Make a list: Beliefs about Kids cont.

This entry is part 16 of 49 in the series Make a List

Last week, I wrote about writing your beliefs about kids. As I said, beliefs are a reflection of our parenting style. What we believe about kids becomes our reality. I realized this during my Special Education studies and I started making sure I always had the right beliefs, the most empowering beliefs that will make me the best mother in the world. And they have!

I examined all my beliefs and found out I had many I had received from my parents, my older sister, my teachers and other adults in my life that were very limiting, such as “Kids are cruel”, “Kids have no respect”, “Kids must be disciplined” and I will stop writing this list, because I would like to focus on beliefs that are better for parents to have.

So here I am opening my heart and telling you 100 of my beliefs about kids. I only write the beliefs that are empowering to me and that have made my parenting happier, healthier and more successful. I hope you will find inspiration in them and learn about the philosophy and vision I have for my parenting and for the Family Matters blog.

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Projection

Picture yourself sitting in an old cinema all by yourself, watching a movie. Turn your head towards the back wall and see there a big window. Behind the window, there is a projection machine. In that machine, a long, wide film is running, a film you have created.

A strong light travels through the film towards the screen. You can see the beam of light getting wider as it travels through the air, showing flickers of colors and movement inside it. Follow the beam of light with your eyes as it keeps on going and getting wider, until you are facing forward and looking at a huge screen, which practically fills your entire fields of vision.

As you look, you become absorbed in the movie, finding yourself emotionally attached to some of the characters, fearing some of the others, hating a few and getting carried away with the story.

Real life is very much the same. We become absorbed in our own story, which we project onto the world. When we interact with other people, we each look at our own “film” and can get into all kinds of trouble.

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Make a list: Beliefs about Kids

This entry is part 15 of 49 in the series Make a List

I thought that as parents, making a list of thoughts and beliefs about kids is highly appropriate, because reading such a list can be a wonderful reflection on our parenting and a chance to do things even better.

In my parenting workshops, where parents get the tools to raise happy kids, we take stock of our beliefs to find empowering or limiting beliefs. It is amazing for people to discover how closely their beliefs about parenting or about kids match the challenges and the happy experiences in their life. Although we believe in things due to our life experiences, once we have those beliefs, they start to drive our experiences instead.

Buddha has said this beautifully, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought”. So if you are a confident parent, it is a result of what you have in your mind and if you are not confident in your parenting, you can be, just change your thoughts.

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Teen Suicide

Someone very close to us lost her son to teen suicide. Her son was 18 years old, a great kid who took his dad’s gun one day, sat in his parents’ car in a park and shot himself to death.

He is gone and is probably not suffering anymore, but a whole family he left behind is still picking up the pieces of their shattered life and cannot find comfort.

I am writing to you because I pray you never have to be in the same position.

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How to Have More Intimacy in Your Relationship

Intimacy: couple lying face-to-face on the floor

Let’s start with some big words. According to Wikipedia, “Intimacy generally refers to the feeling of being in a close personal association and belonging together. Genuine intimacy in human relationships requires dialogue, transparency, vulnerability and reciprocity”.

When I mention intimacy to people, many of them immediately think of romance and physical closeness, particularly in the context of fear of intimacy. But this is only a borrowed meaning.

In fact, many sexual relationships have little or no intimacy in them, while other relationships are based on deep spiritual bonding without any physical contact whatsoever.

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Useless Beauty

Jill was one of the most beautiful, sexiest, most gorgeous woman on Earth. Miss Universe! She could easily have been Miss Universe, and there was not one person in the world – child, adult, man, woman, even really old person – that would want to take their eyes off her. She was stunning. Everything in her was perfect – her body, her eyes, her hair, her mouth, her skin and her nose.

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Make a list: If I Could Live Forever

This entry is part 14 of 49 in the series Make a List

I think time is one of the greatest challenges for humans. The notions of death and end affect many choices in our life. There are many things we do not do because we think they might take too long (or we might not have enough time). We believe it is essential to set our priorities, conserve our energy and choose our battles, but if we could live forever, life would be a totally fascinating ride.

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A Lesson in Proportion

Sometimes, the things we expect the least – both good and bad – can teach us the best lessons in life. Last month, I said to a group of 26 child leaders that in many things of our life, the important thing is not what others give us, but what we choose to take. When I said that, I did not consider the possibility of taking a lesson from others without any intention on their part.

Two weeks ago, we learned a very valuable lesson from a good friend of ours. Tom, our friend, had never planned on giving us this lesson. In fact, if it was up to him, I think he would gladly not teach us this lesson at all because of the heavy price he had to pay for it.

I hope that when you read this story, you will choose to take as much as possible from it. Remember, it is not about what I write, but what you choose to receive.

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Are You Listening?

In our modern life, one of the things we have the least of is time. A common expression I hear from people every day is “I’m very busy” and even “No time. Too busy”. We go to work, we work under pressure all day, we come back, we hurry our meals, we resent having to drive our kids to their various activities, we sleep less than we should, we have less quality time than we want to have and we finish every week completely exhausted from trying to do more than we can, only to start another week that feels exactly the same, if not worse.

But maybe that is only what we think. Maybe it is this tendency to rush into and out of things as quickly as we can that makes us waste more time than we would by relaxing and “taking our time”.

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TV Diet (6): Disposable relationships

This entry is part 6 of 18 in the series TV Diet

Last week, I wrote about the relationship breakdown between parents and kids as a result of watching too much TV. Today, I cover the influence of TV on couples’ relationships, on the divorce rate and on the breakdown of the family structure.

Two years ago, I wrote about the rising divorce rate in the world. What triggered this article was my parents’ 48th anniversary. This year, my parents celebrate their 50th anniversary and I am very proud of them, but because I work with kids and couples, I am concerned about many others.

I believe the kind of exposure on TV to disposable relationships is making it harder for parents, as well as couples without children, to keep their family structure alive and well.

If you want to understand how concerning the statistics is, here are some marriage statistics.

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