In a book called The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman wrote in 1950 that people could be split into two groups. He said that the inner-directed person "has a trustworthy character and builds his life on the stability and security of his family. Usually, he believes in the Judeo-Christian faith". The other-directed person, on the other hand, is "dependent on the approval of others, especially experts. They are consumed by a quest for personal happiness, so that ... anything becomes permissible if it makes me happy".

Yes, this is an old book, but I read this quote this morning in a much newer book on personal power and relationship skills, so the notion that our pursuit of happiness makes us selfish and self-centered is still very much alive today.

So what's the deal? Does personal happiness equate to selfishness? Does the search for personal fulfillment make us lonely?

"Pooh!" the bear snorted, "Again I say pooh!"
- The Big Brag, Dr Seuss

Being a selfish happiness seeker is like drilling for oil in your own back yard. No matter how much oil you find, the yard will never be the same, your house will stand out from the rest and none of your neighbors will remain your friends. It is like cutting down the trees in the Amazon and making a quick buck, but destroying the future of your children and their children.

Happiness is not the same as instant gratification. It is not the same as temporary joy, excitement, elation or even comfort. Happiness is a state of mind that permeates everything in your life. It must be sustainable.

If not, all we have left is the pursuit, and that makes for a very hard and disappointing life.

So how can you tell if your focus is on the right sort of happiness and that you are not wasting your time on becoming more and more self-centered and self-serving?

I suggest that whatever you do and whenever you have a decision to make about a course of action, you use the following questions:

1. Is it good for me?
2. Is it good for others?
3. Is it good for the Greater Good?

Those who stop after the first question may very well make selfish decisions that hurt them in the long run, hurt others and ruin the future. But those who keep going through the list and assign the same level of importance to all of the answers make decisions that will lead them to more and more happiness over time.

Notice that these questions are all based on your personal interpretation of what is "good", who are "others" and what is the "Greater Good". It really does not matter how you see each of these, the simple consideration of other people, future generations, some kind of a moral system and/or society in general will always yield better decisions with more sustainable outcomes.

You see, the world is a very (VERY) large mirror. What we see in the world is a reflection of what is inside us, at least in some way.

Let's say your life is stressful and you decide to go on a 6-week meditation retreat on a mountain in India. Your partner will have to take care of the kids and your family will miss you terribly, your customers will get no service for a long time and your business will suffer from this, which will later hurt your ability to provide for your family. Sure, it will make you happy, at least while you are meditating, but at what cost?

By realizing the effects on others, you could instead learn to meditate at home, spend some time every week doing Yoga, possibly with your partner and children. It may take you longer to relax fully and feel pure and healthy, but you will find a lot more support around you to sustain your journey.

One of the worst trends today is divorce due to one of the partners being unfaithful. Every couple's life involves pressure and even conflict. Finding a fresh person and satisfying our hunger for attention and love with them may be a quick and easy way to temporary happiness, but at what cost?

By realizing the effects on others and on us in the long run and by looking at our society and seeing what this trend is doing to it, you would see that taking personal responsibility for your actions and investing in your existing relationships is a more sustainable approach. After all, there is no guarantee the new person will keep making you happy for long either.

As a parent, you may be happy when your kids play quietly, particularly if others see this as testament of your good parenting. So if your little boy starts throwing things around, you may feel he is stealing your happiness and making you look bad. You can call him "naughty" and do your best to "discipline" him, but at what cost?

Although you may feel justified in "setting him straight", when he stops trusting you and avoids your company, your will regret your actions and may not be able to recover from them. Moreover, if you examine the behavior of other kids whose parents react in a harsh and self-centered way, you will realize your influence on the world in which your kids grow up. It can be a place full of "naughty" people who feel bad about themselves or a place of trust and respect for all.

By realizing that your best parenting asset is your child's faith in you, you could try to find out what troubles him and guide him towards peace of mind.

Similarly, many parents link their happiness to their children's academic performance. If your teenage girl's grades begin to drop, you can nag her to do her homework, tell her she is lazy, forbid her to go on Facebook and ground her for weeks. You may see yourself as providing order and proper priorities to your daughter at a time of hormonal unrest, but at what cost?

By realizing your support role in her life, you could make her feel safe enough to pour her heart out and tell you her boyfriend broke up with her, let her cry a little on your shoulder and reassure her you will always be there for her. This will teach her how to handle grief and disappointment and validate her emotions.

All too often, there is a conflict between our immediate satisfaction and our long-term happiness. That is just how life works. What is good for us right now is never just that. We are surrounded by people with different interests, beliefs and desires that still matter. And even the people who live far away often have some influence on us (like those clearing the jungle trees in Indonesia or those who make our clothes in China).

So practice asking the questions above. First, you will have to think about every answer carefully, but over time, it will become second nature, like riding a bike. And just like riding a bike, it will make you happy.

Have a great life,
Gal

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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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Of course, when we do many of these things and lots of other people do them too, the decline accelerates. I often think of my kids and the kind of place I would like them to have when they grow up and it makes me worry.

Fun with Ice

When we lived in Texas, there was a period of frost every year. That was bad for the lawn, roads were slippery during morning rush hours and there were always accidents because of the frost.

Yet, a friend of mine found a way to have fun with his kids during that time. Before going to bed on Friday night, he would water his driveway, which was short, straight and steep. When his boys woke up on Saturday morning, the driveway would be ready for some extreme sliding!

This went on for a while and nearly became a family tradition, except one day, my friend's mother-in-law came to visit on Saturday morning and slipped on the ice. She was thoroughly upset with my friend's carelessness and promptly sued him (and her daughter, who was married to him) for her medical expenses.

The following year, my friend's insurance raised his premium and he stopped wetting the driveway.

Insurance protects us from losing everything when we are already busy dealing with something bad, so it seems like a good idea. But insurance companies need to make money in order to insure us, so they recover their losses back from us. Along the way, they sometimes take away some of our happiness too.

No Running, No Jumping, No Playing

When Tsoof was 4 years old, his favorite activity was soccer, he loved to play drums and was a very energetic and talkative little boy. We wanted him to be with other kids, so we sent him to a nearby kindergarten that had great facilities and looked really nice.

Over time, we noticed our little boy was becoming sad and agitated, until he said he did not want to go to kindie anymore. When we ask him about it, he said, "They just want me to sit all the time. I can't run and I can't jump and I can't climb anything. And they want me to be quiet all the time. If I sing or shout because I'm happy, they say 'keep it down'. I heard something outside and I climbed the toy box to see what's happening and the teacher pulled me down", he said.

The next time we dropped him off, we went in with him and asked about all these restrictions. His teacher told us there had been some accidents and some children had gotten injured from climbing or bumping into each other while running, so their insurance company had told them they would not pay for these anymore and they should make sure the kids did not do anything dangerous.

"But this is what kids do", we said, "They run and climb and experiment. It's good for them".

"Sorry", said the teacher, "We can't afford to lose our cover".

Sitting Down until 8:30

A couple of years ago, Noff's school introduced a new rule: Until 8:30am, students within the school grounds may only be in the covered area near the cafeteria and they need to be sitting down. At 8:30, when the school opens officially, students may go anywhere (except they only had 15 minutes until their first lesson started).

This was a hard blow for many parents who had to go to work and needed to drop their kids off at school before 8:30. It was like a punishment for the kids, although they had done nothing wrong. It also chopped their social and fun time at school significantly, which is the main reason Ronit and I send our kids to school.

We wondered about this for a long time, until we were told recently that a girl had been hurt while playing at one of the school's playground before any teachers were on duty and her parents sued the school.

The school did the only thing it could to keep enough of its budget for education...

Glorious Jury

A few weeks ago, I received a summons to my first ever jury duty. Having never been inside a courtroom anywhere, I thought this would be a great experience, so I did not ask to be excused, even through 3 weeks away from work would not be easy. I also wanted to do my part as a citizen and help keep the justice system going.

So far, I have been in one trial that went on for three days, but I have had a lot of time to think about the effects of the jury system on our life.

When I told people I was going to be on jury duty, they looked at me like I was soft in the head or something. "You can ask to be excused, you know", they said, "It's easy. Just say you have a business and you can't get away".

That made me wonder who remains to serve as jurors in the system. These are most likely unemployed, senior citizens and people whose jobs pay them so little, the income from their jury duty is the same or higher than what they already make. Would you want to have that cross-section of society at your trial? Is this truly "a jury of peers"?

Then I got to the building where the courts are and went through the orientation. I found out that many (sometimes most) of the prospective jurors arrive in the morning, go through 1 or 2 jury selections and then go back home. By that time, their day is shot and they only get a small amount of money for their trouble.

The "lucky" ones are "empanelled" and serve as jurors for a few days. I was chosen during my first jury selection.

In the courtroom were a judge, a judge's associate, a bailiff, a prosecutor, an assistant prosecutor, a stenographer and at least two correctional services officers. These 8 people were paid by the state. On the defense side were two highly paid lawyers, making a total of 10 other people.

The jury more than doubles the number of people sitting through the entire trial! However little they get paid, every day of trial costs up to 12 days of lost productivity and taxes, as well as the juror payment, lunch and public transport. If that is not enough, it took several hours for the barristers and the judge to explain to us the matters of law relevant to the case, which made the trial longer.

Then came deliberation. In theory, the jury system is meant to protect ordinary citizens from unfair trials, but jurors are people with biases. They all have beliefs, values and needs that come into play when they decide on a verdict. As I sat in the room, I noticed racial comments, political comments, religious comments and many unfounded statements spoken with conviction. Although we all agreed in the end and worked things out quite well, would I want these people at my trial? Probably not.

Having a costly legal system puts it beyond the reach of most people, so having 12 jurors in court actually excludes many of their "peers" from getting a fair trial.

In our topsy turvy world, the things we do to protect ourselves come back to bite us when we do not stop to think them through and sometimes even when we do.

Have a productive day,
Gal

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Computer games are not a dirty word if they support the development of the player. When a child plays a puzzle on the table, their cognitive skills are stretched as much as when they play a puzzle on the computer.

I remember preparing hundreds of pages that ask the kids to circle the "odd one out". Now, they can play many computer games that are way more colorful and varied that reuse the same "cards" for the children to choose from. I was limited by the number of stamps and my drawing ability and used lots of paper to allow each child to have enough pages to experience and learn. Now, any simple computer game can give the kids endless opportunities to find the odd one out, with great graphics, sounds and animation.

Some computer games are very effective at teaching kids cognitive skills. If you choose games that are not violent, no one needs to die and the player develops some skills or learns some strategy (not pure luck) then there is a good chance they will be effective as a teaching tool.

A research done on elders in East Carolina University's Psychophysiology Lab reported a sizable improvement in cognitive abilities among older adults who played casual games, like Bejeweled.

"The initial results of the study are very intriguing, in that they suggest that the 'active participation' required while playing a casual video game like Bejeweled provides an opportunity for mental exercise that more passive activities, like watching television, do not", said researcher Carmen Russoniello, "Future applications could include prescriptive applications using casual video games to potentially stave off Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia-type disorders".

The difference between what we used to do in the past and what happens now is that I knew the kids' level at any stage, because I needed to facilitate their learning, and now they move quickly and parents and teachers do not have to sit with kids while they are playing to monitor progress or time spent in front of the computer.

If you monitor the time your kids spend on the computer and make sure there is a good balance between machine interaction and human interaction and if you use the computer as a helper, not a substitute for your presence, you could realize the benefits of using computer games to sharpen your kids' minds and ... have fun yourself!

Happy parenting,
Ronit

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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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I have been running these workshops over the last 4 years and have seen over 10,000 students from grade 4 to grade 12. In many places, the kids were convinced that changing a name is a must when you move to a new country and when I ask them if they know the meaning of their name, surprise, surprise (or maybe not), most of them do not know the meaning of their own name.

Out of 700 students, only about 30 raised their hands to share the meaning of their names with others, while the rest were nameless. They did not know what the meaning of their names was or why their parents had given them that name. They knew nothing about the story of their name.

I believe that explains why they people change their names once they move to another country and why the people in their new country expect them to "localize" their name.

To get the kids' interest, I told them that in my tradition, the name you are given determines your destiny. You will have the character of the name or the character of the person you are named after. My name is a Hebrew name, which means "little happy song" (in a female form). I think I live up to my name, because I dedicate my life to "singing the happiness song" and teaching others to find their own happiness. It is no coincidence that my life coaching business is called "Be Happy in LIFE".

I am also short...

I find that it is easy for people who do not know the meaning of their names to suggest to others to give up their names once they move to another country and I think this can be easily fixed.

At the end of that section of the workshop, I always tell the kids that my daughter Eden says, "Google is your friend" and they can easily discover the origin or their name by googling it, along with "name" and "meaning" or "origin"! For example, if your name is David, google "david name origin" and consider a few sources.

Usually, I see the students for one day and I do not get a chance to discover what they have done with my suggestion. But in this series of workshops, I stayed at each school for 3 days and an hour after each session, kids came to me with beaming smiles and shared their discoveries with excitement. "My name is Sophie. I am Wisdom".

In the primary school, when I came to work with the kids on the second day, one of the kids gave me a piece of paper, on which he had copied his research from the internet. He came to me excited and said, "I found out my name, Earl, means Noble Man". 5 other kids came to me looking happy and pound and told me their names and meaning. "My name is Liam. My mom said she loved he actor Liam Neeson, so she named me after him". A Somali boy who could hardly speak English managed to tell the class that his name means "Servant of God" and all the kids smiled at him and thought he had a cool name.

When I was packing my things, a teacher told me many kids had come to her that morning, happy to share with the rest of the class the meaning of their names. "They shared their names with pride", she said, "And there was a happy buzz from the first minute of the day. It's amazing how differently they behaved today".

I just smiled. It was not that amazing. Our name is like our fingerprints - it is part of our identity. Knowing the story behind our name and the meaning of our name is an important layer of our existence. It is required to help us define who we are.

I flew back home after a whole week of workshops, feeling tired but very happy and proud for helping 700 kids discover something important about themselves.

If you want to help your kids carry their names with pride, tell them the story of their names. If there is a meaning, tell them the meaning, but if you do not know the meaning ... Google is your friend.

While you are at it, search for your own name too and share it with your family.

Happy discovery,
Little Happy Song

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And that is no way to live. It is not good for the parents and it is not good for the kids.

What happens in these situations is that the parents try to control their children. In fact, they try to control the fine details of what their children do, say and sometimes even feel. They tell themselves and anyone else who will listen how important it is to get all the answers on every assignment correctly. That is how they justify the hours of grilling their kids over homework. They explain the long-term impact of passing a basketball using the scientifically proven motion on their kids' sporting future. That is how they justify the yelling from the sidelines and the intensive drilling at home.

But how important are these things really?

Who are they really important to?

And what are the effects of this controlling behavior on the children, the parents and their relationships for the rest of their lives?

In parents' defense, I would say it is probably the way they were brought up themselves. I even think many are doing better than their parents did, considering the circumstances. They do not know another way (unless they have read enough of this blog).

In a strange way, by trying to control our children, we give them power over our levels of stress and our emotional wellbeing. By nagging, correcting and micromanaging them, we give THEM control over us. They simply use our obvious motivation to throw us to the mat and pin us down.

Ronit and I had a couple of good friends with a 5-year-old boy who refused to eat "good food". His mom begged, threatened and then offered a bribe. "If you eat your lunch/dinner/food, I'll buy you a big ice cream", she would promise. He would then say, "No, I want my ice cream first. I'll eat the food after". She would buy him the ice cream, he would eat it and then refuse to eat anything else. She would go absolutely nuts, but then do the same thing again the following day.

She was so eager to get him to eat some healthy food, she made a big deal out of it, so he leveraged it to get what he wanted every day and twice on Sundays (literally). She cared so much about how his eating habits reflected on her parenting quality, she put her little son in charge of her self-esteem.

This kind of situation is very scary for the child. It means the parent does not have a sense of priority and enough self-confidence to be in charge. Kids view their parents as almighty and being able to shake them so easily makes them unable to rely on the parents for their own security.

So what should parents do?

The secret to trading failure to control with real power involves developing a personal perspective, having clear priorities, focusing only on truly important things and assuming a coaching position.

How to develop a personal perspective in parenting

As always, start by finding a quiet time and place, then relax by taking a few long, deep, slow breaths. Once you are calm and your head is clear, imagine the last scene in which you tried to control your child and ended up pulling your hair out.

Freeze the scene, as if everyone in it suddenly turned into metal or stone (ice is too cold). Now, float out of your body and position yourself opposite the image of you. Take a good look at your face and your body language. It is very likely you will recognize a fear in yourself, which you have not been aware of, but seems to be the source of your pressure during the scene.

Ask yourself, "Why do I really want my child to do [whatever it was]? What was I afraid would happen if he/she didn't do it?"

In many interpersonal conflicts, at least one party considers their views universal and absolute. Often, by accepting them as personal preferences, the conflict goes away. In a struggle with your kids, it is important to realize that although you may believe you are doing what is best for them, you are always first and foremost serving your own interests. When you are afraid of something, you become defensive and uncompromising. That is just human.

Now ask yourself, "Realistically, if I said and did nothing that time, what is the worst thing that could happen?"

In our friend's case, her son would have become hungry over time without ice cream, which would have given her enormous power over him, because then he would have eaten anything she allowed him to eat. If only she overcame her fear for 30 minutes or so...

How to have clear parenting priorities

No matter how many times we ask parents this question and no matter how we present it to them, what parents want most for their children is happiness. They just want their kids to be happy. The rest is just ways to get there.

Now that you are calm and being honest with yourself, ask yourself, "Would my kids be happier if I taught them how to do everything right or if I let them experience life on their own?" Again, consider the most recent incident or perhaps the most common conflict with your kids for perspective.

As a minimum, children need to be healthy and safe. Beyond that, they need to be happy and learn how to stay healthy, safe and happy on their own. Anything we force them to do that serves another aim hurts everybody.

In our friend's case, the little boy became less and less secure and more and more defiant, searching for the point where his mother would finally provide a boundary for him. He was not happy, she was not happy and his father was not happy. A few years later, the couple split and the boy went to live with his dad.

How to assume a coaching position with your kids

Kids are just little people. They are people in the making. From the minute they are born, we need to treat them as individuals. They are not us. They are not part of us. They grow up in a different world and have different needs and different physical and psychological abilities and limitations.

If we deal with them to serve our own happiness, this will often result in conflict. They may not be able to explain it to us, but they can feel it.

But if we do our best to help THEM get what THEY want out of life (using age-appropriate methods, of course), there will be fewer conflicts, our kids will feel safe and supported and life will be good for everyone.

A split second before responding to anything your kids do or say, stop, breathe, look at the scene from a neutral position (do the scene freezing exercise above until you get the hang of this), find the response you believe will make everybody the happiest and then act.

If you do this for a while, your kids will learn to trust you. Then, when you need to stop them from doing something they shouldn't, they are likely to just follow your guidance, because you always look after their best interest. This belief in you, this trust, this confidence, is the real source of power in parenting.

So stop controlling your kids. Relax, focus, let go and be powerful.
Gal

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Nothing is worth more than this day
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Kids are little philosophers practicing the theories of the great philosopher of all times in real life. They live in the simplest stage show that is their life, without much sophistication and with no budget. This is ability smart, knowledgeable and experienced grownups need to learn from their children.

Kids do not have tomorrows. The younger they are, the more limited their understanding of time and the harder it is to explain to them what they will gain tomorrow if they just try a bit harder or wait a little bit longer today. One of parents' biggest frustrations is their inability to explain why to try harder today for some imaginary tomorrow. Kids, on the other hand, do not understand why they should try harder, because from their point of view, fun is the best way to navigate through life and "hard" and "fun" do not go together.

Fun as a Compass

Kids' attitude to fun as a compass is perceived by grownups as a limitation, a lack of perspective and experience. I wonder sometimes who is missing perspective. Kids, the artists of living in the now, whose present is full of fun, or their parents, the champions of living in the future, whose present is an endless cycle of anxiety?

Children invest all their energy in what they will achieve in the short term. Adults, convinced they need to delay their gratifications, exaggerate this and without meaning to, they have invented the opposite of enjoinment and fun and have turned their life into a dress rehearsal for the "real thing".

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things
- Henry Ward Beecher

If you are a parent doing everything you can to better tomorrows, if you are a parent telling your kids off for behaviors today that you are afraid they will keep doing tomorrow, if you believe that whatever happens today is a sign for what will happen in the future, if you think that pain today justifies potential gain tomorrow - you have just passed the most important audition of your life and have been accepted into The Big Dress Rehearsal, where you might spend the rest of your life.

Many parents fall in the trap of separating life into living in the show of life and rehearsing for it, as if they need to prepare all their lives for an imaginary future, when they will have everything they want, but they never take center stage and actually play in the show. The problem with living in a dress rehearsal is that you become very good at rehearsing and not at performing. Many parents invest in preparing their kids and become very good at preparing and not at implementing these preparations. In extreme cases, this imaginary future makes parents so anxious they torture their kids today and justify it by claiming they will be happy for it someday.

If you have ever had a conflict with your child that was very critical for you and you were worried they would take this to their future, while your child thought you were making a big thing out of nothing, you have been in the conflict between life as a rehearsal and life as a show.

A classic example of the life as a rehearsal and life as a show conflict is school. In my parenting workshops, when I ask parents about big conflicts with their kids, they say that most of their parenting energy is spent around school, homework, managing time, grades and teachers. Every argument over school starts with our belief as parents that the imaginary rewards of our kids' schooling in the future will justify their pain in the present. Not many parents ask themselves whether school today is really preparing their children for the show of life they will have to perform in their future.

Our kids do not go to school because they want to. We keep them there with our belief that their future will be better for it. In the cheapest format of schooling, we invest 13 years and tens of thousands of dollars on this school rehearsal and we do not stop to ask if we know for sure what will be the format of the show they will have to perform in the future and if it justifies the long preparation. What we can say for sure is that we have become so good at preparing that we have no clue on what kind of a stage our kids will have to perform in 15 years.

Parents differ from their kids in courage. Kids are not afraid of a show that is not perfect, a bit clumsy, without any status or experience, because what directs them is having fun right now. Their primitive compass, called "fun", has stood strong in the auditions of all times, in shows of all generations and on stages of all successes and challenging experiences. By following this primitive compass, many authors have written thousands of books kids have never read, producers have made movies kids have never seen and philosophers have described theories kids have never heard of.

Enjoy the journey, enjoy every moment and quit worrying about winning and losing
- Matt Biondi

Many parents, on the other hand, prefer the illusion of "the future". They prefer putting off the fun of now and invest lots in preparing for life, in hope that fun will come, later. Parents go to work and dedicate hours of being away from their partner and kids in order to make money and have fun with their partner and kids on a short yearly vacation that they end up spending on renovating the shower, "because it cannot be postponed any longer". They get into an endless cycle, where they do not know what started first, the chicken or the egg.

Kids live without too many conditions. As long as they have fun, with a little bit of company, not seeking a big crowd and not dedicating hours for rehearsing or putting on makeup, they will perform on a small stage or in a solo performance, holding a balloon and celebrating their total ignorance of the future. Parents, on the other hand, have endless conditions on the location of the show, who will be the stage manager, what the content will be, who the other players will be, the director, the salary, who will be invited and how hard they will need to clap. But so many conditions and fun do not go hand in hand.

We can learn from kids how to have the courage not to treat life as a dress rehearsal or an imaginary show that we constantly need to prepare for, but to live in a simple, magical, natural show that happens every day in every second of our imperfect, clumsy, fun life.

We should learn from kids about "performing" and having fun today, because there is a real danger that if we keep preparing, when the time of our show comes, if ever, when we are finally thin, rich, happy, pretty, successful, with a high social status and lots of the latest gadgets, it may be too late.

If we argue and worry about a show that never happens, we can only imagine a sad show, in which our kids will be just like their parents and stop believing that more importantly than being thin and skinny, we need to love our body, more importantly than making money, we need to be content to put it to good use or give it away, more importantly than striving for happiness, we need to be happy along the way, more importantly than being pretty in other people's eyes, we need to feel pretty, more than wanting to be successful, we need to celebrate our existing successes, however small, more importantly than social status, we need to enjoy our friends and family and more importantly than buying gadgets, we need to enjoy them.

For kids, every experience is a show. It is natural and without conditions. They cry a little, laugh for no reason, sometimes they fail and they always get up. They do not have to have an audience and if they do, they do not try to please everyone. When they do not get any cheers and claps, they applaud themselves for participating.

We can learn philosophy from our own children, small, inexperienced and lacking perspective. We can learn from kids that life is a show that starts when we give up on endless rehearsals, when we stop trying to come up with the best show ever and we just participate and have fun. We can learn from kids that fun is an enormous force.

May the force be with you!
Ronit

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At first, I thought Australians were just sick more often than others in the world, but after a short time, I came to the conclusion they were taking a day off when they were tired, sneezed too much, had some errands to run or just needed a day off.

As a parent, that freaked me out. I could take myself one or two years into the future and imagine my own children substitute "Mom, I want some time off" with "Mom, I'm sick". I believe that if you say you are sick enough times, you will convince your body that you are and then you will actually feel sick. Gal and I put a lot of effort and thinking into raising healthy kids and the thought of them being "sick" every time they needed to rest made me feel sick ;P

I fully understand that people need some a break from time to time and the regular days off on weekends and public holidays are good, but they do not always come at the right time or provide enough relief. It makes sense to me that kids do not plan to need time off exactly on those days, so it is just natural that they want time off on a school day.

The problem with "being sick" is that you cannot really enjoy the day and rejuvenate, which defeats the purpose of taking a day off. Taking these needs into consideration, I came up with a solution that has been working for me for over 12 years.

No more sick kids

I told the kids that if they are healthy the whole term (each term is about 10 weeks long), they can pick a day in each term to have a break and on that day, we can do some fun things together. There are some rules to this contract:

1. You cannot pick an exam day
2. You must let me know ahead, so I can plan it and be home with you
3. You cannot pick the same day as your sibling (this allow me to spend individual time with each one of my kids, although on special circumstances, we have had lots of fun with the whole family)

Advantages of picking a day off over being sick

There are many advantages to picking your day off when you are healthy over saying, "Mom, I'm sick" and pretending to be sick.

• The greatest advantage is that kids do not associate having time off with being sick, so they are sick less often.
• I have seen so many people that say, "I can't out so that no one will see me, because I'm supposed to be sick in bed". Not much fun being stuck at home. On a planned day off, you can do whatever you like.
• You do not have to lie to the teachers, so this is a good reward for being honest. I always send a letter to the teacher beforehand and say, "Noff is going to be away on that day". I never lie about this. Remember, teachers and schools are giving you a service and being afraid to be honest is not good for your relationship with your service provider. The teachers will appreciate that more. They know that some parents write "sick" letters even when their kids are not sick (because they do it themselves).
• You can arrange for one of your or your partner to take a day off instead of having to ask family members, neighbors and friends to take care of your sick child.
• You can pick better days for time off so that your child does not miss things that are important to them at school.

I have had this agreement with my kids for 12 years. Tsoof hardly ever used those days, because he was busy and did not want to miss out. In the last two weeks of term, I would ask him, "Which day would you like to take off?" and he would say, "Monday ... no, I don’t want to miss Show Choir ... Tuesday ... no, I don't want o miss Wind Ensemble ... Wednesday ... no, I don't want o miss Drama ... Thursday ... no, I don’t want to miss Percussion Ensemble ... Friday ... no, I don't want to miss Big Band. That's OK, I won't take a day off this term". This was true almost every term for the last 6 days of his schooling.

This week, Noff asked to take her day off. Our new kitchen was arriving and she wanted to be home to watch it being assembled. I was so happy she just asked to stay home instead of having to pretend she was sick. We had to go to school early to bring back something she had left there, so she went to school without her uniform, walked into her classroom and told everyone she was staying home to watch the instillation of the new kitchen. I was very proud she felt comfortable to tell the truth, not to mention that she had been healthy the whole term.

Please try this at home! It works like magic (you can even reward yourself with a day off after being healthy for 3 months solid).

Happy, healthy parenting,
Ronit

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In Australia, there is now something called NAPLAN - National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy, officially described like this: "Every year, all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed on the same days using national tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy".

This means that absolutely NOTHING else matters to most of the teachers and parents of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. After having quite a bit of fun in Prep and Years 1 and 2, the poor kids in Year 3 are taught things by the book, tested every week, deprived of play time, music, art, sport and extracurricular activities and subjected to constant pressure to perform. State Education ministers go nuts from it, so Department of Education executives go nuts from it, so principals go nuts from it, so teachers go nuts from it, so students go nuts from it.

The same thing happens all over again 2, 4 and 6 years later.

And that is really bad.

Because learning should be fun and because all that stress actually blocks learning.

Think back to your time at school for a moment, particularly to 3^rd Grade. Could you study well when you were tired? Could you concentrate in class when you were hungry or when you had to go to the toilet? Was it easy for you to work with numbers after witnessing your parents having a big fight the night before? How well did you do on exams when your dog died or your best friend moved away?

Not too well, right?

School systems are just like conventional medicine - they focus on the symptoms, ignore the personal context and completely miss the underlying issues. They do it because the symptoms, literacy and numeracy in this case, are easy to test and measure. It stands to conventional reason that by teaching more reading, students' reading will improve and by administering more math homework, students will get more practice and get better with numbers.

Ronit and I see just how wrong this approach is with every child that comes to our assessment service. One after the other, parents bring children aged 5 to 14, asking for help with their performance at school. One after the other, these children reveal gaps in their learning due to emotional traumas and communication style incompatibility with their past or present teachers. Ronit advises all of their parents to handle their emotional wellbeing first and one after the other, they pick up speed in their studies as soon as they are able to smile and feel free.

We have seen close correlations between gaps in reading, writing and math skills due to the illness and death of a father. Would you care how much 2 + 5 was if your father was dying?

We have seen gaps in academic performance due to frequent changes of teachers. Young children look up to their teachers and idolize them. That is why they trust their teaching and follow their instructions. Would you be able to trust your 6^th Grade 1 teacher after being "deserted" by the previous 5?

We have seen children whose mother or father had a mental disorder, which forced them to help extensively at home and gave other students at their school plenty of bullying material. Would you be able to motivate yourself even to go to school if this were your situation?

When a child is overwhelmed by strong emotions, pressure to perform only makes things worse. The child feels ignored, abused, rejected and belittled. They lose trust in teachers, parents and sometimes even in "grownups" in general. So they hide their challenges, which makes them even harder to detect, and they go on missing more and more spelling, grammar, arithmetic, shapes, money, graphs and all those other things that show up later as low test scores.

Emotionacy

What kids really need to learn is not literacy or numeracy, it is "emotionacy". They need to learn how to recognize and manage their emotions. They need to be encouraged to express themselves, to explore and to learn what and how they like. They need to be valued as people-in-the-making (my kids have an awesome music teacher who refers to her students as "short people") and to be developed based on their own choices.

Reading something interesting is far more beneficial than reading standard text. Sure, it is not as easy to monitor and regulate, but kids who follow their heart LOVE to read. They read without any external pressure, they learn far more from what they read and they read so much that their level of literacy is actually better over those who are forced to read standard boring stuff.

Give any child a cool science project where they need to measure quantities, calculate fractions, draw a graph and analyze numerical data and they will jump for joy at each discovery and conclusion. They will remember the experiment forever, keep the results in their room for months, show it to everyone and proudly EXPLAIN the math to anyone who will listen. In the context of something exciting, kids have all the skills for math.

Pay attention to how a child learns - by writing and drawing, by listening and talking or by doing - and adapt your teaching to it and all of a sudden, a "slow" child seems "bright". Suddenly, they like coming to class or doing their homework, they love the teacher (or you, their parent) and their scores improve dramatically.

Find out how a child feels, no matter how long it takes and how difficult it is for them to describe (particularly at a young age), help them feel better and you will get a bundle of joy that finds little in class challenging. Use stories, symbolic play with dolls, drawings or any other non-verbal method and you will discover the blocks to natural learning. Give affirmations, touch, quality time, little presents and helpful services and you will see moping turning into energy and a long face becoming a smile.

When you need to teach a child something, present it as a game. Learning happens much better when it is fun and then, the child wants to learn even more, because it is fun. Kids would play games all the time if they could, so just let them. Use their endless energy and fill their games with useful learning and they will be unstoppable.

Academic performance is natural for children when they can "afford it" mentally. When they are too busy surviving emotionally, they can learn nothing, but no matter what their top potential is, they will get a lot closer to it when they are happy.

So check your child's emotionacy and help them get better at it. Write your local representative and speak out at parent-teacher meetings and parent-body gatherings. What your kids need is emotional intelligence and the rest will follow.

Happy parenting,
Gal

P.S. A good starting point is to work on your own happiness, because happy parents raise happy kids.

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