Remember Erma Bombeck’s great piece called, “If I had my life to live over.” If you don’t, click here to read it.

Because my daughter is getting ready to have her first child I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would do differently if I were going to be a first time parent. After you read mine you may have a few of your own to add. Be sure to share them by commenting.

Later today I will choose a winner for my Facebook Party. If you haven’t been there to LIKE it, go now and enter!

Parenting….What I Wish I Had Known

1. Treasure your husband and your marriage just as much as you did before you had children.

By the time I was 30 I had three children. I was also taking care of my terminally ill mother, my elderly grandmother and her sister and I started a new job. Guess who I wasn’t taking care of? Yep, myself and my husband.  Looking back I realize now that I would have been a better parent if I had been a better wife. I should have insisted on a weekly date night, but I didn’t. We should have made a point of going out with our friends occasionally, but we didn’t. There were years when I had tunnel vision. I was so busy just trying to get through all the things I thought I had to do, that I neglected my marriage. Bill and I have been married 31 years now and love each other dearly, but I know that when the kids were little I was more of a mother than a wife. I regret that.

2. Friends -I have always loved spending time with my girlfriends but when the kids were little, I neglected my friendships. Thankfully my besties still love me and now we are getting together more, but I should have made time for them long before now. Another regret.

3. Accept the fact that you will make mistakes. I heard a sermon once on “The Perfect Family.”  Basically, he said there wasn’t one. Which makes sense but for some strange reason when it came to motherhood, I wanted to be perfect. Why? Because I knew there were no do overs when it comes to raising kids. I didn’t want to have ANY regrets. The lesson I learned is that (at least for me) that’s impossible. Some of the time I knew immediately that I had made a mistake, other times it took years before I realized it. Regardless of who we are or what our background is, we are human and humans make mistakes. No matter how badly you want to be the perfect mother or father, you will mess up. Accept it when it happens and move on.

4. Trust your gut. Most of the time I did that and once, it saved my daughter’s life. Rachel was only 7 months old and she had just had her shots. The doctor thought she was having a reaction to the shots. I thought it was more. One rainy night at midnight I trusted my gut and insisted the doctor meet us at the hospital. It was spinal menengitis and for 3 days we didn’t know if our baby would live or die. I could give you an example of when I didn’t trust my instincts, but I think you get the point. There are things that moms just know. Trust yourself.

5. I should have let my husband do more when the first three children were babies. When the twins came along he HAD to do more because I simply couldn’t juggle everything I had been doing. I took care of the older three, but with the twins he changed more diapers, fed more bottles, and played more with them than he ever had the others. As a result they are extremely close. I should have stepped back and let him step up long before I did.

There are lots more things I wish I had known, but that’s a start. Now how about you? What do you wish you had known about raising children?

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Please welcome my friend, John Lunn. John’s blog is awesome and if you haven’t visited it before, after reading his guest post here please go visit him at his blog, Grampy’s Little Acre and tell him NanaHood said “hello!”

by John Lunn

I started a grampy blog a year and a half ago after my son moved back home with his kids. Crammed together in a small New England cape along with our 4 dogs there was no question this had the makings of a great blog: two grandparents giving up their retirement to start raising a family again, a dad who just got custody and didn’t have a clue what to do next, and three boys who couldn’t be different (a 10 year old jock, a cross-dressing 8 year old, and an OCD toddler). As the only woman, my wife had just one demand: “I want my own bathroom.”

Before I could write a word, I had to look inside myself and ask this question (a question that all parent/grandparent bloggers face): how honest and close to the bone should I write? Should I be candid and share what’s really going on in the house – warts, bad moods and all? Or should I do what is more typical and present a rosy impression of being a devoted granddad, complete with lots of smiley pictures and cute anecdotes. As we all know, life lies somewhere in the middle of bad moods and puppy smiles. Life is messy and life in a crowded house full of kids and dogs is the definition of messy.

I’m not sure how any fellow bloggers reading this handle their truths. Do you make a conscious decision to only dig so deep? Do you naturally know where the line for discretion is in your writing, as in your day to day life? If a touchy subject comes up that might fall in a gray area, do you avoid it or write it? I think this is a critical point for for any writer: how much are you willing to expose about yourself to share the truth? Is the truth important?

After researching and reading a number of blogs, I decided if I couldn’t be honest and share real feelings, good and bad, there would be no point to the blog. I try to reach into my thoughts and feelings every time I face the page to get under the piece I’m writing rather than just relate a story. That can be tough. After all, I’m trying to relate the dynamics of a multigenerational household in turmoil. I’ll write about anything as long as I can maintain the dignity of who I’m writing about. When it works, and I share a common truth about an issue, it touches my readers deeply. And when I’ve missed I unintentionally insult my family, which is painful. Sometimes, it’s not easy to know where the line is until after I cross it. Then it’s too late.

As writers, though, we all face this. When you put your foot in it, or say something inappropriate, should we say ‘I’m sorry’, move on and learn from the mistake? Or do we back off and lick our wounds and stop writing with honesty? Shouldn’t we be true to ourselves, even when painful, and true to our subject whether fact or fiction? Another tough call.

I’m a science fiction novelist so writing about the people I love is a challenge. However, I’m developing a sitcom pilot based on this little micro-world so I sure hope my family can take a joke.

How about it? Are you an honest blogger?

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NanaHood is  having a Facebook party this week (contest open until Thursday night).  The winner will get a free copy of my new book, Lost Lessons from Life on the Farm and they get to host the next Facebook party.  Here’s how it works.

All you have to do is LIKE NanaHood’s Facebook page and invite your Facebook friends to LIKE it too! Then leave me a comment letting me know you participated and next Thursday I will choose someone to have a Facebook Party (plus you get a copy of my book). Then the next weekend they choose someone and on and on.

So, how about it? Doesn’t that sound like fun! You can win a book, meet some new Facebook friends and maybe host the next Facebook party!

Go to my Facebook Page by clicking here and lets get this party started.

And if you have time and want to see a cool video that makes you feel good all over, you can do that too! Blessings to each of you. Have a great weekend and don’t forget to enter my contest!

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