As many of you know, I love to garden! One of my favorite things to grow is spring bulbs like tulips and daffodils. As you tuck those little pods of life into the warm cozy soil, you are hoping for better things to come! You trust that the hard work you are doing now will bear fruit in about six months when the weather warms back up and the spring rains begin. I love the view as I pull up to my house in the spring and receive a colorful “welcome home” from all the beautiful flowers I tucked away in previous seasons!
Wouldn’t you agree that disciplining children is very similar to growing a garden? When your children are young you take special care to nurture them and give them the skills they need so that one day they will grow up into talented adults who are able to embrace life and make the world a more beautiful place.
Tomorrow I will be heading north with my family to Bloggy Con 2013 in Sandusky, Ohio. I am so excited about this opportunity to meet other bloggers {face to face}, learn more of the ins and outs of blogging, and have tons of fun at Cedar Point Amusement Park!
I have connected with an amazing group of bloggy friends and we have some fun planned while we’re in Sandusky! To help us get to know each other better we have decided to bring little goodie bags full of some of our favorite things. If you know me, I’m an “outside the box” thinker. 🙂 I couldn’t just give them a bag…I’m giving them a flower pot like the one you see above. It will be full of my favorite things including homemade apple pie filling, MUGS coffee, a fun ice cream scoop {because I LOVE ice cream}, my favorite kind of hair tie, and of course a few little Conscious Discipline surprises too!
This is not your normal flower pot! This flower pot isn’t designed to grow flowers, it’s designed to grow acts of love. Whenever you notice someone doing something helpful or kind you put a flower in the pot. Our goal is to fill the whole pot with evidence of our kindness!
You can make a kindness pot too! Start by grabbing a flower pot and having some fun decorating it! I figured out last week how to use my mom’s Cricut machine to cut vinyl. That’s what I used to cut the letters. It’s so cool because you can just slap them on there and they are good to go! No glue necessary! I added a cute ribbon to each flower pot to give them a little extra flare. Now all you have to do is fill the pot with something like marbles, rice, Styrofoam, or sand and go to the dollar store and buy some colorful silk flowers to put in a basket beside the flower pot.
Throughout the day at home or school you and your children can be looking for kindness. When you notice someone doing a kind or helpful act be sure to let them know you saw them. You could say something like, “You put all your toys away and then helped your friends, so we could get done in a flash! That was helpful!”
Just like those little bulbs that are planted each fall with hopes of a spring to come, you are planting seeds of love in the hearts of your children. With the love and care that they find in their relationship with you their roots will grow deep and strong and one day bear beautiful fruit!