Here's the MOPS re-cap from Thursday, Nov. 8:
Kim Avery, a Certified Life Coach from Winter Haven, spoke to the MOPS group. She titled her lecture as Holiday Hassles: Stress and Anger Management.
Mrs. Avery asked if we all have idealistic holiday images? Are they realistic though? She gave us a humorous quote from Thomas Edison: Insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Sometimes our idealism creates an impossible scenario with our families in which anger takes over. Anger is a natural response that lets us know that something is wrong. It indicates to us that something should be changed.
She took us back to the root of why we have families: Why do we have kids? The answers varied from to have our own Christian families, to the joy they give, to the love they give. Mrs. Avery says We have children so that we can love them and share a uniquely special relationship with them. She reminded us though, that children are sin factories and are chief manipulators. They know every button to push in order to get a reaction (anger, attention) from parents. Our job as parents is to learn how to harness that natural anger and put it to better use. Poor expressions of anger tear down the relationship with our child.
Here are three words for us to remember about anger: Pause, Pray, Plan.
Pause. Ask God, Why am I angry? Implement an appropriate plan to deal with the anger. Three things that can help us implement a plan are 1. Priorities (ours), 2. Training (of our children), 3. Appearances (reacting differently to children in public places because of the audience). When we keep our children as our top priority, when we train them consistently to behave appropriately, and when we continue to implement discipline in all situations, our children are much happier, and therefore, so are we!
First of all, she suggests that we all dump out our suitcase of life (activities, schedule, events, etc.) then ask God what you should put back in. It's a great way to reassess a busy schedule.