Bending Twigs: Snapshots of the Inner Workings of Children's Minds

By Doshia Daniels Burton

Bending Twigs comes as a ‘surprise package’ for couples embarking upon parenting or for persons
who expect to be working with children. In this regard, it provides snapshots of what might be going
through the minds of the children you are engaging as well as the minds of their peers. This book
might cause you to rel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Nov 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781640883505

Book preview

BENDING

TWIGS

Snapshots of the

Inner Workings

of Children’s Minds

DOSHIA DANIELS BURTON

Illustrated by Marv Pontiff

Dedication

To our offspring: Deidre, Derrick, and Deron,

without whose help this book would not have

been possible.

And

to the memory of my beloved husband, Sam,

who was a treasured gift to me for forty-four years.

He lived to see our twigs grow up, marry, and settle into their own careers.

Introduction

I attended a two-part writer’s workshop with a seasoned author in 1973, and we were given an assignment to bring a sample of our writing to share with the group at our next gathering. Two weeks passed, and it was time to attend session two—and I had not written anything. Since my husband had come from a large family of limited means, a huge part of their entertainment had come at the expense of relatives and acquaintances whom the children observed in excruciating detail. My husband was a quick study, and our sparse finances made our early years of marriage a virtual greenhouse for cultivating the techniques he had mastered in utilizing humor to enrich our lives. Our dear children and their associates became fodder for said entertainment. Indeed, our family communication was so seeded with phrases from prior incidents that we found ourselves having to interpret when guests were present.

These seedlings became fair game when I sat down to write. I was encouraged by my peers’ responses. In 1975 I found myself standing in line at the post office, where I would mail a completed manuscript to Zondervan, having had no prior communication with them. As I stood there, with time on my hands, I felt a question arising from somewhere within: Would you be willing to submit the future of this book to me?

I am not sure that I had learned by then that He could read minds, so I thought, Hmmm! I sure wish you had asked me that before I put all this work into it! Then I spoke, Yes, Lord.

I assumed that all the fanfare of special handling and required signatures upon receipt would be signs of an amateur, so I just mailed it to the address I had found in a Writers’ Market publication. I learned, in my almost non-existent preparation, that one should not expect to hear from the publisher before approximately six weeks, and that one should be prepared for lots of rejections. I contacted them after two months and learned that they had no record of ever having received my manuscript. I now know that an unsolicited manuscript generally finds lots of fellowship in file thirteen.

I reasoned that since God had interjected Himself into the equation, He knew where the manuscript was and He could cause it to be found and reunited with me in due time. Instead He has, in the past forty-four years, caused it to be better refined, enlarged, and even multiplied. This, you see, is the first in a series of Twigs books. My children have grown up and have produced twigs of their own; and I have, through the years, found children to be a never-ending source of entertainment, regardless of their setting (or their age). Watch for upcoming books in the series: book two, Parenting Twigs (which includes stories that were shared with me by others as well as an unprecedented look at the evolution of the twigs of book one); and book three, Grandparenting Twigs. I welcome submissions from readers for future Twigs publications. Who knows where it will all lead? Teaching Twigs, Doctoring Twigs, Counseling Twigs, Gathering Twigs, Laughing Twigs…!

Preface

In our effort to discharge our responsibility to bend the twig in the way it should go, we frequently find ourselves delighting in the reflected wisdom of our offspring. This book contains some of the moments of laughter Sam and I enjoyed with our three twigs during our most active years of parenting. For good measure, God added unto our family a ten-year-old daughter, Trudi, who did her part in bringing this book to life.

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