March 27, 2014 by Allison Hendrix

The Truth behind Mommy Magic

Mommy magic is the ability to make a scraped knee feel better with a band-aid and a kiss. It’s that sixth sense that knows where to find a lost lovey at bedtime. It’s how a million little details quietly get done to make a birthday special.

Last night I returned home to my family after a short trip away. As I was putting my children to bed, we were going over our checklist for today. I asked Campbell if he and Smokey, our hamster, were ready for the Pet Parade at school the coming morning.

He rushed over to the cage and cried as he remembered ,“Mamma, Smokey escaped a few days ago and I didn’t make a float! Why hasn’t he come back?”

Tears, and fear of having no pet for the Pet Parade, ensued. After he shut down my idea of Smokey being an ‘Invisible Hamster’, I kissed his head and said I would find him.

Today at 12:30, I showed up at the Pet Parade with Smokey, the Escape Artist hamster. Campbell was overjoyed because I had worked my Mommy Magic.

But it’s not magic at all, is it? Let’s rewind.

I went to bed last night wondering how I was going to find a nocturnal hamster. Was he under the kitchen sink? The bathroom sink? In a bedroom? I laid in bed waiting. Praying. Hoping. I heard a ruffle at 2am. Was it Smokey?

I put on a headlamp as to not wake my husband. I crawled around the floor…in my nightie…with a headlamp…following the noise for an hour and a half. I finally caught him.

I returned him to his cage but wondered how long before he escaped again, after all escaping is his specialty. So I put the cage in the bathtub, a double barrier of sorts. At the moment, I think I’m brilliant.

Come today about 2 hours before the Pet Parade, I tweak the wires of the cage for the journey to school. It appears secure. A quick shower later, I return to an empty cage. Thankfully he hadn’t gotten far and it was an easy capture.

This time I grab a deep kitchen bucket, one with walls too high to scale. We hop in the car. I exhale but a little too soon.

At a stoplight a mile from school, I see the hamster on the passenger floor mat jetting into the crawl space leading to… who knows where. The engine?

I pull into the Publix parking lot and, in desperation, buy celery and peanut butter to lure Smokey out of hiding. Not immediately, but it worked. Ten minutes later, I arrive at the Pet Parade.

There are spaceship-themed wagons with astronaut dogs. There are chickens on a hay-rides. There are princess cats, Ballerina bunnies, and Magician dogs.

I show up with a dirty kitchen bucket, a dishtowel shoved into the bottom, and Smokey peeking out from underneath. Although uncharacteristically uncreative, I’m thrilled with the result, a living hamster.

When Campbell saw his beloved pet, his eyes looked into mine and sparkled. “Mamma! You found him! You’re the best!” He carried that rodent around with such pride letting his friends take turns ogling over it.

I had a secret story today that nobody else there knew. As I looked around this amazing display of pets and parents, I realize that I’m surrounded by a lot of secret stories. The dad who snuck out of an important meeting just in time to see his daughter twirl with her cat. I watch a mom work her magic as she calms her anxious son’s nerves over parading in front of a crowd. Whatever she whispered into his ear worked.

The truth is mommy magic is simply the result of an unexplainable love that makes us do over-the-top ridiculous things to delight our children, to avoid catastrophic meltdowns, and to bring peace to our loved ones souls.

We can find missing shoes because our minds never shut off. As we walk from a bedroom to a garage, we’re cataloging everything we see for future use…a channel changer peeking out from a couch…a shin guard in the pantry…a stuffed animal in the backyard.

This deep love also makes us willingly, and without hesitation, give our time, sleep and energy to our children. Love is interesting like that and sometimes doesn’t make sense to an outsider. Because finding that hamster was important to my son, it was important to me. You may spend hours making a birthday cake shaped like a Lego robot to create that magical moment for your child. Or you may go to 7 stores looking for the perfect pair of shorts that don’t have an itchy tag in the back. Maybe you work an extra job so your child can play club soccer.

Or maybe you have simply brought peace to a home that desperately needed it.

Today I celebrate mothers because you make magic happen each and every day. Your stories may never be told and your sacrifices never acknowledged, but you change the world around you with your love.

♥Allison

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March 2, 2014 by Allison Hendrix

The ridiculous and effective way to stop Sibling Fighting

Need a fresh idea to get your kids to stop fighting? Sometimes the most effective solution is ridiculous and right in front of you. For two weeks, I’ve been driving around town with Nerf gun bullets on the outside of my windshield. I forget that they are there until people stare, point, pretend to shoot at me, and ultimately laugh. Other kids get a kick out of them in the car-line at school, particularly the high-school students.

Let’s back up a bit. My children have been fighting in the car recently. It drives me crazy. I’ve tried time outs, loss of privileges, pulling the car to the side of the road, strategically seating my children away from one another, and even positive reinforcement tactics. Somewhere between their close proximity to one other and a few sensory issues (mostly mine), that stuff just isn’t working for us.

“You’re breathing too loud!”

“You crossed the line onto my side of the seat!”

“Stop humming to the music.”

What ultimately ends the fighting is my mean-mommy-voice yelling “ENOUGH! I’VE HAD ENOUGH!”

Here’s the thing, I don’t like yelling, nor want to. I truly believe there is always a better option…but sometimes I just can’t find that solution in the parenting books.

So a few weeks ago when my youngest shot my windshield with a Nerf bullet in protest to my new rule of ‘No Eating in the Car’, I had an idea. I explained to my three children, that I would leave that Nerf bullet on the windshield if they didn’t fight on the way to school.

Guess what? Nobody fought. In fact, they laughed, were kind and complimentary to one another, and acted as if they were on the same team. The ride home from school that day was the same way. With dark clouds in the sky, they chatted for 30 minutes about what would happen to the Nerf bullet if they windshield wipers went on. Their laughter was contagious.

So the rules to our Nerf Bullet Game were established:

Every day that you don’t fight, you may add a Nerf bullet to the car.
Every time you disagree or complain about anything, we turn on those windshield wipers and a bullet is removed.
You may not relocate somebody else’s bullet without their permission.
A bullet though may be relocated or removed by mommy at any point.

Not only are my kids not fighting in the car, I’m enjoying listening to them interact and plot the destination of their next bullet.

I’m obviously not suggesting that everybody go put Nerf bullets on their windshield to keep their kids from fighting, but I am suggesting that sometimes we can’t find the answers in the parenting books. We need to stop feeling inadequate that great parenting tools aren’t clicking with our family.

Each family is uniquely designed and made up of specific personalities. Parenting is not one size fits all. What works for me, may not work for you, and that’s ok. I’m learning that sometimes an unconventional idea is exactly what my family needs to push through a tough phase to move on to the next.

Our family was struggling in the car and we needed to break that cycle of fighting because, only then, were my kids at a teachable place to address the deeper issues of respect and tolerance. This game will hopefully not be around in a month, because I’d prefer to drive around town not looking like the victim of a Nerf Attack, but it broke our cycle of fighting and yelling, and has allowed us to engage in more effective conversations about changing the way we treat each other.

So consider embracing that unconventional idea that just might click with your family. You may find your instincts are more effective with your children than anything you read, and that adding a dose of laughter to your area of greatest frustration, opens the door to joy where yelling once reigned.

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February 4, 2014 by Allison Hendrix

The Locust Effect

Today’s article is different from my regular posts. Bear with me if you are new here. It communicates a passion close to my heart concerning human trafficking, poverty and violence. There is a compelling video at the end of this article if you are not in the mood to read. Thanks for sticking with me through some difficult realities in our world today.

Last night our family watched the Dreamworks animated movie The Prince of Egypt. In this life story of Moses, there was a scene in which the Israelites, who were slaves in Egypt, were being whipped for not working faster.

My youngest was completely distraught and defensive.

“Mommy, the slave dropped that bag because it was too heavy for him! Why are they hitting him? He should run away!”

This sparked a conversation that I was planning on having with you today as well. I explained to my son that slavery meant they had no freedoms, and the enslaved man was not permitted to leave…ever.

I listened as my angered son shared how unfair that was. He asked repeatedly,

“Why doesn’t somebody go help them?”

I smiled at such an innocent and obvious response. You could imagine his surprise when I told him there are 30 million people being held as slaves today.

“Again, why doesn’t somebody go help them?”

If you know me in real life, you know my heart for the International Justice Mission, a human rights organization I have been involved with for over 8 years. You have heard me tell stories, share pictures, and be a voice of women and children I have met in the poorest communities around the world.

…Stories like the 6-year old girl I met in Cambodia that IJM had just rescued from a brothel where she had been repeatedly used as a prostitute. 6 years old! As I held her in my arms and she smiled a toothless grin at me, I could not help but think of my own daughter back home. This precious Cambodian girl was somebody’s Lily….only stolen away from her mother and sold into a lifestyle never intended for her.

2 million children are exploited in the commercial sex trade a year. (UNICEF)

“3.5 billion of the poorest people live with a constant threat of being raped, robbed, assaulted and exploited. They frequently name violence as their “greatest fear” or “main problem.” For them, vulnerability to violence is just as much a part of being poor as illness, malnutrition, dirty drinking water or inadequate education.” (Gary Haugen in the Huffington Post)

What would life feel like suffocated by the constant fear of violence upon you in a community unprotected by the law? If you are willing to have your view of poverty challenged, my friend and founder of IJM, Gary Haugen, released a book today co-written with Victor Boutros called

The Locust Effect

The premise of this book is that the end of poverty requires the end of violence. Filled with poignant stories and comprehensive research, their argument is both compelling and motivating. The vastness of this feat may seem overwhelming but they offer hope and provide detailed example of how this has been accomplished in modern-day cities.

What can you do?

Watch this video
Buy the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. 100% of the author’s royalties are going back to IJM to fight violence against the poor.
Tell world leaders to make this a priority by signing this petition to the UN.
Visit IJM.org and learn more.
SHARE and increase awareness.