "we're picking up your toys today as the cleaning folks are coming and that's that". Now way before they come I give reminders that we need to put some things away so the house can be cleaned. There's always a slight struggle but afterwards we all feel better with more open space and less clutter. It used to be a major struggle before I became a "yes" mom. I've been working on how to be more creative and even avoid the slight struggle. One night he built an amazing structure on the bedroom floor, which happened to be the night before our help is expected. Before he built the structure, both myself and his father reminded him that tomorrow we are going to need to move it before the help comes. He really doesn't like to move his structures once they are built for a few days. That morning I told him about how construction crews can move houses. We talked about it at length. We then talked about post and beam structures. We live in a house built in the mid-1700's so he knows quite a bit about post and beam structures. However, he didn't know you could move one by disassembling it beam by beam and post by post. We talked about how an old neighbor of ours moved an entire post and beam structure by labeling each post and beam with numbers and then drawing a diagram of the structure showing his matching numbered pieces. Joshua immediately starting numbering the structure he had built on the floor. He informed me he was going to move it to his train table so it would be off the floor but we all could still enjoy it. YES, yes, yes, no tears over picking up, mama didn't get her patience tested, and we got to learn about moving buildings in the process. I'm really happy when I get to be a YES creative mom, but there are days when sometimes I fall back on old patterns and the creative juices are not flowing. They are few and far between these days and it makes us all happy!!