Family Matters

In many marriages, one partner is the main “bread winner”, spending his time (or her time, but mostly his) outside the home, being busy with work-related stuff some of the time at home and needing support from the “other” partner (typically the woman). This creates an imbalance in the family.

Money, whether you like it or not, can buy happiness. Is it better being poor and healthy or rich and sick? I believe the healthy and rich is the better option and I bet you do too.

A recent research has looked for the link between money and happiness and has found out that we can indeed buy happiness, but we get the happiness when we spend our money on someone else.

If you are a parent of kids who go to school, you have probably heard many times expressions like “I hate homework”, “I hate school” or “I don’t want to learn”. As easy and fun as learning at school may seem, it can be hard work for many kids.

I believe that learning is harder when you do not understand why you should learn, how you learn and what you gain from learning. Unfortunately, most kids do not know what happens to them in the process of learning, so they only see the pain associated with it, instead of the pleasure.

Last week, I talked about the 8 worst ways to treat your teens. These were nagging, telling them what to do, punishing them, lecturing, screaming/shouting/yelling, using guilt, begging and bribing.

As I promised, I will dedicate this post to the best ways to treat teens. I do hope you get lots of inspiration and understanding from it and establish a better communication with your teens.

Only 3% of teens going into higher education straight after high school actually finish their choice of study and work in that profession for about 5 years after finishing studying.

Without being taught parenting skills, many parents miss clues that their kids are having a problem. They just move along, expecting their kids to behave “normally”, which the kids can do for a while, but then the burden becomes too heavy for them to carry and they lash out, withdraw or show other signs of distress. The parents are then surprised and get upset at the “unacceptable behavior”. Sounds familiar?

If you are a teacher or a parent of a child who struggles with writing, here are some things you can do to help make life easier for them. Remember, they do not need to be labeled. They do not need a stamp of “Dyslexia” or “ADHD”. If you find they are struggling, lend them a helping hand and change some of the classroom rules to suite their need.

Being single is no fun when people around you nag. Many times, family members believe that all people should get married and that nagging will “encourage” singles to find a partner. In fact, this is the same whatever you nag your kids to do.

Teens are a challenge for many parents. With growth of hair and size (my 13-year-old son is 15cm taller than I am already), with the development of their emotions and thinking, parents go through growth too and the communication between parents and teens changes.

A few weeks ago, my son Tsoof had a birthday party. As a 13-year-old, a day party was not cool enough anymore, so he asked to have an evening party - a dancing party.