Family Matters Category

Family-related posts: kids, teens, parenting, marriage and home

Weeds to Flowers: How a Shift in Perspective Can Transform Your Health and parenting

Most of us move through life reacting automatically to what shows up in front of us. Something happens — the scale goes up, a cold sets in, we overeat after a stressful day — and immediately we label it: bad, wrong, a setback, a failure.

And once we label something, our mind jumps into its usual story.

– “I messed up again.”
– “I shouldn’t feel this way.”
– “This shouldn’t be happening.”
– “What’s wrong with me?”

We don’t even notice that we’re doing it.

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Breaking the Generational Disability of Love: How to Teach Your Children to Feel Truly Loved

Love heart phrases to stop the Generational Disability of Love

We all know that warm, melting feeling when someone says, “I love you.” Three simple words, yet they reach every cell of our body like sunlight warming a cold room. We crave hearing them, and if we’re confident enough, we enjoy saying them too.

Love nourishes us — research shows that love strengthens our immune system, increases happiness, expands longevity, and even impacts financial wellbeing. The greatest thing in life is simply to love and be loved in return.

But here’s the strange, painful truth…

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The Emotional Cost of FOMO: How Fear of Missing Out Steal Your Happiness

I decided to write about FOMO (Fear of missing out) because I’ve seen it quietly affect adults as much as teenagers — parents, grandparents, professionals, anyone who scrolls through social media or compares themselves to others.

We all want our children to be happy, successful, and confident, but sometimes, we forget to nurture our own sense of contentment. FOMO steals your happiness and I want to help you recognize FOMO understand its impact, and take practical steps to reclaim joy, confidence, and peace of mind.

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Alternatives to Punishment: Positive Discipline for Happier, Stronger Kids

From early human history, punishment has been a dominant tool used by parents, educators, and governments. Most of us grow up with the belief that people act based on two main motivations — pain or pleasure. The classic “carrots and sticks” model seems to govern human behaviour, and for many families, this model continues to shape the way children are raised. There are alternatives to punishment.

Punishment is not simply a behavioural tool. Punishment is a manipulation strategy, often disguised as “teaching a lesson.” We use it to make others behave in a way that suits us, even when we say it is for their own good. When we punish children, we attempt to arrange life to meet our needs — not theirs.

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Kindness to Yourself: The Secret to Raising Happy, Resilient Kids

Woman holding a red heart decoration for kindness day

Last week was World Kindness Day, and every year, when the date comes around, I can’t help but smile. But I also can’t help thinking, Why only one day? If there’s anything families need right now, it’s more kindness — not just for others, but especially kindness to yourself.

In my coaching work at Be Happy in Life and in the countless conversations I’ve had with parents over the years, this theme keeps coming up again and again. Parents want their kids to be confident, happy, and emotionally strong — but they forget that the journey starts with the emotional environment inside themselves.

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Make Every Day a Special Day

Special day - a happy family on the beach

Growing up in a family that can’t enjoy the present and thinks joy can only come later, one day (maybe!) can do lots of damage to your kids. Not enjoying the things you have, focusing on trying to impress others, and saving everything “for a special day” takes a lot of energy.

This was the family I grew up in, and I had to change it, for my sake and the sake of my children.

Using my own medicine and walking the talk, I have used my own techniques of writing goals and changing attitude from “One special day” to “Every day is a special day”, and I set new family goals that changed our family life forever.

Here is my story.

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It’s Hard to Say “I’m Sorry” When You’re Not

Kids sometimes do things that others don’t like. Sometimes, they break things and even hurt others. It’s important to help them understand what happened, but parents should never force them to say, “I’m sorry”.

I think the idea of saying “sorry” is distorted because of social “expectations” that if someone is hurt, we must have done something to cause it. This makes parents “teach” their kids to say “sorry” even if it comes without actual “sorrow”.

It’s very easy to see it with young children. They take a game away from another kid (sibling), the other kid cries. Immediately, the parents scold them and force them to go to the other kid and say they’re sorry.

This is humiliating. It plants in those kids the idea that saying “sorry” is admitting guilt, even if they don’t think they’re guilty. And it builds up and stays with the kids.

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How to Have Better Communication with Children

Communication works like a bee. It can produce honey or sting. It’s true. Our communication is the tool we have to connect or destroy relationship. To be better parents, we need to develop better communication with our children.

When our kids are born, they have full trust in us. They trust us with their life. They have to, because without us, they would die. Literally.

Over the years, that trust is gradually lost. Not because the kids grow out of it, but because the parents change the way they communicate with their children.

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Better Family Relationships: How to Build Trust

Family relationships can be hard, let’s be honest. We have a relationship with everyone we come in contact with. Some relationships are short. Some are long. Some are intimate, and others not so much. In every relationship, our actions affect the dynamic. We can’t just do or say whatever we want, whenever we want.

Why? Because we don’t exist in a bubble. Our words have meaning.

It’s amazing how many people are never exposed to the concept of effective and thoughtful communication. I find people of all ages coming to my leadership camps and saying, “How has no one ever taught me this?”

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Domestic Violence is Devastating. We Need to Stop It!

As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected almost every part of our daily life. Work, school and social engagements were adjusted to follow the restrictions. But the most troubling change is the huge increase in domestic violence all around the world.

Domestic violence has been damaging our society in more ways than COVID-19 ever will. But no one thinks we should shut down schools, states, airlines, restaurants, gyms or businesses until we eradicate it from our society. And we’re going to pay for this long after COVID-19 is gone.

Domestic violence is primarily directed at women and children. Why? Because they are more vulnerable.

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