Growing Up With Epilepsy

I’m 14. One day I’m watching an after-school special with my classmates about a kid with Epilepsy. He has a seizure during a basketball game. Isn’t that funny? We’re laughing. We don’t understand. We all join in on the laughter.

It’s a month later and now I’m having a seizure.

A week after that, I’m on medication that makes me fall asleep in the middle of class. I’ll be on it for the rest of my life. I’ll drop a gallon of milk, because my hands are so unsteady I can’t hold it.

My teachers will get mad at me, because my otherwise beautiful handwriting somehow turns sloppy. As it turns out, a gallon of milk isn’t all I can’t hold. Even a pencil is tough.

I’ll break my jaw in three places. I’ll fracture my skull. I’ll get 42 staples in my head. I’ll break off all of my front teeth. My platelets will drop into the below low normal range, spotting me with bruises, and we won’t know why. I’ll have bone marrow aspirations to discover.

I’ll lose hair. I’ll gain weight. I’ll be scared to get pregnant. I’ll have high-risk pregnancies. I’ll have seizures in an airplane, at the gas tank, and in a parking lot. I’ll give speeches and wonder every time what will happen if I fall and whether people will still see me as normal if I do.

But, I don’t see all that coming when I’m 14. I can’t know it, but even still, I have had a seizure. And suddenly the after school special doesn’t seem as funny. I’m not laughing anymore. I work hard to hide my secret, because I don’t want the kids laughing at me like we laughed at basketball boy. Because now, I’m that kid with Epilepsy. And I grow tired trying to hide my secret. And finally, I have a seizure that everyone sees and the secret has been uncovered. And, I am horrified and relieved all at once, even as I struggle to learn that everyone has their things and that there is no such thing as normal.

Parenting Children With Health or Other Challenges

Back to current time. You’re the parent. You have a challenged child. Meaning that your child has Epilepsy or Diabetes or is on the Autism Spectrum or has Schizophrenia or Food Allergies or Low Self-Esteem or a mixture of other challenges. You want to raise him or her with confidence, with the opportunities to enjoy a happy childhood without worrying about such seemingly adult challenges like health or mental health or other such issues. You want to help navigate through the symptoms. You are scared. You don’t have all the answers. What do you do? Where do you go for help?

While I can only speak from the point of view of someone who has epilepsy and not the parent of a child with epilepsy, I have had many conversations with my mom about how she parented me.

7 Keys to Parenting a Challenged Child

My 10 year-old son suffers from anxiety, so now it is my turn to take all of the lessons I learned from her and to apply them as a parent. Here are some things I learned from my mom that I hope will also help you:

1. Increase understanding. First and foremost, learn everything you can about your child’s diagnosis. This could take years, but search high and low, online and offline, to get in the know!
   X 
2. Find support. Whether you join a support group in your community or find one online, make sure to reach out to others with children in similar circumstances. Not only are other parents great resources for information, they will help you feel that you aren’t alone in your parenting struggles.
   X 
3. Set realistic expectations. Once you are armed with information, help your child learn to understand his or her challenges. Do this in a factual way. For example: “You have epilepsy. If you don’t take your medication, you will most likely have a seizure. If you do take your medication, you may experience some side effects, but they won’t be as bad as having a seizure.”
   X 
4. Learn to live within limitations. I found that I really wanted to be in control of my health, so learning what I could and couldn’t control was really important to me. In my situation, I could control whether or not I took my medication. But I couldn’t control whether I had a seizure. However, the risks of me having one almost 100 percent decreased if I took my medication. So, it was up to me! Knowing that helped me feel in control and like I had options.
   X
   Note: I pushed every limit as a teen. I skipped taking my meds. I lived with a lot of stress. I stayed out all night in college, etc. And, I reaped the consequences every time until I finally said: “I HATE having seizures. I’d rather live within my limitations than have one.” So, if your child is pushing limits, consider it part of their growth process of learning to live within their limitations. Ultimately, it is up to them to decide the lifestyle they want to have and to choose accordingly.
   X 
5. Don’t compare. Every person, whether you can detect it or not, lives with challenges. Not everyone has health issues. You just can’t compare your challenges as a parent to the challenges other parents face. So don’t compare! You’ll be miserable every time.
   X
6. Give opportunities for growth. If I could only give huge kudos to my mom for one thing, it would be for her ability to help me feel like I could do anything, even when some things were more difficult for me. If your child is challenged, regardless of how severe, find opportunities that make sense for him or her and offer ways to help achieve success in those areas.
   X
   My mom was really scared to let me travel alone, but I really wanted to be a foreign exchange student. She got a lot of push back from other parents, including family members, when she encouraged me to interview for a spot. But I never knew that until I was an adult. All I knew as a teenager was that she helped me prepare for the interview and was ecstatic when I got accepted into the program. My dad was the same. She always made me feel that I should reach for the stars. If I worked hard enough or was resourceful enough, she thought I could achieve anything. It didn’t mean she wasn’t scared. Or didn’t lose sleep. But, I grew up thinking I could do anything and eventually forgot epilepsy may get in my way.
   Note: I did have a seizure while I was a foreign exchange student and my mom’s worst nightmare came true. But, it taught us all that I could handle my health challenges on my own, which was an important lesson for a 17-year old to learn (and the parent of a 17-year old)!
   X 
7. Get help! Some challenges are far more severe and difficult to deal with than something like epilepsy. I have a brother with schizophrenia and I always think that my epilepsy prepared my mom for that much bigger challenge and yet if you ask her, she’ll tell you that nothing prepares you for something like Schizophrenia or mental illness in general.If you are feeling hopeless or don’t know what to do, reach out to someone with more information. Talk to a doctor or other parents about ways to get help and then seek out that help. Information is the first step, because knowledge is power.
   X
8. Have hope! This is so easy to say, especially in tough moments. But, do whatever you can to build a reservoir of hope. Recognize that you may have to go through a grieving process. Come to terms that this situation may be long term. Then, have hope, knowing that with information, support, and going through the other steps listed above will help you to do everything you can to influence your child’s life. Ultimately, the health struggles he or she faces will be outside of your control, but how you deal with them and in turn, how you teach your child to approach them and manage them, is completely within your influence.

I am now 41 years old. I have two happy and healthy boys. I am married to a fantastically funny guy! I enjoy life by eating large amounts of cheese, dancing like crazy whenever I get the chance, traveling to the ends of the earth and back, and (yes!) giving speeches even though I am nervous I may have a seizure. And life is good! Now… to help my son face his challenges with anxiety so he, too, can feel that life is good!

What tips do you have for raising kids with health or other challenges? How do you help them enjoy life in spite of their challenges?

Photo 1 courtesy of Flickr and Photo 2 courtesy of Flickr.

I married at 27 and immediately, the questions came: “When are you going to begin having all of those 11 kids?” “How soon will you start a family?”

For the first time since my doctor started discussing pregnancy with me nearly 10 years earlier, I got scared. Between that time and the time I became Mrs. Pattee, my platelets decreased (due to my medication) to a much more than below average rate. I researched the birth defects and diseases my medicine was known to cause. I had too much information—information that caused me to feel that making it out of pregnancy as a healthy mom and with a healthy child was anything but certain and definitely something I couldn’t control.

So, I went through many years of denial, putting off the decision to have children until my 30th birthday at which time I realized that nothing in life is certain and some things are worth the risk. Having children, to me, was one of those things worth risking.

It’s funny, because once I made the decision, I didn’t look back. My anxiety melted away. I moved forward doing everything I could to be healthy and focused on learning about the baby growing inside of me.

Ultimately, nothing I was nervous about prior to getting pregnant materialized. My baby boy arrived healthy and with a full head of red hair, screaming and ready to take on the world. I had other complications though—pre-eclampsia, a near stroke at birth, and the inability to produce milk and nurse my baby. But all these things, however scary or frustrating in the moment, had solutions.

When I think of the potential complications I didn’t experience and the minor ones that I did, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for medical advances that made a happy and healthy mother and son and an ecstatic new father our reality.

Today, I’m not much different than I was as a child. I still like to feel certainty and a degree of control in my life. But, my definition of control has shifted and instead of thinking of things in terms of what I can control, I think of things in terms of what I can influence and what I have to be grateful for in life.

As someone who has lived with epilepsy for nearly 30 years, I know that I can influence my health tremendously by doing a few things—getting enough sleep, taking my meds daily, and decreasing my stress. While I was pregnant, I could additionally influence the outcome of a healthy baby by taking the recommended vitamins, most specifically folic acid.

Focusing on those areas of influence, rather than on what I could or could not control, were keys to a successful pregnancy.

I recognize things could have turned out differently. Sometimes, regardless of taking every precaution, the path can change. But focusing on things within our sphere of influence is the best chance we have at having healthy outcomes.

What did you do to stay healthy in your pregnancies? What can you do now to maintain good health?

My husband, @troypattee, has pretty much put me on a grocery shopping moritorium. I haven’t been to Costco alone in years. I am a sucker for “great deals.” And, I have lots of dishes and oversized bottles of Olive Oil to prove it. Can you relate?

But, one thing that has helped us get organized when it comes to groceries is Cozi.com and their online grocery shopping list and accompanying mobile app. All I have to do is make my list online and it syncs real time with the mobile app. Whenever Troy happens to be at the store (click here to see why he wears the shopping pants in our family), he can immediately see what we need and what to buy.

This was a recent find that I’m super thrilled about, because of what it has done for our family organization in the area of grocery shopping.

Apps, Websites, and Online Tools to Organize Your Family

Because of how helpful Cozi has been, I got to thinking of other online resources that have helped organize our family’s lives. Here are some I recommend:

• Google: I know! It sounds simple, but google’s calendar has changed our lives. I have three color-coded calendars: one for personal/family, one for my Mom It Forward work, and one for the evo Conference I co-organize. I especially love the calendar sharing feature, which allows you to share each calendar with different people. I have my husband copied on all three so he knows my plans for the week. The great thing about Google is that it interfaces with other calendaring systems, like Cozi.com.
  X
• AboutOne.com: This is a great site, allowing you to store all important family data like health, education, and even car maintenance records.
  X
• 1password.com: Have you ever forgotten your password? Try this site. It stores them all for you and you only to remember one for all of your accounts. Is that awesome or what? Love this!
  X
• My Job Chart: This is a fabulous online chore chart with built in incentives. It is great at helping organize your family’s chores and is fun for kids.
  X 
• Apps for Moms: If you want a one-stop shop to find great apps for moms sorted by category, like this one from AllRecipes.com called Dinner Spinner, check out Apps for Moms, which directs you to a variety of apps for every need.
  X
• Pinterest: I’m convinced that the whole world has started cooking more and doing more crafts since the invention of Pinterest. As a busy mom, I love this visual bookmarking site because it allows me to store recipes, parenting tips, craft ideas, and more by category. So, when I need a quick dessert to take to a Christmas party or a gift for my kids’ teachers, all I have to do is go to my page and check out my pins and voila! Instant information.

What apps, websites, and online tools help keep your family organized?

Whether being a better parent is one of your New Year’s resolutions or if you’re always in the market for parenting tips and motherhood tricks, start now to establish good habits with your children. Raising them to be responsible and showing them the benefits of that trait is a great way to start this new year.

10 Parenting Tips for Raising Responsible Children

Here are 10 ways you can teach responsibility to your kids:

1. Start young. Young children can help us set the dinner table or put their toys in the toy box.

2. Show children how tasks should be done. Be clear with your expectations. Kids are imitators and they do much better when they are shown how to do something. Let’s use those imitation skills to our advantage!

3. Let kids show someone else how a task should be done. Nothing reinforces a skill like teaching it to another person.

4. Be trustworthy and dependable. Children watch us like junior reporters, monitoring our every move. If they see us being responsible, trustworthy, and dependable on a regular basis, they are more likely to conclude being responsible is just a given.

5. Apologize when you make a mistake. Kids already know we make mistakes, so we might as well admit them when we do. If we own up to our mistakes without blaming someone or something else, we show our children there is no shame in being wrong or falling short, especially when we accept responsibility for it.

6. Give children a role or responsibility within the family. It’s important to give them a task that really matters and let them know exactly why it matters. If you have a dog, changing out the puppy pad is important for both the family and the dog— both sides are thankful!

7. Expect them to make mistakes. It is so easy to forget, especially with older children and teens, that even though the body looks like an adult on the outside, the inside still has an incomplete operating system, i.e. their brains are not yet fully developed.

8. Avoid nagging, yelling, and criticizing. As hard as it might be, we have much less conflict when we avoid nagging, yelling, criticizing or other emotional displays when we are teaching or correcting.

9. Work together as a family. Our children are not here to do the chores we don’t want to do ourselves. Everyone in the family can take a turn doing the “yucky” chores, such as cleaning the dogs teeth at home or cleaning out the litter box.

10. Provide friendly reminders to your children. Remind our children that everybody has to do things they don’t like at one time or another; raking leaves is not your hobby – you do it because it needs to be done – and so should they.

Talking with our children about what it means to be responsible, and the opportunities it affords is the first step to raising responsible children. People who are responsible have better reputations, more educational options, and the freedom to work at a job they like.

How do you help your child learn about and practice responsibility?

Jane Warren writes about home life, parenting and pet care. She enjoys spending time on the ocean, scuba diving and international travel.

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

For my mom, sewing is just part of who she is. My grandmother taught her to sew when she was little and my mom kept it up, making everything from our clothes when we were little to our curtains, table clothes, and all of my sister’s prom dresses.

She started getting paid for her talent a few years ago when she started sewing for the local theater. And not just sewing, but figuring out exactly how to make the come to life on the stage complete with era-appropriate attire.

During a practice for one of her latest plays, The Civil War, we sat together watching the cast learn their parts while she explained to me the challenges with each piece.

“The lead is 7 months pregnant, she shared, “so her dress would have to be longer in front than in back. And the girl next to her had a boob job and was really skinny.” According to my mom, this was more problematic for a seamstress than you’d think. The list went on and on. I sat there amazed at both her excitement and knowledge of costuming.

The older I get, the more I see themes in my mom’s behavior, many centered in her personality and the things she is passionate about, including her talents. Those themes thread through our family and are a legacy she is weaving for us. And I am sure, it is these very things that we will miss most and remember with smiles about her when she’s gone (which, I hope, will be a very long time from now).

What talents does or did your mom possess? How did those talents benefit your family? And what traits or skills did they help you develop?

10 Tips for Making Healthy Family Living More Enjoyable

Check out these 10 tips shared at a MomItForward Twitter Girls’ Night Out (#gno) with Together Counts for ideas on making healthy living fun for the whole family.

1. Mix it up when it comes to packing lunches. In addition to the usual whole wheat bread sandwich with carrot sticks or fruit, try adding things like bok choy, which is a valuable source of folate and vitamins A, C and K.  @Vidia2Be packs it daily, vacuum sealing it for freshness. @OhioCatfish packs frozen strawberries, which thaw by lunchtime. And @MarlaMeredith offers a whole list of healthy lunch box tips.
   X 
2. Plan theme dinners. Categories like Mexican, Soup Night, etc. are common. But what about Dinner Roulette, Finger Foods, Ghoulish Creations, and Colors, which is what @Vidia2be does?
   X 
3. Add music to your dinner routine. @Bodhi_Bear says: “You know who is great at theme dinners that are meatless? BryantTerry: themes include music soundtracks.
   X
4. Make healthy versions of family favorites, like mini pizzas (see @Whyveg’s video recipe), or chili with Quinoa, from @SavorTheThyme. Quinoa is an amino acid-rich seed that has a fluffy, creamy, slightly crunchy texture and a somewhat nutty flavor when cooked.
   X
5. Schedule frequent family meals. If possible, plan more than one meal together a week. Try these conversation starter cards from @CherishBound to help spark conversation.
   X 
6. Try unique ways to be active together, such Muggle Quidditch, which is apparently becoming all the rage, according to @WriterUnblocked and @CBSNews.
   X 
7. Play paintball together, which @EarthAngel2Be says is better in cooler temperatures because of all the gear.
   X 
8. Use computer/video gaming/TV time as an incentive. Have computer, video game, or TV time be the reward for spending active time playing. @EarthAngel2b says it was easy with her five kids.
   X 
9. Cook with sweet potatoes more. @WhyVeg provides this great plan for Lily Pads, Yam Yums, and a fabulous dipping sauce, and says: “I have found that with my 3 year old daughter just renaming some foods with silly substitutes or cutting the “usuals” into cute shape will get her interested and eating some different foods.”
   X 
10. Involve the family in the meal-planning process, as recommended by @Bodhi_Bear, or at least have them write down a list of their favorite foods, as a starting point to thinking about what they do and don’t like about healthy foods.

Ultimately, no one will live healthily if it’s not enjoyable in some way, especially our kids. Making healthy living fun or interesting can make a mother’s job easier. And ultimately, a son or daughter who is healthy is more able to think outside themselves and consider the needs of others.

How do you keep your family fit and healthy? What tips do you have for making healthy living fun for your family?

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Don’t All Good Moms Shop at Joann’s?

If you’re at all like me, you’re very appreciative of all things DIY, including cooking and baking, as well as pinning these fabulous pictures on your Pinterest boards.

And even a step further, you have started to think that you, too, can be one of those moms. You know, the kind whose kids must have a better Christmas because of all the fun kids crafts and family cooking activities they do right from the comfort of their own home. The kind whose neighbors look forward every year to receiving their handmade neighbor gifts. I’m guessing these moms’ houses are spic and span and their kids don’t fight either. Who wouldn’t want to be that kind of mom?

So, in an effort to be a “good mom,” I went to Joann’s. I figured all good moms must shop at Joann’s since the parking lot is always full, I hear everyone talk about it, and well, honestly, because I didn’t shop there!

I hit the craft store of all craft stores on a good day, which the good moms all knew about, because they were all there. Had they known me, they would have detected the imposter in their midst, but they didn’t, so I walked around acting like I knew what I was doing. Fake it til you make it, right?

Wilton Candy Melts for Chocolate Snowflake Pops

First off, I bought a year’s supply of candy melts and lots of chocolate molds. I remember my mom, who is the good mom type, always having candy melts and molds, so I figured that would be a safe place to start. The good news is that a huge sale was happening and I got lots of craft and cooking goods for a fraction of their original cost (all lost on me, because I never buy it).

I went home and made chocolate snowflake suckers for a church activity. I got lots of compliments and someone even asked for the recipe. Even though I placed them on a plate and didn’t have them sticking into some sort of foam core Christmas tree with DIY dodads all over it, I figured I was well on my way to being a good mom.

Gingerbread House Kit

Next up? Gingerbread house kit. I’m sure lots of good moms make their own gingerbread houses, but I took the risk on buying the kit, figuring a pre-fab gingerbread house had to be better than no gingerbread house, right? I also figured it was one more Wilton product to add to the list. And don’t all good moms stock their pantries and craft rooms with Wilton?

Well, I may have had all the other good moms fooled, but when I got home, my 10 year-old son said, “Hey! Mom! Is Wilton your client? Are they doing a #gno Twitter party with you or something? Because why else would you go out and buy all of this stuff? Do we need to tweet about them or something?”

Wow! The wisdom of kids.

So, we broke out the pre-fab gingerbread house. Just one tip for anyone reading this who is a mom like me (the type to ruin a gingerbread house, even one that comes from a kit)… check all the gingerbread pieces before putting them together. The roof looks amazingly similar to walls. And wow does that icing turn into cement like stuff quickly! Not a lot of time to repair mistakes!

Advent Calendars

And finally, the advent calendar. Now, I realize it is already almost Christmas. But seriously… don’t good moms embrace the “better late than never” philosophy? I’m going to play by that rule until someone tells me otherwise, because I bought the mid-sized Fiskar’s hole punch and the Wilton tiny tins to make the advent calendar I saw on this good mom’s blog, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to do the printing and design work to get the little advent activities into the bottoms of the tins. The most non-craftsy of all steps to the project and I can’t figure it out. Oh! Well! We’ll have a Valentine’s advent calendar instead. We’re already ahead of the game craft wise! Aren’t all good moms?

The Real Definition of a Good Mom

Nutshell? When I jumped down to earth from heaven, I somehow missed the good mom manual and ended up in a don’t-you-dare-DIY body. I appreciate all the creativity. I will pin the pictures and longingly look at them on my boards. And I’ll keep trying projects from Joann’s and Wilton so my kids can have a little fun during the holidays. But, I’m hoping they’ll also forgive me for flat reindeer cookies, pre-fab gingerbread houses, and Valentine’s Day advent calendars. After all, who really are the good moms? Those who are spending time with their kids, regardless of how crafty they are.

What craft and cooking projects do you do with your kids? If you aren’t the crafty type, what other activities do you do for fun as a family?

To begin our mother-son chat, I asked him what he thought my goals were as a parent and why I would ask him to clean up. He scratched his head, probably thinking the only reason I’d do it was to torture him, just like I thought my mom was trying to torture me when I was a child and she “made me” do chores. I then took that moment to explain that my goals were for him to grow up with the skills and habits he needed to be a successful adult. We discussed a variety of things that contributed to possible definitions of “successful adult,” one of which was for him to be able to clean up after himself. We discussed the benefits of him learning how to clean and why having order and being clean was important.

We also discussed service and how important it is to not only think about ourselves, but to focus on the needs of others. We talked about how cleaning was not only a way to keep order, but an act of service for those around us. I asked him how serving others may help him both now in his role as a brother, friend, and neighbor and later in life as he becomes a father and husband and what other examples of service he could think of. He wasn’t sure and that made me think that we need to expose him to more opportunities so he has more experiences to draw on should I ask him that question in the future.

As a parent, finding regular opportunities to raise responsible children can require patience. The time I spend “encouraging” my kids to do their chores increases the amount of time it takes to clean the house. But, having that patience helps me not only to have a clean house (shout out to the Electrolux Nimble, the world’s best vacuum!), but also to raise responsible and service-oriented children.

Aside from cleaning and helping others in our own family through chores or other acts of service, finding opportunities to raise giving children can be challenging. I have found lots of ideas online. This list is a great way to get started. And here are some tips for helping young children to be more charitable. And, I especially love this list, which identifies 10 tips for raising given children of all ages.

But the best opportunities, it seems, are those that present themselves to us as we go throughout our daily lives. Here’s one that happened just this past week…

Our friend Jeanne is in an assisted living facility and she needed to go to the store. Unable to drive or walk without assistance, we decided to make the outing a family activity. We loaded up her wheelchair and took her to Wal-Mart, where thankfully, they had a Senior Citizen Parking spot with her name all over it. We took turns pushing her through the store, walking up and down the aisles, gathering the things she needed. After an hour, with both her and our shopping done, we took her back to her new home, walked her up to her room, helped her put her things away, and returned home.

On our drive home, we talked to our kids about Jeanne, sharing her limited abilities at this point in her life. We helped them see that something as fun and simple to them as pushing her wheelchair was a huge act of service and kindness to her. Their smiles in recognizing their contribution recommitted me to creating more opportunities for them to have action-oriented opportunities that teach them responsibility and service while they’re young.

 How do you model and give your children opportunities to be responsible as well as service-oriented? Tips for helping them do chores? Serve others?

Top 10 Ways to Tell Your Child Is a Tween

Here is a top 10 list of dead giveaways that showed me my son left childhood behind to enter the pre-teen years. I’m not gonna lie. I’m more than a little afraid!

1. He asks to do chores to earn money for a bike and clothes? CLOTHES? When did he start caring about tween style? Next, he’ll be asking for deodorant! Right when he decides it’s cool to shower.
2. He flips his hair like Justin Bieber (even though it’s super short and can’t remotely flip).
3. He wears the same shoe size as I do.
4. He tells me I embarrass him all.the.time.
5. He won’t let me give him high fives, or, heaven forbid hug him, in public.
6. He notices girls. WHAT????
7. He started running on my treadmill every day to get exercise. (He’s ridiculously skinny already!)
8. He turned down a picture with Spider Man and a Harry Potter wand on our recent trip to Universal Orlando Resort, because those photo opps and souvenirs are for “little kids,” not tweens like him.
9. He started ordering off the adult menu, because the kids’ menu doesn’t fill him up anymore. OUCH! PRICEY!
10. He started his own business (a lemonade stand) and hired employees! Why are they teaching business classes to kids in school. He keeps quoting that McDonald’s is a 32 billion-dollar company. I think he’s going for the big bucks with his business!

In better news, behind closed doors, he still snuggles with me and does fist bumps as long as I don’t tell anyone. Shhhhhh!

What signs have you seen that show you your kids are moving from one phase to the next in their growing up years?

What did you come up with? An image of a shy woman dressed in tweeds or a powerhouse businesswoman in a suit? Jill Savage seems to be a comfortable combination of the two, a woman as passionate about her role as a mother as she is about others’. She herself is the mother of five children, ranging in age from 14 to 26, and a new grandmother as well. In her book My Hearts at Home: How to Be the Intentional Mother…, she says: “What makes a house a home? It’s the family dynamics of the people who live in that house that makes it a home. When we value being home and recognize all the roles that home plays in our life, we can provide a secure, loving environment for each member of our family.” And, of course, mothers are central to providing that environment.

This is a realization that came to her gradually when she found herself, after graduating from college, unable to find a teaching job in the small community in which they lived. Since her degree was in choral music education, she began teaching private voice and piano lessons, and she opened a daycare in her home. “While caring for other people’s children [in addition to two of my own],” she says, “I found a new value for being at home for a season of time.”

Then she began looking for a conference for mothers. She longed for the camaraderie and encouragement she’d found at teacher conferences when she was getting her degree. She sought training in how to be, as she puts it, an “intentional mom. This was the early ’90s, and she couldn’t find what she needed, so she and a small group of like-minded moms organized one, and her church hosted the event. At their first conference in 1994, they expected 400 moms to attend. Eleven hundred showed up. Melissa Lierman, @TimeOutMom, has been going to Hearts at Home Conferences for 11 years. “When my girlfriends told me there was a conference for moms, I just didn’t believe them! I went to my first one in 1999 and never looked back and have been dragging girlfriends to them year after year and they are instantly hooked too!”

The next year the conference moved to the Illinois State University campus. Twenty-eight hundred moms showed up. Thirty-four hundred came the next year, and forty-five hundred the next. These days, 10,000 women attend multiple Hearts-at-Home conferences every year, and thousands more take advantage of the resources offered through her websites and books. This year, conferences are also being offered in Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria, and Italy.

Not only is there awesome comradery with other people just like you speaking your language and living their lives as moms too, there are fantastic workshops that you can take to fill your mind as well as your soul. “It is so incredible to spend a weekend with literally thousands of other moms taking classes on a huge range of topics from specific parenting classes depending on the age of your child, to cooking, to marriage classes like Jill & Mark Savage’s class Is There Really Sex After Kids?, to updating your mommy wardrobe!”, says Melissa Lierman.

Such numbers and such scope reveal not only a deep thirst for knowledge by so many women eager to be better moms. They also reveal a deep “in-tune-ness” by Jill and her organization with the needs of moms, the kind that only comes from having “been there” herself. Workshops are offered on topics like anger management, laughter, and discipline. “Mothers around the world face similar challenges,” said Brenda Paccamonti, chief resource officer for Hearts at Home. “Every mother—no matter what country or culture—struggles with the same things. The core issues of motherhood are the same and that includes being undervalued as a mother, finding balance and dealing with anger,” said Paccamonti.

Motherhood is indeed a blessing and, if done well, a heavy responsibility. If it were not so, there would be no need for the Hearts at Home conferences, or the books and advice Jill so graciously provides. But it is, ultimately, also a great honor. Follow these links to find out more about Jill, Hearts at Home, her books and her Twitter and Facebook pages.

What makes your house a home? What do you value most when you’re at home?