Both Ronit and I slept very badly that night and had very scary dreams.

In the movie, there are 12 districts full of poor workers who can barely get enough food to eat. Their life is mud (literally), they are dressed in light-blue working uniforms and live in fear. These districts are ruled by "the capitol", a magnificent and decadent city, where people spend their time dressing to impress and trying to find things to entertain themselves. There is police/army force, dressed in white, which swiftly handles any disruptions.

But the main instrument of power is TV and there is one particular show in TV everyone must watch to remember their place in this futuristic society - The Hunger Games. Each district sends a boy and a girl to fight for their life. The game ends when only one remains, giving the people of their district the temporary illusion that life may be better for them too some day.

There were many similarities between The Hunger Games and our life, which I wanted to share with you. This will be depressing, so after that, I will also share with you how you, me and other parents can make reality different, for us and for our kids.

Just like in the movie, our world is controlled by a small group of people with enough power to take away all of our retirement money, crash the property market, mobilize entire armies to a faraway country and occupy it, kill leaders, install new leaders, invade our privacy and use our tax money and bank fees to fund it all.

Just like in the movie, the people in power see life as a game. They pursue meaningless victories and possessions (one character is called Effie Trinket), consumed by their desire for control (the TV host is called Caesar Flickerman) and personal gains. Even when they pretend to be doing the best for "the people", there is a complete disconnect between the lavish way they live and the miserable way others do.

Just like in the movie, most of us are so focused on getting by, we feel isolated and scared, even in a big crowd. This way, we are very easy to control and are not likely to turn to our neighbors and work colleagues to form an army that will overthrow the current regime. Although we have little, we could lose it all, so we keep plowing ahead and thinking it is the best we can do.

Just like in the movie, we raise our children to survive and be safe and thus they become the next generation of us. We do our best to protect them and make them better than we ever were, but we still send them to school, where they are herded and taught to conform, and we still teach them that getting a good job is the best thing they can do for themselves. They see us following the crowd and feeling safe doing what "everybody else" is doing, and they grow up to follow the crowd too.

Just like in the movie, people are sent to fight and kill complete strangers just to satisfy the rules of some game that is forced upon everyone equally. Most Americans, English and Australians have never met an Iraqi or an Afghan and have no idea about the way they live or what they want out of life, but soldiers still go and fight them, sent by majority votes in democratic countries. These soldiers are backed by their families, who support killing anyone that will prevent them from coming back, even complete strangers who were first attacked by the soldiers.

Just like in the movie, the media is the weapon that subjects us to the tyranny. We are pumped day and night with hollow slogans, like "May the odds be ever in your favor", where the odds we would make it are 1 in 24 (in real life, they may even be lower, but the losers do not have to die).

Just like in the movie, our TV shows many hunger games: Big Brother, So You Think You Can Dance, American/Australian Idol, The Farmer Wants a Wife and, of course, Survivor. In all of these, the camera is everywhere, contestants work in groups while having conflicting personal interests and relationships (even love) are staged for the camera.

He is luring you in to make you easy prey. The more likable he is, the more deadly he is
- Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games

All of these shows are sponsored, just like the game in the film, and the sponsors are not interested in letting the best person win. They are interested in manipulating the audience into buying their products. The level of pressure in them is increased artificially through expressions like "elimination", "dancing for her life" and "let's see who will survive".

All of these "reality" shows are rigged, too. In the film, someone mentions that District 1 usually wins. In real life, we know someone who is a wonderful singer, but was not selected for Australia's Got Talent because her life story was not interesting enough for the show.

If we don't watch, they don't have a game
- Gale Hawthorne in The Hunger Games

Unlike the movie, we do not have to subject ourselves to this bombardment of manipulative messages in the media. We can stop reading the papers, switch our radio to a music channel or listen to recorded music, unsubscribe from "special deals" sites, stop reading glossy magazines at the supermarket checkout and ... turn the TV off.

Unlike the movie, we can choose to question the way we live and the lessons we teach our children. We can sit quietly and go over a day in our life, step by step, and ask the following questions about everything we do:

• Why do we do it?
• What is it really doing for us?
• What is it doing to us?
• What is it doing to our family members and our friends?
• What kind of society is it helping to create for us and for our kids?

You could ask this about getting up at 6:30am, about brushing your teeth, about the clothes you put on, about your choice of breakfast, about the way and means by which you travel to work, about taking your kids to school, about your job and about the way you related to people, especially to those you love the most. You could ask this about everything you buy, every place you buy it from, everything you sell and every way in which you sell it.

At first, you may not see the big deal. 30-40 years of habit make us good at seeing certain things and ignoring others. That is only natural. But once you find something that no longer seems right, even if it is your brand of toothpaste, this will show you the power of questioning and open the door to more revelations and more freedom.

Yes, freedom. Because we may have the illusion that we can do or say whatever we want, but unless we make conscious decisions about how to live and how to raise our kids, we are not free at all. We are just products of our upbringing.

When you have had some practice with these questions and you get used to changing your perception, play questioning games with your kids too. The questioning game. No, The Freedom Games!

Happy parenting,
Gal

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That reminded me of the time when we lived in Texas and I wanted to register for a software engineering course at the local university (I was naive enough to think I could do a Master's degree while working and having a family. Yeah, right). The course I wanted was popular and all the places were taken, so I rang during my lunch break to ask to be put on the waiting list.

"I'm sorry, Sir, but you'll have to come in person and fill out the waiting list form", the administrator told me.

"Can you please just take my details and put me on the list?"

"I'm sorry, Sir, but it's university policy", she said.

"What's so special about this form? All you really need is my name and the course number. What's the big deal?"

"Sir, I don't make the rules, I'm just telling you what you're gonna have to do. It's university policy that waiting list registrations are done in person to avoid falsification", she explained.

"You're telling me somebody else might come and register me for a waiting list without my consent and that's such a big problem for the university that I have to give up my lunch break, drive for half an hour, God knows where I can park, fill out a form for just under 2 seconds, then drive back for half an hour? Is that what you're saying?"

"I'm sorry, Sir, but that's the university policy", she said. Again.

"What's your name?" I tried a different way.

"Felicity".

"Oh, nice name, Felicity [from the Latin word for 'happiness']. Can you put yourself in my shoes for a sec and tell me how you would feel about all this? Would you want to drive for an hour to fill out a form for 2 seconds?"

"If that was university policy and I had no choice? Yes, I would".

Checkmate.

Boy, was I pissed off at this. I was spewing for weeks afterwards. It may have even contributed to my later stomach ulcer. Or not.

Over the years that followed, more and more companies structured their operations in such a way that clients could not get their way. Not easily, anyway. When I rang Customer Service ("service" is such a misnomer in this context), I would bump into First Line staff who were basically trained parrots. They had a script for every question the company could think of. When I asked a question they did not have on the list, they just picked the closest script and said that.

The term "company policy" rang in my ears more and more often. It was infuriating.

But at some point, Ronit and I learned how to use the same trick to our advantage as parents. Oh, sweet revenge!

Eden would just not go to bed until we did. No matter what we did, she pulled remarkable stunts to stay awake and be with us. We were desperate for some "us time" and for the feeling that we were in control of our family.

We had a couple of sessions with a family therapist and he told us we should just blame the clock.

"What?!"

"Yes, blame the clock. Just point to the clock and tell Eden that, as she can see for herself, it is time for bed. No matter what she says, just keep telling her 'Now it is time for you to go to bed'. Don't argue and don't raise your voice. Just keep pointing to the clock and telling her it's time for bed".

"Eden's too clever for this. She'll argue with us", we said (OK, I said).

"Yes, but you won't. You'll just say, 'Eden, it's time to go to bed', and then she will", he said calmly.

After 6 long years of torture every night and 2 days of referring to the new "family policy", Eden went to bed at 8pm (as opposed to 11pm or whenever we crashed). There was nothing she could do to break us. We were armed with a powerful new weapon of conflict destruction and we were going to use it against any child tyranny.

After that, we became very creative with our use of "family policy" or "family rules". When we wanted our kids to try new food, we would say, "The rule in our family is that we try everything at least once. If you don't like it after you've tried, that's OK, but everybody has to try once. No exception".

When we wanted our kids to get enough sleep, we would say, "You're 10 years old and 10-year-olds need at least 10 hours of sleep at night. Since you need to get up at 7am, you have to be in bed by 9pm. That's the rule". And off to bed the kids went, much to our amazement at first, but we are really used to it by now.

When we wanted out kids to do well at school, we would say, "In our family, schoolwork comes before games, friends, computers and TV. The rule is 'finish your homework first and then you can do whatever you want'. It's the same rule for everyone, including you". And that is how it worked. No conflict. No dramas. Because you cannot argue with the rules.

Here are some more useful examples:

• In our family, siblings love, respect and help each other
• The rule is that everyone helps clear the table after dinner. We all stay together until everything is finished
• We do not watch TV when we eat. That's the rule
• Toys have to go back into the box before we can take out new ones. That's how it works in this house

As I was eavesdropping on the parenting workshop, Ronit was listing these and other examples of "family rules" to the participants. Ronit said, "Kids never argue with the rules. They never think of telling you they're your rules and you can change them. They feel safe when they know the rules and they stop fighting".

I could see their puzzled reactions, which are so typical to those who have never tried this method.

I quietly giggled to myself, remembering how we had used each of the rules Ronit mentioned, at how innocent kids can be and how easy it is to get them to do "the right thing" and feel good about it. It's awesome.

Please try this at home. It does not take a professional (although if you work in Customer Service somewhere, you are a professional already...).

Happy parenting,
Gal

You may want to read

• Troubled Teens: Disturbing Thoughts
• Anger Management: Be Prepared
• Troubled Teens: Terrible Times

Gal and I used to eat whatever our parents ate. We went to the supermarket and picked from the shelves the exact same things we had seen our parents choose or whatever was on sale. It took us 5 years of managing our own economy and a sick girl to discover that what we eat and how we eat has a strong impact on our life. Some things you just cannot learn at school.

It happened more than 20 years ago and since then, we have learned more and more about what to eat to be healthy in body and mind. I know that not everyone is convinced that healthy eating is the right solution and I understand. After all, the concept of "health" is very wide. When I sit with my clients at a cafe and order iced coffee with ice cream and whipped cream, I am 100% convinced it is healthy for my soul. So we may not agree about what food is healthy, but I think we can all agree on how to eat.

We live a very fast lifestyle. All the people around you will tell you they have no time - no time for the kids, no time for fun, no time for hobbies, no time for friends and no time for eating. Many shops and massive businesses have come to life to cater for this "fast food" lifestyle. We grab a shake, eat a meal on the way, in the car, during a meeting, while watching TV, during phone conversations and when reading a book. We think we are saving time, but we are making it harder for our digestive system to make the best of our food and this creates a never-ending cycle. What we eat is not digested properly, we lack essential nutrients, we feel tired, we become ineffective and what usually takes us 2 hours, suddenly takes us 4 and we have just lost 2 hours of our precious time, so we need to catch up and save time by grabbing some fast food or eating our healthy food on the run.

Unfortunately, our kids are like little monkeys. They see how we eat and they do exactly what we do. If you watch TV while you eat, you cannot complain that your children want to do the same.

The way we eat has a direct impact on our digestive system and as a result, on our health and well-being, our energy level and on our ability to handle stress.

There are 4 simple things you can do to help your body make the best of what you eat. Teaching kids how to eat will make sure they do not start their own "eating on the run" cycle. Good habits will last them for life.

Enjoy your food, eat comfortably, eat together

Eating needs to be an enjoyable experience. When eating is complicated or lonely, we associate food with need rather than with pleasure. Many theories about health and food emphasize the importance of enjoying your food.

French people eat lots of cream and drink wine, yet they have no issues with fat in their diet, because they love food and instead of thinking about it as burden or a source of worry and heartache, they enjoy their food and there is no better way of enjoying your food than enjoying it in friendly company.

I have worked with some families that did not have a dining table. Everyone ate at different times and at different places in the house. When we lived in Thailand, we noticed that the Thai people seemed to be eating all the time, every waking hour, and they always ate together.

Gal was a manager in a company and used to bring his own lunch to work. The people he managed always ate together. When they saw him eating by himself, they invited him to join them and around the table, everyone was equal.

Make sure you have special family eating times with your children. It is a wonderful opportunity to bond with other family members and make the experience an enjoyable memory for the kids. Meals are not just for food, they are social events.

Eat warm food

Our body is like a washing machine that heats the water before it washes the dirty clothes. If you connect the washing machine to a hot water outlet, the washing will start straight away. If you connect it to cold water, it will take time for the machine to heat the water, and only when this is completed, the washing cycle will start.

Using cold water will use more energy. When eating, if you eat warm food and drink warm water, the body will start digesting the food straight away, if you eat cold food and cold drinks, it will take the body time to heat the food before it starts digesting.

Digestion and stress are the two things that take most of our energy. If you feel exhausted and tired after having a meal, it is usually a sign that your digestive system is working hard. If your food is cold, or even frozen, your system works harder and you use up a lot of energy (if you are wondering about eating hot food, there is nothing to worry about. When we feel the food is too hot in our mouth, it never reaches the digestive system).

The solution is not to eat or drink straight from the fridge, especially when you are not feeling good, when you are sick or when you are tired. Take fruit, vegetable, dairy food or drinks out of the fridge and let them stand outside for a while before you eat or drink them.

When you eat, eat!

The second thing you can do is use the rule "When you eat, eat!" According to traditional Chinese medicine, digestion and concentration use the same energy. It means we cannot eat and do other things at the same time, because our energy goes to the other things and our digestive system does not have enough left.

It is a very easy and simple rule: when you eat, focus on eating. No books, no TV, no radio, no computers, no work and no talking on the phone. Just eating. If you follow this rule, your kids will do the same. Our family loves music, but we make sure we turn it off while we eat. When we finish eating, sometimes Tsoof brings his guitar and we sing. Make it easy for your digestive system to do what it needs to do.

It is easy. Try it for two weeks and you will see a huge difference in the kids' behavior.

Chew!

Digestion starts in our mouth, using our teeth to break down the food and our saliva to soften it and break down the starch. When we chew the food, we send a massage to the digestive system to produce enzymes to break down the food.

If the food gets to the stomach too quickly, there are not enough enzymes to break it down. Our digestive system also does a much better job when the food reaches the stomach in very small, soft chunks. If we swallow the food too quickly, it takes longer for it to break down and sometimes, it is pushed along only partially digested and we do not absorb all the nutrients in it.

If it takes long to digest, our body does extra work and that makes us feel tired and exhausted, but if we cut the food with our teeth and chew it well, it will be digested quickly and easily. Chewing our food makes it easier for our digestive system and can save us lots of needed energy.

It takes our body 20 minutes to notice we have eaten. Chewing every bite 20 times (Yoga says 27) will make sure we eat more slowly and feel full after a smaller amount of food. Eating too quickly actually makes us eat more.

Chewing 20 times is not easy, but you can make a game out of it and have an evening a week when you make a conscious effort to chew your food and help your body save energy. Ask them about the different flavors they can taste and about how the taste of the food changes as they chew. Playing chewing games with kids will also help with the fun and enjoyment.

I see "eat and run" as a form of eating disorder. Most people do it to save time, but what they lose is energy and even more time. Having good food habits food is as important as what we eat and starting young can make sure this will become second nature to them and accompany them for life. Having a general positive attitude towards food will keep your kids away from eating disorders.

Patience is a virtue with food too.

Bon appétit,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The "Light Thinking" Diet
• Teenage Problems
• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Food

To a great extent, this also affects parents of teenagers, who are being encouraged to consider every little friction and identity-building exercise on the teen's part as part of their overall negative attitude to adults and authority.

Yesterday evening, however, Channel Ten in Australia showed a piece titled "Teen Trouble?" in which a mother and her 3 wonderful teenagers were interviewed, having gone through Ronit's coaching programs. Ronit was also interviewed as a parenting expert with some tips on how to get along well with teenage children and build strong relationships with them.

Irene Thompson and her lovely kids are a great example of how well and how quickly the Be Happy in LIFEparenting workshops and teen coaching programs work.

Here is the video  for your viewing pleasure:

The next parenting workshop open to the public in Brisbane will be on the 30^th of October and bookings are available for groups and organizations anywhere in Australia and around the world.

Love your teens and see them blossom,
Gal

You may want to read

• Anger Management: Be Prepared
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• I See You

One of my clients had an angry teenager at home until recently. Olivia was only 12 years old and very, very, very angry. Her mom, Nancy, who was trapped by the "teenage problems" belief, did nothing for a while. All her friends said it was normal ("You know, teens these days..."), so she just waited for the teenage years to pass and prepared herself for when her two younger kids would go through it too.

But then Nancy met another client of mine who told her, "It doesn't have to be like that. You should go and see Ronit". So she came to one of my parenting workshops. After the workshop, she had some hope that maybe it was not normal for "teenagers these days" to be so angry and that maybe she could help her daughter relax.

Shortly after, Nancy told me, "There was something you said to me during the parenting workshop that made a huge shift with my daughter. I was convinced all teenagers were the same, but I realized that I could help my daughter if I only changed some of the things I was doing myself. It really worked!"

Olivia had been seeing a psychologist for a while, trying to make a big decision, but without any results. After the parenting workshop, Nancy went to the psychologist and asked her to try one of my strategies. It took only one session for Olivia to make her mind up and Nancy came to see me, hoping she could make more changes in her teen daughter's attitude and life.

Parents these days...

To me, "teenagers these days..." is usually related to "parents these days...", so I asked Nancy some questions about what was happening in their home.

Olivia was not very social girl and had some problems at school. She was constantly angry and grumpy. She came from school and went straight to her room. Her family members had to knock on her door and "invite" her to dinner. She went to sleep between midnight and 2am, got up around 7am in a foul mood, went to school angry and came back angry. This cycle was endless. This is roughly how our conversation went.

Ronit: Why does she go to sleep so late?

Nancy: She watches TV and she spends time on Facebook

Ronit: Why does she have TV in her room?

Nancy (puzzled, smiles back at me): All our kids have TVs in their rooms

Ronit: What will happen if you take the TV out of her room?

Nancy: She will use her computer for Facebook chats and watch YouTube videos

Ronit: How come she has Facebook? It's not legal under the age of 13 to have Facebook account. She had to lie to open an account, did you know that?

Nancy: We know, because we opened the account for her. All the kids in her class have Facebook accounts and she had social problems, so we didn't want her to feel different

Ronit: Why does she have a computer in her room?

Nancy (puzzled, smiles back at me): All our kids have computers in their rooms. (At this stage, she felt a bit uncomfortable) I thought kids nowadays all have their own computers. What about your kids?

Ronit: Oh, my kids don't have any electrical appliances in their rooms - no TV, no radio, no computer and no phone

Nancy was surprised. She knows a lot about my kids and is very surprised to hear that.

Ronit: What happens if you take the computer out of her room too?

Nancy: We can't... She will watch YouTube clips and chat on her iPhone

Ronit: Why on Earth would a 12-year-old who goes to school, where mobile phones are not allowed, is picked up from school and taken to everyone by her mother (the taxi driver) need an iPhone?

Nancy: So she doesn't feel different. All the kids have iPhones

Ronit: Not all kids have them. My kids don't and the younger one doesn't have any kind of mobile phone

Nancy (smiles): I can't believe it. Don't they feel different?

Ronit: They do and they know they are different. This is why no one thinks they are angry teenagers. What happens if you take her iPhone at night before she goes to sleep?

Nancy stops for a second. She has never thought this was an option.

Ronit: Who pays for Olivia's iPhone?

Nancy: We do...

Now I have a question for you. If parents do everything to make sure their kids are not different from the rest of the angry teenagers around them, how much do you think they contribute to "teenagers these days..."?

Nancy and I discussed other things too, but a major one, which I would like to present to day, was sleep.

Teenagers and sleep deprivation

Every person, regardless of age, who sleeps 5 hours at night, wakes up grumpy, confused and disoriented. They do not have to be teenagers to be angry. Take sleep away from any person for more than 3 days and you will have a typical teen - grumpy, moody, angry, agitated and grossly overreacting.

Research done by sleep experts discovered that lack of sufficient sleep puts teenagers at risk of cognitive and emotional difficulties, poor concentration, poor memory, low academic achievements and a significant increase in accidents.

A research at the University of Minnesota studied over 7,000 teenagers and found out there were more incidents of depression and ADHD among teenagers who did not sleep enough.

Further studies about teenagers and sleep discovered that, starting around the beginning of puberty and continuing into their early 20s, teenagers need about 9.2 hours of sleep each night, compared with the 7.5-8 hours that adults need.

Teenagers these days are exposed to a lot more stimulation than we were in the past just before they go to sleep. If we have the stimulation easily available, it is not fair to ask them to reject it, especially when all the other kids get it too.

Many parents think they are doing their kids a favor when they supply them with all the new gadgets and make it easy for them to access them, when in fact, kids have very little time each day to make good use of all those gadgets, so they sacrifice their essential sleep.

Nancy went home and talked to her husband. They decided together what to do and told their kids about the new rules in the house to make sure Olivia gets enough sleep. The other kids were happy, but Olivia was not. She was upset and cried.

A week later, she stopped being one of those angry teenagers and having "teenage problems"...

How to stop being the parents of angry teenagers

• Do not allow a TV set in their room
• Do not allow a computer in their room
• Do not allow mobile phones in their room
• Stop them using the computer at least 2 hours before bedtime (this is a good tip for everyone, because the light from the monitor disturbs the function of the sleeping hormone)
• Make sure they sleep at least 9 hours every night
• Do not allow any after-school activities that go past sleep time on nights before school (typically Sunday to Thursday)
• It is harder to relax and sleep when the mind is pre-occupied with homework, so make homework a priority, but do not allow doing homework through the night, except in extreme cases. Staying up late slows everything down and causes delays in subsequent assignments
• Limit teenagers' evenings work and encourage weekend and holiday jobs
• Limit Facebook activity (you may have to use security programs to monitor and/or limit Internet use)
• Teach your kids some time management skills. If they plan all their activities, they will find out easily when they are wasting time

If you want your teenager not to be "one of those teenagers...", make sure you are not one of those parents...

Have a good night's sleep,
Ronit

You may want to read

• The Hunger Games
• TV Diet (15): Routine
• TV Diet (8): How Much TV is Too Much?

In their song Lifestyle of the Rich and the Famous, Good Charlotte sing about how celebrities complain all the time and say their life is hard, even though they have money, mansions and other things money can buy. By contrasting fame and fortune with living on the streets, this song reflects general public sentiment very well.

But it is not true.

If you have been anywhere near a TV set in the past few weeks, read any newspaper or even glanced at a magazine at the checkout line, you have seen them - Prince William and Kate Middleton. Their lives and upcoming wedding were covered from every angle and then, their wedding was covered in even more detail. Anyone who had anything to do with them at any time was interviewed ad nauseam and every bit was replayed over and over again.

We generally watch little television, but I happened to catch one of the programs on "Will and Kate", in which Prince William's life in college was covered, including a trip to Chile, where he roughed it out as a volunteer. There was footage of him first thing in the morning, barely awake, cooking porridge for everyone and narrating the whole thing, including the horrible taste of the porridge.

It clearly stood out from the program that Prince William was comfortable being famous and treated the film crew with respect. He was polite and composed and had a shy smile on his face most of the time.

When the program continued, someone from the media commented on how Kate started out being nice to journalists, but had grown impatient with them in the previous few weeks. That comment did not surprise me somehow. I had seen similar reports about many people who were new to celebrity.

I started to think that the main difference between Prince William and Kate is that Prince William was born a mega celebrity and simply grew into the role, whereas for Kate, being the subject of such a media frenzy was a new thing. I believe Kate was overwhelmed by what she was losing when she became a celebrity, while Prince William took it easy, because he had never had it and had lost nothing.

You see, when we sit in our humble home, surrounded by our family, after a day of normal work and school, we wish for the things we do not have, but we forget that everything has a price. We imagine the glamour, the glitz and the freedom afforded to those who have lots of money of fame, and we choose to ignore and downplay the things that go with them, such as super-high pressure, massive temptations and brutal invasion of privacy.

Being happy is not directly linked to the amount of money you have or to the number of people who recognize your face. Being happy is linked strongly to how kind you are to yourself and others (within your means) and how much people really care about you.

Money and fame can be vehicle to happiness. When used well, they can magnify everything you do. But in the incessant pursuit of money and fame, most people forget that they are only means and not the goal.

The real goal is happiness. It is everyone's real goal.

Ronit and I have been to many seminars on wealth creation, where we heard that in order to have a lot of money, you must love money. You must get excited by the thought of having piles and piles of it. And we were sitting there, thinking, "But we don't want money. We want to be happy. Money is just a magnifier of who we are and if we are money chasers, having money will just help us chase more money faster".

Because in life, you do not get what you want. You get what you focus on.

Would you rather have lots of money or a loving family?

Would you rather have a highly paid job, the industry's respect and long working hours or enough time to watch your kids grow and become wonderful people under your care and influence?

Would you rather come home to impeccable order and shiny new things or to a warm and lived-in place, where every item carries memories of precious events and people?

Would you rather eat lavishly with your boy- or girl-du-jour in the most expensive places to the sound of camera clicks and whispers of people who feel fortunate to be in your presence or have a quiet, romantic dinner with your childhood sweetheart at an affordable restaurant and whisper naughty things to each other because there is nobody hiding under your table with a recorder?

Would you rather live with people who want what you have and will do pretty much anything to get it or with people you can trust, who will drop everything and come to your aid when you need them?

Would you rather measure your self-worth by the amount of money they have, how often you are mentioned in the papers and the number of "friends" you have online or by the strength of your character and the happiness around you?

Ultimately, it is your choice. And you are making it every day. And what you say matters very little, because what you do always speaks louder.

As a parent, your kids will do what Prince William did. They will adapt.

They will notice your daily actions and your daily choices and believe them to be the best anyone can make. They will decide that if they want to be like Mommy and Daddy, they had better do the same. And they will start to put that into action right away, no matter what you say to them. Because what you do always speaks louder.

To really drive home the message that happiness is more important than anything else is, you must live this choice every day as a person and a parent. Your career, your home, your car, your habits and your behavior must reflect that choice.

Look around you slowly and deliberately and pay attention to the things that make you happy - familiar things that make you feel safe, toys and tools linked to pleasant memories and furniture that gives you a sense of belonging. Imagine the people in your life – your partner, your kids, your parents and your friends - and think of all the things they do for you - the smiles, the touches, the little services, the thoughtful presents, the special cards, the acceptance, the understanding, the support…

Are you smiling yet?

You just cannot buy these things with money or fame, can you?

Have a beautiful day,
Gal

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I grew up in a small town, where I knew lots of people. As a kid in 1^st Grade, I rode the bus home from school for 20 minutes, after crossing a main street. I was very proud of myself, but the only reason I agreed to it was because the bus driver at that particular time was my parents' friend and I trusted him.

When I was growing up, TV was a new thing, broadcasting hours were limited and the quality was pretty bad, so I mostly played outside with my friends. If anything happened to me when my mom was away, I would just go into my friend's home and get some help from his parents.

When my mom came home late, I would go to my divorced, middle-aged neighbor and he would tell me stories from another country feed me exotic food and keep me safe until it was time for me to go home.

What made me feel safe was mostly that people behaved in a way that matched their words and their facial expressions. When a man used harsh words, he also waved his arms, shook his fist and screwed up his face. When a woman offered to help me, she also smiled and looked relaxed and kind all over.

Not these days.

Try to remember the last time you watched the news on TV. The anchors smiled most of the time, didn't they? They even exchanged jokes from time to time, right? But the topics on the news were all doom and gloom - shootings, robberies, dishonest politicians, government decisions you may not like, etc.

Is it appropriate to behave cheerfully when you deliver bad news?

Now, consider most of the "sitcoms". In a typically conversation, the audience is the real listener and the participants are just acting out a script, so delivering hurtful words, putting others down and using sarcasm are all "part of the deal", while keeping a posture and facial expression that says, "Yeah! I'm all that".

But in our daily life, there is no audience. The only ones hearing the words are us and we get hurt by them. And when someone we love says something that hurts and looks like they have just won the lotto, it makes us wonder how much they care.

Switch channels to any police drama series, in which actors pretend to have various emotions, but all the time they are made to look suspicious in order to keep the tension.

After watching enough of these, do you trust people more? Worse, do you trust your own judgment and ability to tell a liar from an honest person?

This has become so difficult, there is even a special series called Lie to Me, which supposedly teaches us how to detect when people are lying. According to Scientific American, there is a real professor of lie detection behind the series, but there is a staggering variety of expressions to keep up with.

I was talking to Tsoof last week about how films are being used for advertising and gave him the example of product placements in The Truman Show (see in this video). There is a scene in the movie when Truman is upset and his wife offers to make him some cocoa, but she presents the package to the hidden camera behind him and praises the cocoa until he turns around and wonders, "Who are you talking to?"

The same thing happens in nearly every commercial on TV, on radio, in the papers and online, as well as in infomercials during morning shows. A person appears to be very pleased with some product and makes statements about it, which nobody would ever say to a friend at home. There is a big contrast between being a familiar actress and energetically promoting headache medicine.

I believe these things (and others) are leading our kids to distrust body language, facial expression and tone of voice as ways to receive messages from others. Worse, by often mimicking this inconsistent behavior, our kids are actually training themselves to lie better, which makes me worry for them sometimes.

The link between our body language, facial expression and tone of voice and our emotional state is extremely difficult to control consciously, maybe even impossible. I used to be very attentive to words, but since becoming a life coach, I have greatly improved my abilities to detect emotional messages through behavior. When I meet new people or watch people in public places, I can easily pick them out and sometimes predict the next steps.

But the important thing about all of this is that the most appealing people I meet are the ones who appear as angry, kind, distressed or happy as they say they are - the ones who seem to be hiding nothing. I want my kids to be like them.

A few years ago, I worked with a young Indian woman who was like that. She was very gentle, but she was never bullied. She was very religious and had a picture of an old guru on her desk, but she was never mocked or ostracized. She was sure of herself and acted from a point of confidence and everyone just loved that.

I read somewhere that the reason we like babies is that they are innocent. This lasts roughly until they go to school and then they learn too much about manipulation. In a sense, she was like a young child - pure.

It takes confidence to show who you really are. It may not be possible to do it all the time and with everybody, but I will do my best to teach my kids to work on their beliefs, their thoughts and their emotions and live honestly. And I am going to do this by showing them how.

How about you?

Happy parenting,
Gal

You may want to read

• Knowledge = Beliefs
• The Hunger Games
• Troubled Teens: Disturbing Thoughts

When I ask parents about their challenges, they talk mostly about their kids' (bad or annoying) behavior (here is a poll about conflicts parents have with their kids). However, I think that is a reflection of other challenges we have. As you will see from the top parenting bloggers' answers below, parenting challenges are varied and reflect our wider perspective on parenting.

In this part of Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss, I asked each blogger about the things they find challenging as parents. I told them it did not have to be their kids' behavior but in parenting in general or anything else directly or indirectly related to raising kids. I believe you will find what they have to say very interesting.

What drives you nuts as a parent?

Maria Melo - Conversations with Moms

That my children will one day become teenagers with Real problems and I won't have taught them the necessary tools to solve them.

Everyone, including the store clerk, feels that they can give you advice on parenting.

That I even have to worry about the safety of my children.

Currently, it's that no matter how I try to stop myself, I cannot help but compare my 1-year-old's development with my 5-year-old when he was his age. I worry at why my first son was so much more advanced than my second child.

How communication has evolved from talking on the phone or in person to texting, instant messaging and Twitter. How the connection between people has changed.

Annie - PhD in Parenting

I wouldn't say that there are a lot of things that drive me nuts and I'm not sure that I can come up with five. The biggest thing is not having enough time in the day.

The other thing that drives me nuts is when both of my kids want to do different things with me at the same time. Getting them both to agree on and focus on one activity that we can all do together is challenging. That is why I cherish my one-on-one time with each child.

Richard "RJ" Jaramillo - Single Dad

Cleaning the house. I have three kids. I can't afford a cleaning service. Enough said.

Laundry. Of my three kids, I have two teenagers who change a lot. Enough said.

Grocery Shopping.

When my oldest daughter drives my car at night. I can't sleep until she gets home.

Trying to balance family, career and a social life (single parent dating).

Sue Scheff - Sue Scheff Blog

Parents that are in denial! This drives me absolutely crazy! I will have parents describe their child as the most intelligent, good looking, great baseball player etc, however he/she is smoking pot, taking pills and loves the keg parties!

Parents that blame it on others, which goes hand and hand with my above comment. It is never "their" child, it is the peers/friends they are hanging out with. Parents and teens need to take accountability.

Parents that replace time with material items. Your children need you. Trying to buy love is not the answer and may give immediate gratification however can develop emotional scars of not having their parents available to them.

Susan Heim - Susan Heim on Parenting

Entitlement. I've heard many kids say that their parents "owe" them a video game system, a phone, designer clothes, a car and more. I've listened to parents talk about how they've run all over town to find just the right Hannah Montana backpack that their child demanded. Kids need to learn about earning their own money and delaying gratification. Their parents don't owe them whatever they want.

Video games. My kids play them and I don't have anything against them, but I'm frustrated that kids are so obsessed with them at times that they neglect homework, physical fitness and more. Parents need to set limits.

Housework. Kids need to be taught to do things around the house and help out with cleaning. My teens do their own laundry, take out the trash, clean up the dishes, vacuum and more. Children need to know that we all work together as a family to take care of our home.

Phones. Kids don't need a phone when they're five. When I was a kid, nobody had cell phones and somehow we all managed to stay in touch! I can see the necessity for it when kids are old enough to be out on their own, but phones should be used for necessity, not for status.

Junk food. It breaks my heart to see so many children who are overweight these days. Like many parents, I struggle to get my kids to eat healthy foods, but they also don't have unlimited access to candy, chips, etc. Kids with weight problems will continue to have weight problems as adults. Limits need to be set on when unhealthy food is consumed.

Annie Fox, M.Ed. - From the desk of Annie Fox

Our two children are grown up and living lives of their own. But looking back these are the things they used to do that drove me bonkers.

Daughter's inability to get off the phone when she had homework to do.

Son's messy room.

Daughter's challenge with managing her time. We used to joke that she was "chronically" challenged.

Son's addiction to video games and online games.

Ronit Baras - Family Matters

Although I do not describe things as driving me nuts, I have my own "ticks" and weaknesses.

Seeing my kids watch TV gets me out of balance. My body gets tense when they watch TV. I know it is abnormal. To survive this better, I encourage them to watch DVDs without the commercials sending them messages I wouldn't want them to adopt.

It is hard for me to find the balance between telling them everything in order to be honest with them and keeping from them information that is beyond their capacity to understand.

Other parents taking the liberty to expose my kids to things I see as inappropriate - violent games on the computer that I do not allow at home, letting 6-year-olds watch M-rated movies and offering alcohol to my daughter when she was only 16. That frustrates me a lot. The nerve of some people!

When people say, "Just wait until you have a kid/a boy/a teen/a student…" when I already have them. For some unknown reason, I get this a lot (maybe because I'm short). The first time I have heard that, Eden was 3 years old and my aunt, who gave birth to her first son at the age of 44, said to me, "Just wait until you have a baby". Eden had to be a baby before she turned 3 years old…

When parents play "Let's tell horrible stories about our kids" and choose not to participate. If I join, I feel bad, because I need to lie about something I do not really think is horrible about my kids. I have wonderful kids and there is nothing horrible I can find about them. If I do not join, I'm a party pooper and I'm out.

So what drives you nuts about parenting? Use the comment box below to let us know, because venting helps!

Join us again next week, when the top parenting bloggers discuss their philosophy on discipline.

If you wish to know more about the bloggers who take part in this project or contact any of them, please visit their blogs, follow them on Twitter and/or become their fan on Facebook. Alternatively, you can send them a question or comment through the comment box below.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

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• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Role Model
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This is a very good thing, because otherwise, we would spend most of our time wondering what to do and being totally confused.

But most of our knowledge has been acquired by a process we call "learning", which is when information comes to us from a trusted person (teacher, professor, parent, etc) or a trusted source (books, newspapers, TV).

For this type of knowledge, we have no proof. Most people have never seen the world from the outside, yet they feel they know what it looks like. Most people have never been to faraway countries (like, oh, I don't know, Iraq maybe), but they argue with certainty the latest events they see on the news. Most people are no experts on economy, health, philosophy or education, but they feel comfortable talking about them at parties.

This type of knowledge is delivered to us by subjective sources and is very often only valid in the context in which it is given. We feel we have gained new knowledge, but we have actually created a new belief based on our trust in the source.

18^th century philosopher David Hume claimed we actually know nothing for sure. He said that if we throw a tennis ball at a wall and it bounces back, the only thing we can learn from it is that the ball has bounced back. We can throw it again and again 1,000 times and there is still no guarantee it will bounce back the next time. The ball might get flattened and drop, the wall might crumble or someone might step into the ball's path. We know absolutely nothing about the future with real certainty.

OK, so this is a bit extreme, because 1 out of 1,000 is still pretty certain, but the point is that we never truly know anything unless we know everything.

But beyond philosophy, I am sure you realize that news sells advertising and that the information we are exposed to is selective and biased. When a government's political agenda changes after an election, even your kids' school curriculum may change, sometimes to the point of using different History and Social Science books that support a different political opinion.

I have had some personal experience with fabricating reality to suit the media, including newspapers, radio stations and a TV program. It was not pretty.

How does this affect your life? And how is it related to parenting?

I am glad you asked.

Our modern world bombards us with information everywhere and from every direction. Organizations have become very clever about the way they send us messages - they use "authoritative" figures to deliver the messages, they use (incessant) repetition, they attract our attention towards what they deem important and draw it away from what would be better for them we did not see.

This is the most difficult time in history to get clear, objective and accurate information on anything, really. We see things "as they happen", but we never see what happens behind, around or in the next street. We read inflaming descriptions of what someone has said, done and even meant in big, bold letters, but we never notice the tiny correction statement on the inside back page with the person's response.

And most of the information is bad - people get killed, abused, taken to court, arrested, flooded and evicted, they fight and they suffer disasters and oppression. The world is a dangerous place for kids.

Is it?

Well, our kids do not know any better than what we allow them to know. Being young, they are curious and open and do not question incoming information. Being small, they trust grown-ups and older kids just because they are bigger and older. Being human, once they form a belief, they begin to reinforce it by collecting supporting evidence and ignoring anything that disagrees with it. Pretty quickly, they just "know" it.

Their only defense is us, their parents. But what can we do?

As always, the first thing we can do is be aware. We need to see that knowledge is a collection of beliefs, each of which can be questioned and then strengthened or eliminated to suit our needs. We also need to be aware of the kinds of information our kids are exposed to and the sources of information they trust.

Then, we need to act as a filter for our kids by restricting their access to harmful information and encouraging positive types. We must put control over what they see, hear and experience as much as we can. And we need to help them process what they "learn" by talking, explaining and prompting with questions to ensure what they remember will serve them well.

Finally, we need to help our kids develop their own filters, to treat new information with a healthy dose of skepticism, to correlate, to ask their parents and to accept or reject it based on whether it will serve them or not.

So serve and protect your kids and help them form good, useful beliefs they will call "knowledge" while they are having a great life.

Happy parenting,
Gal

You may want to read

• Lie to Me
• TV Diet (13): Raising Aware Kids
• Make a list: Beliefs about Kids cont.

Yesterday, one of my clients talked about a breakdown in his marriage. His wife has been telling him for a long time something was wrong in their relationship, but he just thought she had "another bad day" until she kicked him out of the house.

What I said to him was very similar to what I have written about TV. Many things in life like our struggle with weight. When things go wrong, we eat a lot and neglect to notice the extra weight. When we look in the mirror, we feel uncomfortable, but we say "It's just a bad day" and we eat more to find comfort, only to look in the morning 5kg later and feel bad about ourselves that we are in a never-ending cycle of struggle.

When something goes wrong with our relationship, we slowly drift apart and one day wake up and it is too hard to mend.

When we lose control over our kids' education, health and wellbeing, we stop being able to help them develop the skills, habits, thoughts and beliefs that will make them happy and we wake up when they leave school, join a gang or worse, fall sick.

One day, we wake up sick and tired from feeling unhappy and say, "How did we get to this point?"

Very bad question. A much better question is "What can we do to make things better right now?"

Still, my answer is always, "We got the extra 25kg one kilo at a time. That's how".

A TV diet is no different from any other diet. It is supposed to bring some order and control over your life and in this case, over your family life.

Preventive Parenting

My biggest recommendation for every change is to "grow antennas" and be sensitive to when things start to go wrong with your kids' TV habits. It is much easier to get rid of 1 extra kilo than it is to get rid of 25.

Preventive parenting is always better than reactive parenting, because as a reactive parent you are too busy putting out fires and there is neither time nor energy left to focus on building a healthy, happy family lifestyle.

Earlier is better

It is ALWAYS better to start a positive change right now than to start it later
- Ronit Baras

As I said at the beginning, TV is neither good nor bad, but the way we use it can be good or bad. Make sure your meaning of healthy TV and unhealthy TV is fully defined and clearly communicated to your kids as early as possible. Even a 4-year-old can understand when Mom or Dad says, "This show is not suitable for 4-year-olds, because it's too violent and I want you to watch good shows that are suitable for your age". Young kids have less life experience and are highly influenced by their parents, while older kids are subject to many more influences. Start early!

Try to avoid asking yourself "How did you get to this point?" when thinking of things you are not happy about, as that will drag you into a critical state, full of self blame and regrets. It is much harder to get action out of that state. Instead, focus on

"What do I want and how can I start getting there right now?"

It is the difference between a past-oriented question and a future-oriented question that gives many parents who attend my parenting workshops the strength and determination to make a change. When you ask what you can do right now to create a better or desired situation, you look for solutions, rather than someone or something to blame.

If you are looking for the answer to this question, you will find lots of tips, ideas and techniques in every post of the TV diet series that will help you overcome TV binging and behavior kids' problems due to watching too much TV.

For many parents, using only one or two tips from what I have covered in the past 18 weeks has made a huge difference in their family life and the effort of fighting kids' watching habits has become a faded memory to them.

If you want the constant fights about TV to be a faded memory for you too, start now!

Happy Parenting!
Ronit

You may want to read

• TV Diet (15): Routine
• TV Diet (14): Cutting Junk TV
• The Hunger Games