"Lower Your Expectations, Raise Your Satisfaction"

At a friend's baby shower recently we joked about this phrase. (She actually heard a whole sermon on it once.) So when she said she is expecting her baby about a week after he's due in order to keep from feeling frustrated if he's late, we tossed this phrase back at her and laughed. Lower Your Expectations, Raise Your Satisfaction !

I actually use this technique when parenting. I have one particular child who struggles with following directions. So, rather than expect him to respond at the first request I have to change my expectation to 10,000 requests. If I have to ask him 10,000 times it is okay. I can't get frustrated or angry I just keep on getting his attention and asking again... and again. It's not what some of my Christian friends would call good parenting, but for this child it's better than him feeling my wrath every time he fails to respond immediately. Lower Your Expectations, Raise Your Satisfaction!

For these next couple of weeks we are pouring it on academically. We had a full week this past week and we've got another one coming. J is learning oral storytelling (and knocking my socks off), metaphor / similes, fractions, taking comprehension reading tests daily, and he and B are both working on a nature notebook (which takes an hour) and then they are making lapbooks about native plants and local crops (which can take another hour). And that's not their entire day! So, during this season, I had to step back and say, "We will work on school until 5:00. We will not be done by 2:00 as we usually are. We will not be done before lunch as we sometimes are. We will just be finishing up when it's time to make dinner." So, see -- I lowered my expectation of making quick work of the learning process and I am not hearing myself whine (oh yes, it happens) when they take all day to finish the projects. And I'm okay with it. Lower Your Expectations, Raise Your Satisfaction!

See, Kobie. It's working for me. :-)