What your children wish was on your to-do list today

Editor's note: This content, "A thinking mama's to-do list" by Shawn Ledington Fink, originally appeared on her blog, Awesomely Awake. It has been posted here with the author's permission.

In an ideal world, we’re all chugging along with clean houses, perfect children and organized pantries.

And then there’s reality that is so far from perfect it’s not even funny.

This list is in no particular order. And it certainly is not the be-all and end-all of things a parent can do or would even want to do. And, it doesn’t mean that you have to do everything on this list. It also doesn’t mean you have to do everything on this list every single day. That would be ludicrous. We’re still human beings with lives that have to be taken care of and order to make sense of at times.

My final note on this is that this is my personal to-do list and it’s based on our family’s values, belief system and manifesto, but I thought you might like it, too. We tend to do things a little differently. We tend to think a little differently. Perhaps if you wrote a list — and I encourage anyone to do so — it would look very different.

This is simply one of those gentle reminders we all need. So … here we go.