When Marissa asked if I would consider writing a guest post on the topic of creating a peaceful environment for my children, I couldn’t help laughing and then sighing. My thoughts went to beautifully painted walls, counters and floors that never see clutter, and most of all a mama who is never frazzled. My home, conversely, is one where the carpet daily receives new speckled blots of play-dough colors and the walls remain an ever-blatant white. It’s hardly what I would consider a model of beauty and creativity. Yet I do very much desire for our home to be a place of peaceful learning and joyful growth for our children, and there are many choices which we have made with the goal in mind of establishing this kind of environment for our children. My intention in writing this post is to share some of the things which have worked for us in making our home a peaceful place for our young children to grow and learn.
The most important element to a peaceful environment, of course, is love. This is lived out through open communication, mutual acceptance, and purposeful respect. It means choosing to share unselfishly and to trust one another’s words and actions. It means forgiving one another and daily living out that beautiful 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love. We both encourage these attitudes in our children and choose to live them out as their parents. I trust my children’s good intentions and their honesty, and I give them no reason to distrust mine. I listen to them, and they listen to me. Though my position is one of authority over them, I am still obligated to treat them with respect, consideration, gentleness, and compassion. This kind of love in our family relationships makes our home a place of harmonious community.
There are also many little habits which affect the direction and flow of our days and thus also influence our thoughts and actions. It’s taken some time to figure out what works best for us, but finding our own rhythm has been priceless. I spend the entirety of my days with our young children, training them and teaching them, loving them and enjoying them. There is no yelling here. We are at home at least three full days out of every week, often more. We don’t have a set schedule, but we have a rhythmic routine to our days which works best for all of us, yet can be flexible as needed. We don’t have a television. We do have playtime and storytime and naptime. We laugh often. We play games together, sing songs together, and have many conversations together throughout all of it. We pray together and read the Bible together. We work at laundry and dishes and cooking and cleaning together. If the foundational aspect of our home is love, then the framework of our home is togetherness.
Building onto this foundation of love and framework of togetherness, then, the clearly seen, material format of our home is one which may seem simple but which has been chosen purposefully and carefully. The interior layout and contents of our home have been determined largely by our philosophies of raising children. I tend toward the Montessori method for teaching preschoolers, and so I have sought to incorporate this into our everyday surroundings.
Our goal is to teach them to relate responsibly not only with their own toys and books, but also with all of their possessions and ours as well. Being able to access crafts, games, art supplies, clothing, shoes, and so forth on their own helps enable our children to develop the self-discipline and responsibility which is so highly valued in the Montessori method. The layout of our home is such that it enables and encourages our children to do things for themselves and of their own accord. Our three-year-old can access most of her clothing, thus enabling her to dress herself and put away her own clothes. She can help us wash dishes, make meals, clean up big messes, and a dozen other useful household chores. Our one-year-old can help put away dishes from the dishwasher, put away kitchen utensils and dishcloths, help sort laundry, sweep the floor, clean up spills, and put his dirty clothes in the clothes hamper. My perspective is that while allowing them to help takes longer now, my hard work will pay off in the long run. (I already find this to be true; having happy little hands that are well-trained to trot around the home and put things away makes life much easier for me at my current state of nine months pregnant.) These daily acts of repetitive responsibility, done with joyful exuberance and a growing understanding of the importance of organization and follow-through, contribute not only to a household that runs smoothly, but also teach our children the value of motivation, obedience, and self-direction. These all contribute to raising up contented children who feel the peace of a life lived with purposefulness, not distracted busy-ness leading to anxiety.
Though it may seem a meager differentiation, I feel that these habits have a marked impact on the ways our children play and relate. Rather than dumping out a huge box of toys and then flitting on distractedly to something else, as many toddlers seem to do, our little ones are learning to play intentionally with one item until finished, then put it away before moving onto the next thing. Even at the tender ages of three and one, I believe that these little practices are all part of helping them build self-discipline, not only in playtime but also in daily life. This ability to be self-motivated to follow through on tasks is statistically one of the most important factors in a person’s long-term success in life. Thus, teaching our children to follow through on tasks, persevering and completing cycles of activity which they began of their own accord, is of central importance in the way that we teach them and walk through our days with them.
Another factor in having our home be a beneficial learning environment is in the toys that we accumulate and keep. We believe in having lovely, practical, simple, educational toys which can be used for multiple purposes and for multiple ages. We try to choose only those which have innate teaching opportunities such as small musical instruments, legos, and blocks, all of which are educational and great fun. Our children also love toys which can be used to create imaginative scenarios, such as their play kitchen, where they make inventive meals for us every day. 
Finally, we believe that a love for reading is one of the greatest gifts which can be given to a child, and so books are a major component of our days and located intermittently throughout our home. We read together before naptime and bedtime, as well as interspersed during the day while playing. Because reading is such a big deal in our family, I am adamant about only allowing high-quality, truthful literature into the hands and hearts of our little ones. Not every book that they read has gorgeous illustrations and timeless moral truths, but we are careful to have are a wide array of beautiful books which encourage learning and creativity. I am positive that the books we read to our little ones greatly influence their perspectives about God, other people, the world, and themselves. Both of our children have a tendency to memorize the books that we read to them and intersperse the words and concepts of their books into their play (and also, I think, into their worldview). What a difference it makes to choose books which are full of joy and love and the beauty of life rather than jealousy of siblings or resentment toward parents!
What are some ways that you seek to create a peaceful home? Are there things that you have found vital for your family? WE would love to hear feedback, questions, and what has worked for others who are pursuing peaceful learning environments for their children!
Jamie is happily married to her best friend Keith. Their children are Priscilla (3) and Abraham (1.5). Their next little baby is due to arrive sometime in the next week! Jamie blogs about motherhood, children, and this gracious gift of life over at Purposeful Living.
Thanks for sharing:)
Love your thoughts on a peaceful home environment Jamie. Sometimes for me it is hard to feel like our home environment is peaceful with three rowdy boys… But there is a peacefulness in it, if that makes any sense.I agree with the not having bins and bins of toys in the toddler age. My boys are past that age so now we actually do have bins of legos, animals, people, ect… But when we have friends over with very young children I put away all of those bins because the children get to distracted by the amount and just find joy in the destruction and mess. My boys are to the age where they create elaborate worlds throughout the house and know when it’s time and where to put toys away.
Kristin, it totally makes sense to me. I think that often peaceful make us think quiet little children hardly making a sound and I don’t think that is realistic or desireable. Our kids are going to be noisy and rowdy (mine sure are today); they are likely going to have disagreements and tiffs as well. I think the peaceful part is that we guide them through these disagreements well and help them be energetic and rambunctious appropriately. I know for us, our home is peaceful while still quite full of life yet we still have days where we have to all work on being loving and restoring peace.Also I am kind of looking forward to that age where they are able to handle things like bins of legos and such:)
Kristin, I completely know what you mean about there being a peacefulness in the midst of the excitement and energy. Usually when I try to take a picture in our home of what looks like a beautiful, happy playtime to me, I end up looking at it later and thinking, ack, there are toys everywhere, and it’s such a mess! But I think a huge part of making a home into a lovely learning environment for our children is making space for them to be able to explore and create and imagine. And I agree with Missy, I’m looking forward to when our children are able to play responsibly with things like big bins of legos!
I find it difficult having one boy in the age you’re describing, perfectly content to sit and create a lego/lincoln log world, and one boy in the toddler age.
And the little one comes along and destroys the precious creation…
Hey james, loved this so much!
“Our goal is to teach them to relate responsibly not only with their own toys and books, but also with all of their possessions and ours as well. Being able to access crafts, games, art supplies, clothing, shoes, and so forth on their own helps enable our children to develop the self-discipline and responsibility which is so highly valued in the Montessori method.”
I really liked this quote, and would love to start implimenting some of your ideas. How do you feel about children being able to access their own snacks, opening the fridge by themselves and helping themselves to fruit, milk etc?
I really liked that part too Sadie!I think that your question is a great one too. I am interested to hear Jamie’s thoughts. I do know that within the Montessori method (and the way we do it), in the early years, snacks and food are a guided process. So while small children wouldn’t really just go open the fridge and pull out what they would like, snacks and meals would be done in such a way that they could always participate in the preparation and clean up. I *try* to have us all work together on meals so the girls will often help set the table, I direct them what foods to take out of the fridge and cupboard. And they help prepare with what they can (Aneliese is now able to cut up things with a butter knife which she loves). That way it is kind of a cooperative, together thing and not eating/snacking happening when ever, where ever. Jamie perhaps has different thoughts.
I’m terrible at letting the boys help me in the kitchen, very selfish that way, I love to cook and I want it done perfectly 😉 I need to loosen up a lot with food and kitchen stuff.
I tend to be the same way (as I just had a hard time today letting A scoop cookies in the less than beautiful way that I wanted them)…however, I really like that especially at supper prep, it cuts out so much of the whining that seems to happen at the time of day. Also I love seeing how proud they are to tell Dan about what their part of making supper was and Aneliese is especially extremely helpful now. I just kind of think it is a really important skill for both boys and girls to learn and to enjoy. Plus, I am looking forward to my night off cooking some time in the future;)
Thank you, Sadie! I’m really glad you liked it!
I have this lovely idea in mind of having tasty snacks ready and waiting on the children’s table in the living room when they wake up from naptime, as well as things like cut-up apples available in the refrigerator for other times, and maybe a mid-afternoon smoothie break each day. But honestly, organized snacks rarely happen in our home. For whatever reason (and it’s probably just that I find it challenging enough to keep up with main meal preparation without adding more), snacks aren’t really a big thing for us. We do try to make mealtimes a cooperative experience; the children often sit on the counter or on stools to help us prepare meals, particularly the more interesting ones, and we all sit down together to eat. But if they are hungry in between meals… and it’s kind of embarrassing to admit this… they usually just get leftovers from the previous meal. They happen to adore cold leftover oatmeal (seriously, it’s kind of bizarre) so that is probably the most common “snack” in our home. I don’t really have things that they are able to help themselves to, but I’m not sure if I’ve really done that based out of a set philosophy or just out of a lack of organization.
I’m sorry… I don’t think that is probably very helpful! My only real experience on the opening-the-fridge-themselves note is that now that Priscilla can open it herself and even get her own milk, she is welcome to do so, but she always has to ask first. I like that because she enjoys the privilege of being able to get things out on her own, but I can also keep an eye on what she is doing.
I mainly ask because you have your art supplies readilly available, which is something I’ve never done, but would consider doing it now, and Nolan is very independent and often wakes up and heads right for the fridge to grab an apple or an orange, and I’ve thought of having a ‘kid friendly’ shelf in the fridge for them. I do like the idea of him asking first, something that needs work 😉
Sadie, I think that could be a great idea, I never thought of it:). I agree with Jamie though, I find it important that they ask….as my bottle of elderberry syrup knows!
Jamie, I am almost jealous! Snack is so important to my girls (even if it is left over oatmeal:) that they can hardly handle having lunch if they know that we didn’t do snack…oh routine.
my kids can open the fridge whenever they want but the only thing they can grab is a raw carrot. You can tell if they are really hungry when they are walking around with a giant carrot and an orange face.
Sadie, I like your idea of having a shelf in the fridge with snacks on it! I think the hard part for me (besides actually making sure there were snacks there) would be figuring out how to limit them to snacking only at appropriate times… like, not right before dinner.
About having crafts available, I should add that they have crayons, paper, and pens that they can access at any time, but they have to ask before getting out play-dough or opening the boxes with things like paper scraps and glue, and of course they need my help and permission before they can do painting or that kind of stuff.
i don’t have babies (yet) but as a hopeful teacher with my own classroom, and I did observe in a montessori classroom one time, and it looked really similar to james’ orderly and organized shelves. I would love to read up on that and use it in my classroom if I ever have a classroom!! haha But the quote I loved the best was:”Rather than have big bins or boxes full of muddled toys, we have simple, low bookcases and a few small baskets in which the children store their things. Knowing exactly where to find a toy means that our children also know just where to put it back when finished. They learned early on to store their books upright, spines out, on the bookshelves in their rooms. This contributes to treating their books respectfully and replacing them carefully when finished.”
I loved that picture of your neat tidy books and how much you value good books for your littles is such an inspiration! I have collected books for so many years and I am sooo excited to have them used by littles that appreciate a good story! (my nieces and nephews have enjoyed them!!)
really really loved this post. what inspirational women I know! love you james and it has been so sweet of you, missy, to open up your blog! love i!
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Thank you, Erin! I had to stop myself from rambling too much about the good books aspect of things… but I suspect you would have liked it. Maybe I will write another books post sometime soon.
You are going to have a beautiful classroom one of these days!!
thing things I want to do in my head to create a peaceful organized home are having a hard time actualizing themselves these days. Thanks for the reminder. Right now my house is so messy i just want to throw everything away and start fresh 🙂
This is just a fantastic post! Thank you so much for these great practical ideas and insights. I struggle with boys knowing when being rough with things is too rough and when it’s ok to just let them ‘be’ even if it is bit on the destructive side. But I do long to teach them to be responsible with their own and other people’s property without making ‘things’ too high a priority. Not sure if that makes sense. I just really appreciated all you had to say and will be working toward implementing some of these things in the future.
Thank you, Katherine!! I’m really glad it was helpful!