Family Matters

In one of my parenting workshops, I had a discussion with one of the fathers about the use of negative words and we talked about the slogan “Australia says ‘no’ to violence against children”. I explained that the brain records “Australia says to violence against children”, omits the “no” and focuses on “Australia”, “violence” and “children”. Paul thought it was a great slogan (and he did not work for the copywriting company who came up with the slogan).

At that stage, all the other participants already understood that “no smoking” only promoted smoking by focusing on the smoking, so pretty quickly, there was a lively group interaction going on.
This week, I got a video made by a great organisation, which presented the answer we were looking for in our discussion at that parenting workshop. What would you want people to focus on? We want them to focus on creating a child-friendly environment for our kids. We want them to be happy, to feel safe and to have good relationships with others.

The answer to (the pink elephant) “Australia says no to violence against children” is now “Australia says yes to a child-friendly environment for our children” and I love this new focus.

When I was 14, I promised myself to have words like Marianne Williamson’s quote above on the walls of my house to keep me inspired. For those of you who know me, my house has such writings on the walls, in every diary, on every photo album and on the bathroom mirror (in lipstick). I am inspired!

Once upon a time, in a small village, lived a family. They had a small guest house at the back of their property, where people passing by stayed for the night. All four of their kids helped in the guest house and when they finished their chores, went to play with the other kids - all but the second son, Tom. Tom was a very quiet and a sad boy. He never smiled, never laughed and the other kids did not want to play with him.

One day, an old man came to the guest house and Tom, who loved listening to the guests’ stories, showed the old man his room.

Just before the holidays and the start of a new year, we went to Southbank Parklands in Brisbane to spread some real holiday cheer with free hugs and some good friends.
Some truly touching stories were told to us, like a grandmother, whose grandson had been in an accident in the country and had been flown [...]

As we prepared to hug the homeless, I happened to read about hugging and found a post where Carl Munson expressed his uncomfortable feelings about hugging. Here is my response.

A couple of weeks ago, I delivered a Parenting Skills workshop for the Mullumbimby High School parents and friends. It was great fun and I was honoured to have the school principal and the mayor of Byron Shire attending.
Here is an inspiring true story I told them about the important messages kids & teens need from [...]

For a while, I’ve been thinking of ways to motivate my readers to live an inspiring life that will make a difference. Many people think that the way we can make a difference is by doing big things and I think we need to re-define the meaning of “big”. I think we can make a difference, a big difference, by changing the depression statistics in the world. One person at a time, we can teach how to put happiness in our hearts and chase away the darkness. And you are probably asking yourself, “And how do we do that with no budget, without the support of the government and without organizing ourselves in a formal way?”