I became a mother at the age of 29 when our first daughter was born. At the time, my husband and I had been married for three years and I was teaching seventh grade language arts at Johnston Middle School, outside of Des Moines. At the end of the school year I chose to resign because I didn’t feel like I could be the teacher I wanted to be and the mom I wanted to be at the same time. I wanted to give both careers my all, so I put teaching on hold for a period of time.

Over the years, we went on to have three more daughters and I put my heart and soul into being a mother. I still used my teaching abilities by taking my daughters to the library regularly, reading them countless books, and then volunteering in their classrooms when they started school. When we lived in Washington State the whole Talented and Gifted program at the Elementary level was staffed by parent volunteers, so I was in the classroom weekly coordinating the Language Arts component.

Being a mother has taught me lots over the years. I have prickled at the phrase, “Oh, you’re just a stay-at-home mom” because it denigrates the role that mothers play in their children’s lives. I have been able to be there to watch my daughters grow and be there when they have had sorrows. It wasn’t always easy (many times I retreated to the bathroom where I could close the door and cry or just have some peace), but it has been worth it.

Now that my daughters are all adults, they have come to realize that their childhoods were different than many of their friends’. One of them said to me once, “Mom, did you know that my friends didn’t grow up going to the library all the time and going to local museums?” She was in shock because she thought that this was normal. It’s nice that as adults they are coming to appreciate all that we did together.

Whether or not parents are able to be a full-time parent, there are things that I have learned being a mom that made things go better during those hectic days of raising toddlers to teenagers. I thought that for my column this month that I would share some of these tips with you.

When children are young, it’s very easy to just do all the straightening and cleaning around the house instead of having kids help out. My husband and I certainly did this because it was just faster for the two of us to do things instead of taking the time to have our girls help out. But then the words of a song reminded me that we were actually doing them a disservice by NOT having them help. In the song “How Will They Know?” by Natalie Sleeth, she repeats this phrase in every verse: How will they know unless we teach them so?

We started small; we couldn’t expect our 1-and 3-year-old daughters to do the dishes, but we could ask them to find all the plastic things in the dishwasher and take them out and stack them on the counter. This helped our girls to know that they were contributing to the family and prepared them to be able to unload the entire dishwasher one day.

The same holds true for straightening common rooms in the house. Instead of asking a child to clean the whole living room, I asked them to pick up as many things as how old they were. So, for example, if the child was 8 years old, then they would put away 8 things in the room. This helped to get the room cleaner and was a reasonable expectation for their age. If we needed extra help for company coming over, then we would do “double duty” and everyone would do the double amount of their age. This also helped them to learn to multiply a number by 2.

When their bedrooms just became a big mess, I would set aside an hour to work with them and turn it into a game. I learned this from a Mister Rogers book. I made up cards that said “Put away four stuffed animals” and “Put away four books” and so forth. They would get a card and go do what it said while I worked on organizing things. One card even said “Take care of a Mom Pile” and that meant that they would put away things that I had categorized to be taken somewhere in the house. By turning this task of getting their bedroom straightened up into a game, we were able to work together and get the job done.

When my girls started attending school, mornings were very hectic. Getting everyone ready and out the door on time took a lot of work. Especially stressful was getting lunches ready. Something that I learned from my mother was making sandwiches ahead of time and then freezing them. A lot of people that I’ve told this too are skeptical of it, but it works! I would set aside 30 minutes to make up 12 – 20 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bag them up, and then pop them into the freezer. Then on school days, I would grab one out for each lunch and it would thaw in time for lunch.

Another time saver for lunches that we did was to have everyone take snack size baggies and bag up crackers, dried fruit, nuts, etc. and then these were placed in an area where they could be quickly put into lunch bags. We would make up about 50 baggies at a time and then we would be set for a few weeks. Not only did this save time in the morning, but it also saved a lot of money because buying everything pre-packaged is much more expensive.

I have a fond memory from when I was in kindergarten of being able to hammer real nails with a real hammer. Yes, this was the 1970s. But because of that memory, I wanted to make sure that my daughters knew how to use a hammer and screw driver so that they could fix things. When they were young, we started out with a board where nails had just been started and then they got to hammer them the rest of the way into the wood. I let them try out unscrewing and then screwing back together a light switch panel. As they have now all lived on their own, they have taught roommates how to use these tools.

When I taught school, I had a student who was getting in trouble in all of his classes. We called together a conference with his parents and all of his teachers. Many things were discussed that day for how to correct his behavior. I then asked his mother what she thought about offering to “go on a date” with her son to spend some time with him. She was taken aback by my idea because she usually just gave him the latest video game to try to get him to be good. She realized that instead of giving him things, she could give him her time and attention.

I noticed a big change in this boy after she started doing this. I had suggested it because my parents had regularly scheduled with me and my siblings “Daddy-Daughter Dates” and “Mommy-Daughter Dates.” This was special one-on-one time where we would just go get an ice cream cone or go to the park, but we were able to have time with our parent to talk without any other siblings around. We did this with our daughters and it was so wonderful to have this time with them as they were growing up.

I ask again the question from the song by Natalie Sleeth: How will they know unless we teach them so? Being a parent is more than just bringing a child into this world or taking on that responsibility with adoption or step-parenting. We are not just baby-sitters to these children; we have been given the responsibility to care for them. We often say we are raising children, but we can change that phrase around (and in so doing, change the way that we parent) to: “We are raising adults.” For that is what we really want to do; bring up children who will leave our homes ready to be adults.