Monday, December 10, 2007

Riding the Rollercoaster

That's what parenthood is really isn't it. A rollercoaster. I have two kids, 12 and 15. Princess 15 is for the most part a delight to be around. She is witty, charming and has moments of selflessness and can be so giving. Then there is the "dark" side. I find that our whole family rides the emotional rollercoaster with her. When she is happy, we are all happy! Its just like when she was a baby and toddler, only now we can, on occasion reason with her. I never realised that parenting a teenage daughter would be so scary. I'm really reluctant to let her go and make her own decisions, I so badly want to protect her from any (and there were many) mistakes that I made. I know in my head that this is an issue that I need to hand over to the Lord, but I even struggle to entrust her to Him! How silly is that! It's like I'm saying "no thanks Lord, this job may be a bit big for you, I'd better handle it myself" This week I'm going to try and pray for my lack of faith in my ability as a parent and my lack of trust in the Lord.

Lord, help me to build my faith in you. I pray that my daughter can grow into a lovely young woman with a firm faith and trust in you. I pray that she can endure the turbulent teenage years with her self esteem in tact and with a growing relationship with you.
These things I commit to you.
Amen.

3 valued opinions!:

lightening said...

You have a blog!!!! And you told me about it!!!! You rock!!!!! If you need any help, sing out and I'll pretend I have a clue what I'm talking about. I'm good at that. Pretending I mean!!! :-)

HisPrincess said...

Thanks heaps. I know it sounds tragic....but how do I get people to talk to me?

lightening said...

It might sound tragic to you but in the blogworld - it's perfectly normal. People write stuff and they want people to read it and talk to them about it.

Here are a few tips to get your started. Firstly, look in your set up pages. Go to "settings" and then "comments".

You want to allow anonymous comments otherwise anyone that doesn't have a google account it excluded from commenting which will cut out a lot of potential readers/commenters. So click on "who can comment" - anyone.

I'd also recommend you remove the "word verification". You can find that setting on the same page. Most people find them frustrating and it can stop people leaving a comment.

The BEST way to start getting people to your blog is to leave comments with a link to your blog and people will click through (some will).

A couple of other things that would be good for you to do:

1. claim your blog via technorati. There is an explanation about this on my "blogworld" blog. http://lighteningsblogworld.blogspot.com

What that will do is that if you link to another blog (via a blogroll or in a post) the blog owner can see that you've linked to them and will likely visit your blog to check you out. I know I check technorati most days.

2. Set up a stat counter by going to www.statcounter.com . If you have trouble doing this, let me know. I get about 1 in 10 or more people that visit my blog comment so if you can put a statcounter on there it'll tell you if people are reading.

3. I can add your blog to my blogroll and you'll possibly get some people visiting through that but I should warn you that some people IRL (eg Mandy) sometimes read my blog.

There are other things you can do but this will get you started. :-)