Friday Finds: Intro

I'm launching a new feature here at Wishful Thinking: Friday Finds. Every Friday I will post about a website or product that I find helpful, useful, or just plain fun.

This week's feature is a website I tripped across last night, Raising Godly Tomatoes.

Elizabeth, who writes the site, is the mother of 10 (yeah, count 'em 10!!!) children. She offers sage and Godly advice on childrearing.

Last night, I was feeling overwhelmed by parenting my two boys, ages 2 years and 4 months, respectively. I was at the end of my rope, and had stopped being an effective parent, and had become a screaming, irritated, short-tempered and very ineffective parent.

Raising Godly Tomatoes helped me remember some of the basic tenets of good parenting: namely that consistency and gentle correction are the most effective ways to raise children who are kind, respectful and responsible. It seems simple, but she presents her technique in a loving and easy to understand way, and supports her points with Biblical teachings.

To be fair, she does advocate "swatting" children on a clothed or diapered bottom as a form of correction, or to get a child's attention when he is doing an unacceptable behavior. I am not comfortable "swatting," but I think her perspective on the swat is gentle and would not cause harm to a child if you did do it.

I also believe I can use some of her other ideas and still have success, even if I do not chose to spank.

If you're having trouble managing your children, I would highly recommend that you spend some time at Elizabeth's site. It's wonderful.


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Thanks for reading my Friday Find! If you'd like to play along, here are the rules:

Write a post on your own blog about a "Friday Find." The find must be family friendly - this is a G-rated blog, and I'd like to keep it that way. You may use the graphic if you would like.

Then leave your name and a short description of your post, and link to your specific post in the Mister Linky below. It might look something like this:

Goslyn (Childrearing Help) - then that would link directly to this post, not to my main homepage.

Here's how to link to a specific post: On your blog, click on the title of your Friday Finds post. It should open in a new window, where the only post you see is your Friday Finds post. Then copy that URL into the Mister Linky. It's super simple.

If you link to your homepage, I will ask you to repost your link so that it links directly to the page with your Friday Find on it. If you cannot do this within a reasonable amount of time, your link will be removed.

After you've added your link, take a moment to check out and comment on some of the other great Friday Finds!