I have 3 kids of my own and they are everything a parent can dream of. They are "the full package". One of my friends told me that if she did not know them, she would think I was making them up. Almost every person who meets my kids asks us, "How did you do it?" Modestly, we say we were lucky, and we were. I am convinced that some things were just lucky, but no one wants to know about your luck, because luck is not something you can bring into your life. So these people say, "Come on, Ronit, tell us how you did it".

I think I am using this parenting blog to say how I did it. As of today, there are 911 posts (is this a sign?) explaining how 3 kids in big differences in age, each born in a different place in the world, who each went through many changes in their life, can all be their parents' bliss.

Today, I want to share with you a very easy trick to raise such kids. I call it "the mirror trick".

Eden came home one day and told us about some research she was studying in her psychology degree that tried to predict people's success based on how many books they have had at home during their childhood. This made me wonder about what possessions our family has had during the life of the kids. This was not an easy task, because we lived in different places around the world, some apartments, some houses, some rented, some owned, some buildings, some complexes, some small and some big. Over the 23 years of having kids, we have lived in over 16 homes.

I did this research, I found out that apart from having Gal, Eden and me there, we also had mirrors in all them. Big, huge mirrors.

How has having mirrors contributed to our kids being so great? Let me explain.

Mirrors are a fascinating thing for babies. I still remember the first times my kids saw themselves or them and me reflected in the mirror. It was fascinating. At first, they tried to find what was behind it. Then, they tried to touch the reflection and feel it. At one stage, they learned it was them and they loved looking at themselves.

In one of the early childhood centers where I worked as the academic director, I had a huge mirror installed in the babies' room. The littlies looked at themselves crying. Try it, when your 1-year-old cries, put them in front of the mirror and watch how their face changes as soon as they see themselves.

When my kids were toddlers, I used to play with whipped cream and shaving cream on the mirror. I had learned this during my work with autistic children and my kids loved every second of it.

When Tsoof was just 2 years old, we lived in a building and had a huge 2x4 meter mirror in the living room. The kids used to spend hours in front of it dancing, singing, acting and exercising. Whenever they had friends over, they all went to look in the mirror and make faces in front of it.

When Noff was a baby, she used to watch herself crying in the mirror and make faces. She used to stand there hours and examine her faces. She was very amused by this and she still does it at the age of 10.

Kids who live with huge mirrors at home are used to seeing themselves. They do not need others to tell them how they look, because they already know very well. Instead of forming an identity based on what others tell them, they form their own identity based on what they see in their own reflection.

Kids who grow up with a huge mirror to look at themselves before they leave home can be confident they look good just before they go out. They are not worried about the way they look, because they know exactly how they look whenever they want to.

Kids who grow up with a huge mirror and see their body over and over again, learn to love their body. They are not so worried about how their body looks in other people's eyes, because they have seen millions of self-images reflected at them and they can use those to make up their own mind about their body.

If you have ever seen a video of yourself, you know that it is a strange feeling, because you are not used to seeing yourself from that position (or hearing yourself, but that is another matter). It does not look like your reflection in the mirror. This is why many people are very self-conscious when they present in front of others. Kids who grow up in front of a large mirror get so used to this image of themselves that they are not very self-conscious about it. Children who grow up with huge mirrors and see their full figure themselves often are more confident presenting in front of others. They do not panic during "show and tell", they are not scared to read their book reports or do anything that requires them to stand and talk in front of an audience, because they use the mirror at home to practice.

Advantages of mirrors

Mirrors are very good surfaces for painting and drawing with whiteboard markers or lipstick and are easy to clean. This allows young kids to have fun on the "walls" without Mom or Dad freaking out.

Mirrors make the room look spacious, which helps everyone feel that they have more space.

Mirrors can be used as (sliding) doors, which can be good use of space that would otherwise be used for nothing.

Mirrors can be decorative features.

Mirrors can reflect a lot of light. If you have a mirror opposite a window, you can double the light that comes in through the window. You can also use them to direct light to places that would otherwise be dark. It even multiplies electric lights.

My kids gained a huge advantage from the fact that we always had a huge mirror at home. In some houses, we had even more than one.

19 years ago, when we started our world travels, I gave my mirrors to my sisters. One of these mirrors is still in use today. When my sister's first son was born 3 years ago, he spent hours looking at himself in that big mirror. When I visit him and when I talk to him on Skype, I find a very confident little boy who speaks well beyond his age and does many things 2 years "ahead of schedule". It is probably because my sister is an amazing mother who talks to him all the time, explains things to him with patience and respect, teaches him, exposes him and stimulates him continually.

And I am convinced it is also because of the big mirror.

Try it. What have you got to lose?

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Perfect Child: How to help perfectionist kids
• The Perfect Child: Is your kid a perfectionist?
• My Name is My Identity

I have clients who are perfectionists and they know they are perfectionists. They have been to some form of counseling or have seen psychologists and they claim that things have become worse since they discovered their perfectionism. The label "Perfectionist" has allowed them to justify their behavior and that has increased the friction in their relationships even more.

Most of them came for life coaching when they reached rock bottom in their relationship due to their high demands when their wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, friends, work colleagues or even boss said, "Get lost!" and kicked them out of the relationship or left them.

In the previous post on perfectionism, I wrote about ways to assess whether you or your children are perfectionists. In this chapter, I will give you some tips to help perfectionists. If you want to use them to help a child, remember that your goal is to plant those thoughts into your child's mind or create circumstances that will help them overcome the fear that is associated with things not happening exactly the way they want them to.

1. When they finish a puzzle, a block tower, a Lego building or anything that can be reassembled, make fun of wrecking it. It helps kids learn that Mom and Dad are not mad at them for it.
2. Allow your kids to make a mess. You can have a place for mess - a sandpit outside, a table for finger painting. Let your kids play with their food. do you know how much fun it is to eat Jelly with your fingers? If you are worried, have a plastic sheet underneath the mess. Remember, everything can be wiped or washed in the dishwasher or washing machine, so is not worth fussing about it. If you cannot handle the mess, let someone else do it at first, and get involved gradually.
3. When you need to be on time at school, a meeting or an appointment, be prepared and plan your time well. Do not talk about being late as the end of the world. If you are in panic mode when you are late, that gives your kids the message they must not be late and makes them fussy about being late and demanding towards others who are late. If you are going to be late, take a deep breath, let the other party know and just be there as quickly as you can.
4. Encourage kids to be involved in activities that are not competitive and are not graded or judged. Choose activities in which they are measured on progress relative to themselves or by working in a team and achieving something together. Better yet, choose activities that are all about fun, like going to the pool, exploring nature or playing at the playground.
5. Give kids challenges without comparing them to others. If you are travelling to France and you give your child the task of finding 10 things you can do in Paris, it is a challenge, but the child cannot fail and there is nobody to compare with.
6. Avoid using the word "should" like the plague. This gives a message that there is a right and a wrong way to say, do and be, and perfectionist children (and adults) add it to their vocabulary and fear every time they say, do, think or believe in something they "shouldn't". The word "should" implies there are some external, absolute standards they must obey, when the world is really about personal preferences.
7. For the same reason, avoid using the words "have to", "need to", "ought to" and "must". Instead, use "maybe you can", "how about", "can I suggest" or "it might be better to".
8. Teach your kids to start conversations with others. Go over "conversation starters" with them. A good way to start a conversation is by asking questions like "How was your holiday?", "What did you do on the weekend?", "I watched Harry Potter 7 on the weekend. Have you seen it?", "It's so hot today", "It's freezing cold today" and even "Would you like to play?"
   The main idea is to find something you have in common with the person you start the conversation with and invite them into the conversation in a kind way. It is scary but possible.
   I gave a group of kids at a leadership camp the task to gather personal information about others in the group (that they had met for first time) or the leaders of the camp so they could use it to start conversations with them. It is amazing how quickly you can teach kids to work up the courage to do it. It was easier for me because they did it in a group, everyone knew everyone else was having the same challenge and everybody could say, "Ronit told us". It might take you longer than two days, but it is possible.
9. Change the order of the furniture in the house from time to time. Make it sound like you are exploring different ways of positioning things. Ask the perfectionist child for their opinion to make it easy to manage the change. Get them to help move things around themselves too.
10. Create monitored surprises. Perfectionists do not like surprises, so work with them on it. First, tell them you want to make them a surprise a week before the surprise day. When things work well, tell them 5 days before, and slowly reduce the time to telling them a day before and eventually, surprise them totally. Gradual adjustment is the key.
11. Play the game of "Three funny mistakes". At dinnertime, every member of the family tells the rest of the family, in turn (do not start with the perfectionist), about three mistakes they have made during the day as a funny story.
12. Share your weaknesses with your children so that they learn it is safe to have them. Most perfectionists have suffered from exposing their weaknesses and therefore choose to hide them. They need to believe this will never be used by others to humiliate them. Make sure no one in the family makes fun of them or bullies them for their weaknesses - it will only make them hide these more and prevents you from knowing there is an issue that needs to be addressed.
13. When in competition, talk to your children about the losing kid or the losing team to make them realize that the losers have feelings too. Help them see that in most competitions, there are many more losers than winners, which makes them part of the majority.
14. When your kids express expectations that are too high (of themselves or of others), help them realize that it is not realistic. Ask, "Do you know someone who gets perfect scores on all of their exams?", "Do you think it's possible to always, always, always be on time?" Emphasize the words "perfect", "all" and "always" to help them recognize they expect the impossible.
15. Put their accomplishments on display. Make a diary of accomplishments for them to use if they have doubts about their successes. Teach them to measure small achievements like making dinner, helping their siblings or meeting a challenge, successes that are self-rated or that requires kindness and not being perfect (we call them "emotional stretches").
16. Help them express their feelings or attach a feeling to their successes and challenges. Teach them to rate their emotions. When they say, "I feel like a failure", ask, "On a scale of 1-10, how much?" At first, they will say 10, but after a while, they will understand they do not really feel the same and start noticing the difference in their feeling, which will help them recognize the fear that triggers their perfectionism.
17. Agree on a signal with your child that tells them they are being perfectionists and could relax their expectations a bit.
18. Celebrate with your children 90% or 80% scores on their exams, so they will not think that you expect them to score 100%.
19. When you use behavioral management, do not use 100% as a point when they get a reward. If they need to clean the room, it does not have to be spotless for the room to be considered clean.
20. Teach your kids to enjoy the process. If they are frustrated with achievements, help them realize they have achieved a lot on the way. 3 years ago, Tsoof participated in a competition that he had spent a lot of time practicing seriously for. He and his teachers were very frustrated he did not win anything in the competition, because all of them thought he played much better than those who won. In the week following the competition, we focused on how much better he was playing the marimba after two months of practice as the real achievement, which made it easier for him to move on.

Competitions, scores and awards are stepping-stones on the long and exciting journey of life

I hope these tips will help you help your perfectionist child and if you need the help yourself, translate them into adult vocabulary and your own circumstances and make perfectionism a period in your life, not a lifestyle.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Perfect Child: Is your kid a perfectionist?
• More Control – Less Power
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As a life coach promoting happiness, I find myself talking a lot about perfectionism as an obstacle on the way to a happy life. After researching the science of happiness and seeing thousands of clients, including many parents and children, I can tell you that happiness and perfectionism cannot live in the same body. They are like the good and the bad wolves living in your body and when you feed one, the other one starves.

The problem with perfectionism is not only that perfectionists are not happy but also that those who are close to them are not happy either because of it.

Many grownup perfectionists started out as perfectionist kids. In my kids' assessments, I can tell if a child has a tendency towards perfectionism from age 3. Most people believe this cannot be helped. Some kids are born perfectionists and that is that, but I think this attitude makes our life much harder, because repeating this mantra guarantees there is nothing we can do about it.

Much like any other "disease", perfectionism can be cured and the best time to do it is during early childhood, before the child develops strong behavior patterns that are hard to change.

I also believe that the best people to cure child perfectionism are parents, because their love for their child will help them overcome the resistance.

The origin of perfectionism is fear. Perfectionists have a strong need to control life around them for some reason. Anything they, or other people, do that threatens that stability or control increases the fear and therefore increases the perfectionism.

Many parents react badly to a child who shows rigid thinking and reacts badly to changes. Unfortunately, that increases the fear and does not give a child the stability he or she is aching for. It is a cycle of bad reactions that helps nobody.

For parents to help, they need to be convinced that this behavior is going to be a huge obstacle to their child's good health and wellbeing, their relationships and their success in life.

If the parents are perfectionists themselves, they tend not to see the problem at all. Unfortunately, if this is the case, there is no cure. Perfectionist parents must first heal themselves before helping a child overcome perfectionism. After all, to cure perfectionism, there must be a desire to change.

Parents need to find if the child's behavior is a form of perfectionism, so I have compiled this list to help with that. If you want to assess yourself first, this will be very helpful for you too. To assess yourself, though, you need courage and honesty.

Please remember that for a person to be considered a perfectionist, he or she does not need to exhibit all of the behaviors on the list and does not have to exhibit them all the time, only most of them and more than once or twice.

Here is a list of perfectionist behaviors:

1. Perfectionists have high standards for themselves and others. They have high expectations, which are often unreasonable or impossible to achieve.
2. Perfectionists pay attention to details. This can be a good thing, but sometimes, after all the important things are covered, they keep focusing on little things.
3. Perfectionists have an "all or nothing" mentality. If they cannot do things perfectly, they do not see any point in doing them at all. Many times, people say they have lots of potential, which is true, but if they think they might not be able to achieve their high standard, they do not try.
4. Perfectionists procrastinate a lot, which goes together with their high expectations. If they think they will not be able to achieve something, they postpone doing it.
5. Perfectionists experience lots of anxiety. Their desire for things to follow their expectations is so high that anything that does not follow it creates anxiety.
6. Perfectionists are afraid to make mistakes, which contributes very much to their anxiety and avoidance.
7. Perfectionists have challenges with their relationships. They are very demanding, their behavior makes people avoid their company and in most of their relationships, the blame others and complain.
8. Perfectionists are highly competitive and constantly compare themselves to others. They define themselves in comparison to others. Not every competitive person is a perfectionist, so match this with other items on the list.
9. Perfectionists seem very unhappy and dissatisfied when good results, good scores and even very good achievements are not good enough. Since they are not perfect, they are no good.
10. Perfectionists are very critical.
11. Perfectionists show some compulsive behaviors, as they prefer things to be organized, predictable and stable. They need life around them to be consistent and adopt a lifestyle that consists of many routines.
12. Perfectionists do not take risks. Risks cannot be predicted by definition and they avoid doing things they cannot predict.
13. Perfectionists mainly focus on problems, difficulties and mistakes of themselves and others.
14. Perfectionists do a lot to hide their weakness. If someone knows something about a weakness they have, it is a sign for them they are not perfect, which they find hard to accept. They will hide it by having many justifications for their behavior and attitude.
15. Although perfectionists may tell others about their mistakes, they do not like it when others tell them about their mistakes and are very sensitive to criticism.
16. Perfectionists find it hard to be in the moment. Their mind is so future-oriented they find it hard to stop and enjoy the present.
17. Perfectionists are prone to depression.
18. Perfectionists consider love as conditional, so they find it hard to feel loved and often find it hard to express love.
19. Perfectionists consider their self-worth a result of their achievements. If the achievement is good, it is not enough. For them to be worthy, they need to be extremely high achievers.
20. Perfectionists consider things to be "right" or "wrong". They expect others to think the same and if they do not, they will invest a lot of energy to convince the others their way is the right way.
21. Because they have the "my way or the highway" mindset, they can often be seen as self-centered as they expect and demand those around them to fit in with their way of thinking.

Use this list as an assessment tool and measure the intensity of each behavior. Remember that the sooner you discover something, the sooner you can heal it.

Join me next time for how to help perfectionist kids.

Calm and happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Perfect Child: How to help perfectionist kids
• More Control – Less Power
• Living in a Dress Rehearsal

But maybe it does not have to be.

In the past few days, I have been reading an excellent book called Predictably Irrational by Professor Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT. In one of the chapters, he describes experiments that show humans are so sensitive to loss they do everything they can to avoid losing even things they could have, but do not actually have. One of these things, he says, is options.

In his description, he give parents' decision-making about their children's development as an example of how irrationally expensive it is to keep our kids' options open. If you do the math, he says, you see that spreading the family resources over 4 different activities each week, say ballet, piano, art and karate, means your child makes 1 unit of progress in each of them every week, as opposed to choosing just one activity, say piano, which would allow the child to make 4 units of progress every week and become really good at it.

From a mathematical point of view, ¾ of your money is wasted and your child never reaches a level of competence that would make their chosen pursuit generate significant enough rewards. It is therefore irrational to pay for and drive your child to many afternoon activities and a more economical choice would be to pick a single "winner" and give it all you have got (or a couple of related/complementary "winners", perhaps).

Reading this, I was tempted to agree, and this post was almost about how much his point made sense, but then Eden and I went for our morning walk (it is so great she starts late on Wednesdays) and reviewed her life, the lives of Tsoof and Noff and those of other kids we know, and my view of this issue changed completely.

You see, the discussion of how valuable each extracurricular activity is depends on the chances of success you expect in each field, as well as what you value. Alas, in real life, there are only a handful of really great opera singers, world-class painters, immortal actors and champion martial artists. In any global competitive field, the likelihood your child will "make it big" is low, no matter how much time, effort and money you put into it.

This leaves a life of repetitive disappointment and unhappiness, which, if you think about it, is really the opposite of what you want for your children. No matter how we put it to the parents we meet (and we meet many), if they had to choose one thing to give their kids above all else, it would be happiness. That is their highest value as parents. Happiness.

Let's say you consider developing the artistic side of little Bobby. Subjecting him from his 3^rd year to 6 hours of painting classes a week may improve his painting technique beyond that of most other people, but can you already sense the pressure building up? Can you sense how little Bobby might feel imprisoned by his parents' choice for him? Can you imagine what teenage Bobby might choose to rebel against? Can you predict Bobby's life after his art receives lukewarm reviews from some people who matter in his field?

How will grownup Bobby do socially? Will he be able to mingle with athletes or musicians? Will he be able to enjoy a walk in the park, a movie or (gulp) a visit to an art gallery? Will he be able to carry on a casual conversation about any topic other than art and painting?

I doubt it. If Bobby accepts his parents' choice and pursues his art, he is more likely to be single-minded and unhappy that a loveable, outgoing and social butterfly. If Bobby rejects his parents' choice, then their investment of time, effort and money, as well as his entire childhood, have been a waste and he will have to start building his life from scratch.

On the other hand, kids who are exposed to a wide variety of activities and experiences, while they may not excel in any of them, develop their mental flexibility, learn to engage many kinds of people in many kinds of situations and build resilience. They gain emotional intelligence that will serve them well every day of their life, everywhere they go.

In the past week or so, our family has been watching a series of programs called "Music School". Out of thousands of children, the producers picked 16 kids, aged from 8 to 13, who want to be singers. Each program shows 8 of them preparing and performing a song, guided by a famous musician.

As you would expect, these young people are pretty amazing singers, but that is not the most important part. When they are interviewed, their level of expression is very high, most of them can speak more than one language, they have great relationships with their families, they quickly befriended one another, they connect to the lyrics of the songs they perform intensely and they "work the crowd" in a natural, effortless way.

Moreover, the ones who do best are those who can handle pressure, keep themselves positive and motivated and accept the challenges thrown at them by the panel of "music teachers".

It is not talent and success that create happiness. It is happiness that allows talent to be expressed and creates success.

As parents, rather than trying to find the area in which your kids will shine and frantically exposing them to activities in the hope of finding "that special talent" they have, let them experience many things for the sake of enjoyment, balanced development, priceless social practice and networking and the feeling that they can do anything they want once they put their mind to it.

Rather than subjecting your children to hours of drilling and endless pressure on the way to achievements that would one day make them happy, make them happy today and every day by accepting their choices, encouraging them and using your resources to help them achieve what they want to achieve, to experience life and to build their character in the process.

Happy parenting,
Gal

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If you are not sure, keep reading.

Parents, like most people, often view the world in absolute terms - "This is pretty", "This is wrong", "This smells good" or "How rude!" Naturally, the way they view their children is similar. They break each child down into separate properties, such as looks, math skills, strength and manners, and assign a rating or a score to each one of these important aspects in each child.

The result is disappointing more often than not, simply because nobody is perfect in every way, let alone kids, who undergo big changes and have not mastered every rule in their parents' book. This is particularly apparent during the teenage years, when even calm and obedient children turn into full-sized, defiant and opinionated creatures. Many parents of teenagers are so focused on what their sons and daughters are not doing (right) they have a hard time remembering how they behaved last year, when they were still in primary school.

But your kids are the most precious, amazing and wonderful things in the world.

Really.

First, consider the odds of any of them being born at all. Out of thousands of potential partners in your life, you have chosen only one to have each child with. That child would not be the same if you had chosen anybody else.

Out of hundreds of eggs and billions of sperm, only one sperm combined with one egg to produce each child. The odds of having that particular child with those particular physical traits and basic character make winning the lottery seem like a sure thing.

Even if you have not had any major disasters during pregnancy, delivery or babyhood, you are likely to know parents who have. When Ronit and I lost our second child on his second day (see 35-hour baby), we were crushed, because we thought nothing like that would ever happen to us. When our third pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, we could hardly breathe and wanted to scream. But as people came to comfort us, we learned just how many parents struggle to conceive, to carry babies to term and to keep them alive and healthy during their first year. Even with modern medicine and biotechnology, making a new child is harder and fraught with dangers more than most people realize.

So basically, every child you have has come out ahead in the race to live, and this makes them very precious and truly amazing.

Once they are born, kids start to learn about the world around them. They start out having on control over their body and thoughts, and their only way to learn is by noticing the responses they get for different things and deciding whether they like them or not. They grab something hot and it hurts, so they drop it. They lick something sweet and they like the taste, so they lick again. They cry and Mommy or Daddy pick them up and make them feel good, so they cry again.

Oh, wait. What was that?!

Yes, whether you are aware of it or not, your behavior towards your kids is one of their strongest learning tool. You know that when you make an angry face or yell, your child will get the message that you disapprove of what he or she has done, but when they come crying after someone has hit them and you scold the other child, do you think that will make them bring more of their problems to you? If you do this consistently, do you think that will make them think it is OK to throw their problems on other people?

So for better or worse, your kids are amazing learners, picking up the smallest cues from you as to the best ways to behave. They become so good at it that they know how to get sweets or money out of you and to get you to drive them to friends and activities early on a cold winter Saturday morning. Yes, it can be annoying, but they have learned it all from you (and your partner).

In fact, kids are little mirrors, both physically and emotionally. When you look at them, you see yourself and your partner. You like in them what you like about yourself or your partner. You dislike in them what you dislike about yourself or your partner.

This means that the more you like about yourself, the more you like about your kids. Imagine that!

This can be a scary thought, I know. When you look at the world in absolute terms, a child can be beautiful or ugly, smart or dumb, talented or useless, and so can you.

But if you look at your kids and yourself as flexible creatures that adapt and grow, you see that you can be the power behind that growth and you can direct it to wherever you want. In other words, you can choose to like yourself more and to appreciate your kids more.

You see, the main reason your kids are the most precious, amazing and wonderful things in the world is that you created them. This, of course, also makes you the most precious, amazing and wonderful thing in the world, even if you are no longer a child.

Of course, your kids already know how wonderful you are, because if you ask them, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" they will most likely say, "I want to be like Mommy/Daddy".

Happy parenting,
Gal

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From the parents' perspective, "Me too" can be very annoying, because kids sometimes ask for really inappropriate things, but for children learn about the world by observing and mimicking others, so there is nothing more natural and healthy than wanting what the others have or trying to do what the others are doing.

In our family, 10-year-old Noff is much younger than Tsoof (16) and Eden (23), so when she wants something they have, they used to get upset, until they got used to it.

When she was little, we often tried to respect her choice of food, so we asked her what she wanted to eat, gave her some options and helped her prepare the food she liked. But often, when she sat at the table, she saw that Eden had something else to eat and seemed to be enjoying it very much. Noff would promptly forget she ever wanted anything else and ask Eden to share.

"Eden, can I have some mango too", she would say.

"But you said you wanted cereal", Eden would complain, "I brought enough mango for me, because you wanted something else".

"Yes, but now I want mango too", Noff explained, as if that was the most obvious an innocent thing in the world. And for her, it was.

For kids, the appeal of things and activities is related more to the people who have them or do them than to what they are. Without the benefit of experience, they do not have enough knowledge or perspective to decide what they may or may not enjoy in the future, so their best bet is to go with the choices of those they trust, like their parents, older siblings and friends.

Ronit and I learned this over the years, so by the time Noff came around, we started using it to our advantage (and hers, of course). At the start of the year, when Noff picked her afternoon activities, we would ask her, "Who else is doing this?" If any of her close friends signed up for an activity she liked, she was going to enjoy it for sure, but if she wanted to sign up for something weird, that question would quickly bring up the real reason and help Noff give up without a fight.

Sometimes, "Me too" works really well, too. A couple of years ago, Noff's best friend Paige learned ice-skating every Thursday afternoon. Her mother said she could take Noff from school, drive the girls to their ice-skating class, then back to Paige's house, and we could pick her up from there. This was great for us, but we were unsure as to Noff's reasons, so we agreed to try for one term and then rethink it.

Initially, Noff's main focus was on spending as much time as she could with Paige. Since Paige had been skating for a while, Noff started in a lower group and they could only skate together during the "free skating time" in-between lessons. But this drove Noff to make a big effort to catch up, which she eventually did.

After almost a year, Paige decided to stop, but by then, Noff had turned ice-skating into her own thing and wanted to keep going. She desperately looked for someone who could take her to lessons and keep her company, until one day, she saw an ad for a free trial day and convinced Eden to give it a go.

Eden tried and said, "Me too". They have been getting up early every Saturday morning for a year, going together to Ice Skating, coming back full of stories and looking for more opportunities to skate.

As you can see, kids' mimicry can help them experience more in life and propel them forward. But what happens when a child's role models all go through something rather negative, like getting glasses?

This happened to us recently. In the past few years, I have gotten a few pairs of glasses, but in the past few months, Ronit had her eyes checked and got new glasses, Eden complained about poor vision, had her eyes checked and got new glasses, and Tsoof went for his annual checkup and ... got new glasses.

As if that was not enough, Eden started reading Harry Potter with Noff every evening. We all love to read and Noff seemed apprehensive of long books with no pictures, so this was a great way to ease her into reading them. Every evening, they sit side-by-side, eyes bright, and read the book.

And guess what: Harry Potter wears glasses too!

Noff could not take it anymore. She was being left way behind the family. Something just had to be done, but what?

She grabbed a pair of 3D cinema glasses, took out the lenses and put them on proudly. She walked around the house smugly, posing and beaming at anyone who would look at her, and even took some pictures of herself.

In fact, she was so excited about her clever way to experience glasses without having bad eyes that the following day, she took them to school with her. Although she did not wear them in class (that must have felt a bit too stupid), she did put them on during the musical rehearsal in the afternoon and said everyone thought she looked cool.

That lasted all of 2 days, but Noff gained a lot of experience from it and put to rest her feeling of being left out. At some point, she had satisfied the "Me too" urge, put the glasses down and went about her business.

Ah, the fun of raising children.

Happy parenting,
Gal

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• Wonders of Creation
• Troubled Teens: Scary Times
• Troubled Teens: Disturbing Thoughts

Kids are not born with reading skills, but they still need them to build their knowledge and understanding. We develop these skills in them by reading for fun or by reading to get information.

Although I believe that reading for fun is very important and can help increase your vocabulary and understanding, I think it is limited, because kids cannot check on their own if they understood the stories or not. Many books have layers of understanding and the young reader cannot tell which layer he or she is reading at and what they might be missing.

School is pretty much the only place where we can check kids' understanding and help them develop their reading skills and teachers are qualified to tell which level of reading and which reading skill is expected at each age, but as a parent, there are things you can teach your kids at home that will help them greatly with their reading development.

1. Title - Guessing ahead is a good skill in reading. Teachers ask kids to guess what the story is about by reading the title only. This is an easy game that you can play with kids of all ages. Give them a title and ask them to guess what the story, the article or the book is about. They do not have to be 100% correct to develop this skill. They only need to have a good association with the title in their mind. When they can read more, give them paragraphs and ask them to come up with a title. The primary question the title needs to answer is, "What is this about?"
2. Content page or headings - Reading a content page or going over the headings can help us greatly to understand the structure of the book or article, to "get into the author's head" and to discover the flow of the book, article or essay. You can ask children to guess what each chapter or section is about from its heading. One sentence is enough to get the picture. If kids read lots of content pages and lots of headings, it can help them with their writing skills too, because they can understand how to structure an essay on any topic. First, we find the title, then we make a skeleton of the things we want to say and only at the end, we write it all down. Often, the content page and the headings are enough to help kids remember a book or an article when they need to.
3. Pictures - Photos and drawings are a very good way to communicate ideas. Even before kids can read, you can use pictures to help them "read". I remember 2-year-olds in my childcare center reading books to me using only the photos, so every child can do that. Ask your kids to guess what the book is about from the pictures. When they grow up, they will also use the photos and artwork on the cover of the book to pick books from the library.
4. First and last paragraph - In every article, section or chapter, the first and last paragraphs are the most important parts for the reader. The author is supposed to write in the opening paragraph what the article will be about and in the closing paragraph what the article was about. Crossing those two paragraphs can give a very good indication for what children are supposed to remember when they read. Later on, it can provide a quick way to review and recall the information.
5. Taking notes - Turning your reading into something short that you can remember is very important. Do not wait until the end to memorize. Instead, at the end of every chapter, write down in one sentence what you have read. Do it in your own words and keep your notes in a handy place. If you can write inside a workbook, that would be the best place. If not, write on a piece of paper and insert between the pages like a bookmark. Teach your kids to do the same.
6. Highlight - I have always loved books and taken good care of my books. However, whenever I bought the book and it was mine, I wrote my notes inside it and highlighted the most important parts of the book. Highlighting makes sure you pay attention to only the important things in the book or article. It is also extremely helpful in remembering what you have read for an exam and for finding great quotes to references in your own writing. Show your kids how you do it and teach them to do it too.

Your kids' teachers will probably dedicate lots of time to teaching these skills, but they need to teach 25 to 30 kids and every year, there will be another teacher doing it, with a different style and a different approach. You are there all the time for your kids, so when you help them do their homework, you can easily teach them these tricks to help them become effective readers.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

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• The Fun Incentive
• Effective Reading for Kids (2)
• Effective Reading for Kids (1)

Creativity is the art of making something new and original. We can expose our kids to making things from a very early stage and that will boost their self-confidence and their flexibility. The good thing about being creative is that it helps when you need to solve problems. Creative people are better problem solvers, because they are able to take a solution from one area of life and apply it in another area.

Children are in "learning mode" during most of their childhood. They try things, fail and learn and this grows their confidence. We all want to have creative children, so when they are not, before we start with the Genetics mantra ("He's not a creative child. Some people are born with it and some aren't"), we should examine our parenting style and how it locks or unlocks this creativity. Yes, there are people who are born with high creative potential, but I tend to think they need to be stimulated enough to actually reach a high level of creativity.

I think parents hold the keys to their children's creativity. No matter how genetically creative your child is, you can help them be more creative. Your attitude will determine if your children keep trying or label themselves as "not good with those things", which is worse than not being able to create.

Over the last 25 years, I have worked with thousands of children that talk about their ability to create in a bad way. You might think, "Well, maybe they discovered they were just not very creative", and I say"

You cannot discover you are just not good at creating. You can only be blocked from discovering that you are.

There are some parenting attitudes that do that to children, lock or unlock their creativity. Children get beliefs about their ability to create from their social agents - mainly parents, family members and teachers. As parents hold most of the influence and spend most of the time with the children in the early years, it is likely that they hold the key to kids' creativity.

Realistic creation

When children draw, paint or sculpt, as their fine motor skills are not very sophisticated and their desire is to make things colorful and fun, there is a 100% chance their creation will not be "realistic".

Parents who point out that a creation is not realistic block their children's creativity. If you say things like, "Where have you seen a man with green skin?", "This doesn't look like a rabbit" or "Does it make sense to you that the child is bigger than the house?", you might think you are teaching your kids something about life, but in fact, you are sending them a message that art and creation are only good if they look like real life.

If the great artists thought like you, they would never have created the most wonderful creations of all times. If the great inventors thought like you, we would still be in the Dark Ages with no technology or medicine.

To be creative, you have to come up with something new, something that has never been done or seen.

By being realistic, making everything look like real life, being logical and making sense, we block creativity.

The right way to create

Creativity has no right or wrong way. When my son, Tsoof started playing percussion, he was about 4 years old and played for hours every day. When he was 7, he had a teacher who was so focused on playing "right" that Tsoof stopped playing totally.

It took us a while to realize that playing at home stopped totally. Tsoof is a very creative child. He is 16 years old and dedicates his life to playing and writing music and I still remember the fear I had that his amazing talent would be gone because he hated that teacher and stopped playing for a while.

Children need freedom to experiment, experience and create. When they are under pressure, they cannot think clearly and cannot create at all. It is the same as other areas of life. If they read for fun, they will read a lot, but if they read under pressure "to read the right way", they will hate reading and stop.

If your child is creating something and you are too focused on the right way of doing it or on the right order of things, you miss the whole point of learning creativity. When your child plays a musical instrument and you tell them they played wrong, you block their creativity.

By thinking there is a right way and correcting your children when they cook, when they sing, when they build, when they play a musical instrument or when they draw, we block creativity.

Talent is genetic

Some parents believe that creativity is genetic and that you are either born with it or you are not. I think this is an invention by people who underestimate their creativity to help them feel better about their inability to be creative.

If you ask any highly creative person, they will tell you their talents would mean nothing if you did not pursue them, if you did not try, struggle, learn and practice.

Some parents think they help their child deal with disappointment when they say, "You can't expect yourself to be like Dave. He was born with this talent" or "You're not good at drawing. So what?" It is our role as parents to expose our kids' creative expressions, in hope that they find what they like and what they are good at. If we keep telling them they must be born with it, they will give up on looking for their creativity at a very early age. When things are hard, they will just say, "I'm not good at these things", and stop trying.

By talking about creativity as a genetic quality that cannot be developed, we blocks children from trying.

No mistakes allowed

The essence of creativity is the ability to try again and again and to borrow ideas from one area of life for use in another area. To reach success, we need to make lots and lots of mistakes before we come up with something that works.

Think of Thomas Edison. He was very creative and very determined and he could try again and again and again to perfect the light bulb, because he did not think that mistakes were bad things. He thought they were opportunities to learn.

Some parents are very rigid in their parenting style. They make a big fuss out of every "mistake" their children make and create painful associations with mistakes that make their children afraid to try.

If you examine those parents childhood, you will find that they have a painful association with making mistakes themselves and they think they are helping their children avoid this pain by not making mistakes. This is a very vicious cycle that must be stopped.

By associating original creation with the fear of making mistakes, we block creativity.

This is silly

Some parents think that every creation must be serious, practical and useful. But children create for the fun of creating. They do not expect their creations to be displayed in a museum and their inventions are not meant to save the world.

The way you treat their creations will determine your children's attitude towards being creative. If you think their silly, useless or there is nothing special about them, you are taking the fun out of creating them.

I remember 3-year-old kids at my childcare center not wanting to take their carton car creations home, saying, "Mommy will throw it away and I want to keep it". Give your children's creations the respect they deserve if you want them to respect themselves in life as they grow up.

I used to teach the 3-year-olds to sign their names on their creations "just like the greatest artists of all time" to help them respect themselves. If you have creative children and with lots of creations, you can come to an agreement that you take a photo or make a video clip of it before you throw it away "to make room for new creations".

By talking to kids as if their creations are silly or not serious enough, we block their creativity.

I bet Einstein's mother never told him his ideas were silly...

Every child can be creative if we help them unlock their creativity. You hold the key, so use it wisely.

Creative parenting,
Ronit

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• Approval Trap (4): How to get yourself out
• Approval Trap (3): Approval-Seeking Behavior
• Approval Trap (2): Are you trapped?

Here are some more things you can do on a regular basis when you are relaxed that will help you send a message of respect to your kids and strengthen their "choice muscle".

Brainstorm options

Some kids are afraid that because they cannot see a way out, they are stuck. We all get stuck when we do see no option that will get us out of a painful situation or get us to a desired situation.

That is OK, because thinking of options is a skill that needs to be taught. Ask your child, "What's the worst that can happen?" or "What can go wrong?" or "Tell me the craziest solution you can think of". It is important to think of options and while I suggest coming up with crazy things, I would like to emphasize you should aim for solutions, not problems. If you focus on endless possible problems, you are going to find them. Looking for many problems is a dangerous zone that may create more fear than help.

Sometimes, all kids need is a single idea. You can suggest things too, but make sure the child comes up with most of the ideas. If you want to lead them towards something, say things like, "How about...", "What if...", "Do you think doing .... could work?" "What do you think of this option?" Everything you say must be as a mature person, a helper and a mentor. If you try to push your solution, you are not helping, but weakening your child's choice muscle.

Give time to think

When you suggest something, give your child time to think about it. If you expect an immediate decision, you are pushing. Pushing the choice muscle will not make it strong but weak.

It is very important to tell your kids they do not have to make immediate decisions. If we push our kids to make decisions quickly, we give them a message that every choice is a "life or death" decision. This is not good. They should never have that feeling. The choices we make are not perfect either and we often work on them for a while. By the time our kids need to make a decision like whether to risk of driving through a red light, their choice muscle will be so strong they will resist the temptation once they get to a red light, but that takes time and practice.

To help kids think about their choices without pressure, say, "I think it's a good idea to sleep on these ideas", "Take some time to think about this and we can continue tomorrow", or, "I suggest that you think about it for a while before you make your decision".

I use this technique for many things my kids want and I started at an early age. If they want to study a musical instrument, get a haircut, paint their room or register for a new class, I say, "Think about it for a week". If they come back in a week, I know they have thought about it, but if not, I know it was not that important. That is OK!

Basic pros and cons

Making a choice is a matter of weighing the pros and cons of the options you see in front of you. This is a learned skill that is good to teach from an early age. Kids must understand that most choices are not 100% good or 100% bad. Every choice has advantages and disadvantages.

The simplest technique is just writing down the pros and cons separately, counting each side and comparing the numbers. This process helps kids see with their own eyes which options has more good points than bad points. Take a piece of paper and write things down. Often, when you write down the pros and cons, that is enough to convince yourself. Do not be tempted to do everything in your head. When we do not write things down, we allow our subconscious to erase things we do not want to remember or deal with.

Advanced option weighing technique

Sometimes, just listing the pros and cons is not good enough, because some considerations have a higher value than others. For example, your son wants to join a basketball team that practices on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings. He cannot make up his mind whether he is willing to give up other things for this, such as going to parties that happen on Saturday, going to the beach with your family or inviting friends to sleep over on Friday night.

This is when you give the considerations weights. Some considerations are more important to you than others are and it is good to know what these are. So if there are 6 things to consider, you can rank the categories from 1 to 6 (1 being the least important and 6 being the most important). Then, you fill in the form, giving 0 points for "no" and 1 point for "yes" to each consideration in each option.

When you are done, multiply the 1s by the importance and add up the scores for each option. Using a proper weight system, this example shows that going to basketball will be the best choice for your child.

* I play with my basketball friends
** I may play some basketball during school breaks

I use this technique when I make big decisions and even with my clients (who are not young kids) when they need to make hard decisions. Quantifying the importance is a very good way of taking the emotions out of making a choice.

I learned a version of this technique from one of my inspiring teachers. One of my Special Education professors said that teachers tend to give extra points to their favorite students (yes, I know, it is not something you like to find out, but it is true - it is only human to give discounts to the people you like and teachers are just human). To get over this, she came up with a weighing system and designed a marking system that was made of 10 to 20 items (that is a lot, because most teachers use only 3: exam, participating in class and homework, and if they use more than one exam, that makes a huge difference in their grading). This is very easy to do with percentages. You have 100% and divide it between scoring categories by their level of importance (which you can easily teach older kids to do). Well, this does not mean you will not give extra points to your favorite students, but when the extra point is 1% of 7%, it is not a lot and your favoritism in under control.

This technique is great for choosing work, profession, what university subjects to study, friends, a suitable school and, I dare say, even a partner. You rate what is important to you and find out if this person gets to the level you expect. Remember, 100% is not possible!

Independent kids are not born, they are made. I know many parents who struggle with their kids when an easy shift from showing power to supporting their kids' choice muscle could have made their life much better. Do you know how much trouble you can save if you teach your kids to be independent and prepare their own lunch box?

Noff has been making her own sandwiches since she was 4 years old. We would give her a blunt spreading knife and a plate with bread and she put her own spread on it. When she wanted a chocolate drink, she could climb on a chair, take the chocolate powder and pour herself some milk. Yes, it was messy at first, but she did not need us to fulfill her needs, because she could do lots of that herself. She is 10 years old now and she is in charge of many dishes that we make for dinners. If Gal and I had to be away from home, our kids would make themselves a feast every day.

Raising independent kids is helpful in many ways. Eden, who is our eldest, is the most independent in our family, because she has had the most time to practice. She slept over when she about 6 months old, she flew to the other side of the world on her own when she was 10 years old. When we brought a babysitter to take care of the younger kids, she used to host the babysitter. Every time we came back home, the babysitter would say, "Eden babysat me until she went to sleep". She asked her if she wanted anything to eat or to drink and, served her cookies and showed her how to make herself another cup of tea. She showed her how to use the TV and the VCR, where the toilet was and when to give Tsoof his bottle (when Tsoof was a baby). When she was awake, Eden used to change his diapers herself and went to sleep when she knew the babysitter was fine. As you would expect, the transition to not having a babysitter was easy. Practice had made it better and easier.

Total independence happens the second your kid leaves the house and no longer needs your financial support. No kid on Earth, no matter how old, can do it well without practice, without making mistakes and without learning from their own choices. They need time and the more time they have to make those choices in a safe environment, when Mom and Dad can help them, guide them and teach them techniques and opportunities, the better they will be at it.

Life is full of choices and as a parent, you have the luxury of raising independent kids. All you have to do is ... choose!

Happy choices,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Teaching about Choice
• Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Opportunities
• Kids’ Declaration of Independence: How to Give Choices

Accept choice as part of life

Be open and share with your kids stories about situations that have made it hard for you to make choices and how you have solved your dilemmas. It is very important for kids to understand that those situations are part of everyday life and our life is full of choices. Kids generally feel small and helpless and when they understand that you, their almighty parent, feel small and helpless sometimes, that you are not always sure what to do, that you are even afraid sometimes, it will help them be more tolerant towards their own difficult choices. If you talk to them about bad choices you have made and how you have grown from them, that will be of great service to your kids, because they will be able to learn from them too.

Be their inspiration

We make some of the choices in life because we know someone we trust and appreciate who has done (or is doing) something we think they have benefited from. Those people are an inspiration for us. Many kids see their parents as role models and inspiration, because they trust them.

Telling kids about your life will give them ideas and they will say, "I make this choice because something similar has happened to my dad and he solved it successfully that way". It is very important to say, "It worked for me. I lived in different circumstances, but it may work for you too". Remember not to impose your solutions. Think of their choice muscle, not your significance or your power muscle.

Let go of the perfect choice

Some people and their kids think there is such a thing as the perfect choice. Those people tend to talk about their good choices and are in denial of their bad ones. This is a tendency towards perfectionism and it promotes procrastination.

It is important for those parents to understand that not making a choice is a choice not to make a choice and when we do that, we put our life at the mercy of circumstances. The other side of this is being in constant regrets about bad choices. It is reasonable to be disappointed about choices you have made in the past, but since you cannot go back to the past and change them, you have to make the most of your choices, learn from them, move on and teach your kids to do the same.

If you want to help your kids, talk about good choices and bad choices. Tell them there is nothing in life we can have that does not require giving up something else and that waiting for the "right" choice to appear may take too long and they might miss opportunities to learn and grow. When you help your kids make choices, avoid using the words "good choice", "bad choice" and "the right choice". Do not say things like "I'm telling you, you will regret this", "I'm telling you, you will never regret this" and "If you ask me..." (which implies you are using the power muscle).

This is the nature of choices. Only after we make them, we know if they were any good. Do not play fortuneteller, because you may be wrong and lose the trust of your child. You can say, "I believe...", "From my experience...", "I hope..." or "I wish..." Humility can do a lot for your credibility.

Pay attention to conflicts

Use protests as a sign it is about time to change something and give your kids more choice.

Some parents cannot tell when is a good time to give their kids more independence and let them make their own choices.

I think it is hard to tell mainly because there is no "right" time, as most kids are different and are ready to move forward towards their independence at different times. This does not make them problematic, it only means they need more time to practice.

A good sign the time has come is that there is a conflict. I believe that conflicts with kids are part of their journey to independence. Their protests are declarations of their desire to be respected and to have some form of independence. Even a 1-year-old who fights her mom when she feeds her is a declaration of independence.

This is a good time to start giving her choices with her food by saying, "Would you like the red spoon or the blue spoon?" "Would you like to hold the spoon yourself?" "Do you want Mommy to sing you the airplane song or the porridge song?" The impact of this is amazing.

Most conflicts with kids are a battle between the parents' strong power muscle and the kids' weak choice muscle. If the kids are OK with you making choices for them and you are happy with it too, make the choices for them, but if they are not happy, they will protest and if you are not happy, you will protest.

Join me next week for more techniques for teaching your kids about choice and helping them use their "choice muscle".

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Decision Techniques
• Kids’ Declaration of Independence: Opportunities
• Kids’ Declaration of Independence: How to Give Choices