Cherish your cherubs project: PRAISE your cherubs

If you have just discovered my blog or are dropping by after some time away, every Monday for the next couple of weeks I am running a Cherish your Cherubs Project here on my blog. A little project to help us appreciate and adore our children/cherubs more and a way to record and remember them in our lives. Every week other bloggers link up and share how they have gone in their lives and so far we have done:

Week 1 - Record

Week 2 - Remember

Week 3 - Interview.

Last week I had a great giggle reading over some of the interviews you conducted with your cherubs. What delightful minds they have and hilarious thoughts on life. I especially love how you even interviewed your babies and recorded what they had to say. So Awesome!

This week the topic is PRAISE. I wanted you to try to spend more time speaking positively to your cherubs. To actively seek out good things that they are doing and to praise them for it. If you are like me this meant slowing down a little and keeping it in your mind as you went throughout your day. My personal goal was to:

Basically, for me this week it personally involved me biting my tongue and trying to hold back on saying negative comments. I even surprised myself by holding back on some good opportunities to make some serious fun out of a few of my cherubs. I knew it would be an awesome laugh if I said something but also knew it would come across as negative to the child involved and it really was a critical comment. But, man were they golden opportunities that I passed up!

As I went about my week trying to dish out a little more praise to my cherubs I started to notice something interesting happening. The more praise that I shared, the more praise I started to see.

I live a busy life and once I started to slow down and to focus on the positive, I started to see that my cherubs were praising each other as well. I was amazed to see that we have one child who is just brilliant at sharing love and praising others. I had seriously never noticed how much he does it before.

Let me introduce you to my P-Man (Praise Man), Eli. This boy is a walking praise generator.

I heard him telling Liahona: You are the most beautiful person in the world.
Constantly telling Matt: Dad I love you soooo much.
Telling me: Mum, I am going to give you a massage every night.
(Yep! He is currently my favourite child! Haha!)
Then while he is massaging me: Mum, you are so beautiful
(Hmmm...did I mention he is currently my favourite child!)
Telling Nathan several times a day: Nathan you are awesome
and many more praises to the rest of the family.

It is a little sad that he is too young to read properly because I would give him this list and let him just go for it. We could all benefit from some more kind words in our family.

On special moment that happened for me personally this week that involved praise came from Liberty. This week I went to the gym for the first time in ages. I was really nervous about it and kind of upset that I could not fit into my gym clothes like I used to. Hence, the reason for needing to get back into exercising and the gym! So here I am in my room, trying on t-shirt after t-shirt looking for one to wear that actually fits, that is not too tight. 

In walks Liberty. I am feeling discouraged. I have a pile of t-shirts on my bed and I am wearing the last one I have tried on. Liberty walks up to me, raises her eyes to mine and simply says: 

'Mum, you look pretty.' 

Me, well I start to cry. It was just what I need to hear to get me out the door and I wore that t-shirt to the gym with Liberty's comment ringing in my ears the whole time, getting me through my gym experience. How wonderful it was to have some praise come back to me when I really need it and out of the mouth of babes to uplift and inspire me. It is the special moments like those that make this all worth while.

I hope that you have been enjoying the last couple of weeks with spending a little more time focusing on your cherubs and now, it is time to move onto what I would love for you to do for Week 5. Write.

For next week I would love for you to spend some time writing out your feelings to your cherubs. I know not all of you have cherubs that are at ages where they can read and so this may be a little difficult. I thought that maybe you could do some of the following suggestions:
*Write them a letter (they could read now, you could read to them, for them to read in the future)
*Leaving them a note on a pillow
*Hiding a note in a lunch box
*Make a poster to surprise them when they come home
*Spell out words with food, toys, lollies or anything else they love

Vanessa suggested: I try to write them little notes and put them in their lunch box or put a sticky note heart with a personal message on their bedroom door so they see it when they come home from school.

I found this cute note you could copy and print out to use on Pinterest (no source):

Kate at Picklebums has these cute lunch box notes HERE

More cute notes from HERE

60+ free printables from Kind over Matter HERE

Now for the fun part. Time to link up your Week 4. Praise moments you have to share. This can be a new blog post or an older blog post. Anything that helps us to learn a little more about your cherubs or family in relation to Praise. I will leave the link open for the rest of the week incase you want to link up with us here. I hope that if you do decide to link up a post that you will take the time to read and comment on a few others to spread the blog love. If you are just finding out about this project you are most welcome to join in at any time. You do not have to start from week 1. I am so looking forward to reading what you have to share and thanks so much for joining in.