Family Matters Category

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

How to See Your Kids Beyond the Behavior

As a parent, your kids’ behavior can sometimes drive you nuts. But looking at the behavior is misleading. You need to look beyond the behavior.

Most parents will tell you that parenting is one of the hardest “professions” in the world. Yet, we never got any training for it. In the past year, it’s been even harder. It’s been a difficult, overwhelming experience for parents and to their children too.

The best way to see how kids reacted to the challenge of COVID-19 restrictions and online learning, all you have to do is watch their behavior. When children feel overwhelmed, they immediately start to show dysfunctional behavior. Trust me, if they could, they would do things differently. Just as you would…

Read How to See Your Kids Beyond the Behavior »

Manipulating Your Kids Will Make You a Good Parent

Many parents feel uncomfortable about the idea of manipulation. They get upset when their children manipulate them, and feel uncomfortable about manipulating them in return. But I think it’s a valuable parenting tool.

The word “manipulation” has negative connotations and implies bad intentions. But in most cases, we don’t manipulate others to harm them. Quite the opposite.

In my parenting programs, I’m amazed by how many parents don’t think they have the right to make their children think or do some things. These parents don’t seem to understand their role.

What?!

Read Manipulating Your Kids Will Make You a Good Parent »

Helpful Staycation Ideas to Make Your COVID-19 Holidays Great

The holidays are coming and this year, 2020, isn’t a normal year. We can’t go on vacation the way we did in previous years. So, what can we do? We can have a staycation. But first, we need some staycation ideas.

With COVID-19 looming, limited money, closed attractions, and restricted events and restaurants, a proper holiday seems difficult, even impossible. So, we either have a staycation or go nuts.

A staycation isn’t staying at home. It’s having a vacation, and enjoying our time, at home, or close to home. But how do we do it?

Read Helpful Staycation Ideas to Make Your COVID-19 Holidays Great »

How to Overcome Fight, Flight & Freeze in Relationships

There’s some amount of stress in every relationship, and we respond to it through Fight, Flight or Freeze. So how can we overcome these responses, relax and stay together?

Watching babies and toddlers playing “hide and seek” can teach us a lot about the human mind and how we can improve the relationship game.

Our granddaughter is 3 years old, and we look after her once or twice a week (lucky us). She loves to play “hide and seek”, and we all love to watch her having fun.

For a long time, we had to nominate a person to hide with her, so she would get the hang of it. Because whenever we asked, “Where is Ayla?” she would answer from her hiding place…

Hilarious, right?!

Read How to Overcome Fight, Flight & Freeze in Relationships »

Formal vs. Informal Learning: Which is The Best During COVID-19?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many parents ask themselves if formal education is enough to give their kids what they need. What was normal before COVID-19 is not the same now. I suggest informal learning instead.

I believe many good things came out of COVID-19. For example, some of my nephews blossomed with remote learning. Unfortunately, some of them, who had been brilliant students before, just collapsed.

Lately, the parents of many of the children I coach told me of real challenges at home. I believe this difficult period highlights challenges each family already had before. The uncertainty, the restrictions, the financial burden, and the isolation just added more pressure into the system and the system no longer copes.

Read Formal vs. Informal Learning: Which is The Best During COVID-19? »

100 Easy Ways of Entertaining Kids During COVID-19

Many parents are looking for easy ways of entertaining kids, but that’s happening now more than ever before. The restrictions that came with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have created challenges for many families around the world.

Usually, kids spend a lot of time at school. Their time is full of learning, variety, and activities to keep them interested and occupied. It’s very hard to get bored at school. So, parents just need to entertain them in the afternoons.

Now, however, they spend most, if not all, of their time at home. This period is very difficult for them because they locked up and bored out of their little mind. Finding entertaining things to do is a much bigger challenge than it normally is.

Fortunately, you’re at the right place and I’m here to help!

Read 100 Easy Ways of Entertaining Kids During COVID-19 »

How to Inspire Your Kids’ Natural Kindness

Humans are kind in nature. Just watch young children. They are born with natural kindness. This is the main reason it’s so wonderful to be around children. They constantly give and engage in a way that makes you want to give in return.

Research has found that kindness is contagious. If you want to see it in action, try smiling at people as you pass them on the street. Smiling is an act of kindness! And when you smile, people smile back.

When babies see a puppet show with kind and affectionate characters, followed by rude and mean ones, they prefer the kind puppets. Yes, they were just babies. But they have an innate ability to mirror their surroundings. They can notice the tone of the voice and actions.

Read How to Inspire Your Kids’ Natural Kindness »

Amazing Awakened Spirit in a Beautiful Teenager

Teens have a bad reputation. People often label them as rebellious, difficult and even troubled. Over the years, I’ve worked with many teens, and some of them have an awakened spirit that blew me away.

Jordan was a 17-year-old boy who came to see me because he had some difficulties with his parents. When I read his parents’ description of him, and the description he had written about himself, I knew he was different. No doubt about it. I just didn’t know how much.

His parents wrote he had been clingy as a child, had no friends, didn’t listen to them and had no direction in life. But when I read his own description, I was very confused. The way he described himself – his desires, challenges and what he wanted from his coaching – was in total contradiction to what his parents wrote about him. This was an issue for sure.

This post is part of 19 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

Read Amazing Awakened Spirit in a Beautiful Teenager »

Amazing Natural Treatment for Hyperactive Attention Deficit Disorder

Children with learning difficulties are very close to my heart. I’ve written about kids with Hyperactive Attention Deficit Disorder (ADHD) before and shared tips and strategies to help them live a happy, fulfilling life. It makes me very happy when readers share their stories and tell me how they’ve used my tips to improve their ADHD child’s life for the better.

Claire is the mother of a boy with ADD/ADHD. She came to this blog and read some of the posts about ways to manage Hyperactive Attention Deficit Disorder. After just one month of trying some of the techniques, her son became a happier child, and she became a happier mom.

When she felt she was on the right track, she sent me a very happy and positive update on her son’s progress and how she’d used my tips. So I asked if I could share her emails with other moms.

Read Amazing Natural Treatment for Hyperactive Attention Deficit Disorder »

The Truth about Why We Send Our Kids to School

There is a point in every parent’s journey where you ask yourself, “Why do I send my kids to school?” Over the last 33 years, I’ve worked with many parents. And I can tell you that most of them didn’t have a good answer to this question.

Have you ever reached this point in your parenting?

What was your answer?

Read The Truth about Why We Send Our Kids to School »