Great Expectations

When I was training to be a life coach, our instructor said to us that our level of disappointment is related to the gap between two things – our expectations and the facts. Although this may sound simple in principle and you may be saying to yourself, “Well, of course”, stop and think about real-life situations where you find yourself disappointed and you will soon see the problem.

I went out to lunch with a few other future life coaches, and one of them, Sarah, told me about some challenges she was having at the time with her teens. Sarah was married for the second time and had two teens of her own and two teens who were her husband’s kids. Most people would already cringe at this stage, right?

Anyway, Sarah said that her kids were well organized, but her husband’s teen daughter was “very messy” and kept leaving her clothes on the floor, which drove Sarah bonkers. When Sarah tried to confront her stepdaughter about tidying up her room, she got the “You’re not my mother” treatment.

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97 Positive Thoughts for Your Kids

All parents want to give their kids all that they wish. Happy thoughts and a positive mindset are the tools to get them everything they want in life. Here is a list of thoughts you want your kids to have.

Before introducing them to your kids, try to find out what they think now, and slowly shift their thoughts towards better ones. Remember, what they think will determine how successful they will be financially, academically and socially. It will determine their appreciation and wellbeing.

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How to Take Care of the Environment and Make a Difference

After hearing many people talk about the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, we decided to rent it from the video library. We watched it with the kids and they were very surprised to see the world drying up right in front of their eyes.

I was not sure that it would have such a great impact on them, because, as kids, I thought they would be too preoccupied with school, friends and fun. Well, watching it was not fun at all, but I was very surprised when “Earth Hour” was announced and the kids wanted to take part in it.

They did not complain, they did not talk about computers or watching a movie, they did not even say anything when we suggested taking a shower in the dark.

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Talk to the Heart

One day, I got a phone call from a mother, who was interested in our child coaching. I talked to her for a while to get a good understanding of her situation. During this conversation, we talked about things that were application to many parent-child situations, which I have since repeated with many parents, so here it is for everyone’s benefit.

Margaret: I have a problem with my teenage son, Jeff. He is 13 years old and I have completely lost control of him.

Gal: How do you mean?

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Are We Clear?

Some time ago, my daughter Eden had a very busy time with her Event Management studies, work and social life, and Ronit and I tried to keep up with her by asking for her plans and then keeping each other up to date.

One day, Eden said to me “I have no classes tomorrow”, and I thought she might be spending the day at home, catching up, and maybe we can spend some time together.

In the evening, when we were talking about the next day, however, Ronit said to me “Eden is going to study tomorrow”.

“That can’t be”, I said, “She told me she wasn’t going to study”.

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Kids Shopping for a Feeling

Among the roles of a parent, the one role that parents do not like very much is being a bank. How many times have you heard yourself say, “Do I look like a bank?” or “Money does not grow on trees”? At one point, every parent wishes they could give their children everything they desire, until they realize that not everything their kids want is what they actually want to give them.

The “Daddy, buy me!” syndrome is a modern disease of our materialistic world. Once upon a time, everyone was poor and the heroes of our old stories were of a time when people always shared their last remaining bits of food with animals and people who “needed it more”.

Nowadays, in our world of abundance, there are advertisements everywhere, encouraging people to buy things they really do not need. Those ads treat everyone as if they had an enormous budget and try to convince you that you cannot possibly live without this and that even your “Daddy bank” cannot stand in your way.

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Just a Little Kick to the Head

I was sitting one evening and flicking through the channels when my favorite program had yet another long commercial break. One of the other channels was showing “The Footy Show”, and I paused on it for a few seconds.

The word “Footy” is short for “Australian Rules Football”, one of the preferred sports in Australia. It involves two teams of muscular men with tight clothes and various helmets and bandages, running around on a field and chasing an egg-shaped ball, with the aim of kicking it between two posts. It’s “a man’s game”, you see, where tackles abound.

Just as I was watching, there was a short clip of an incident that had happened during the previous week, in which two players slid on the grass, both trying to get the ball. One of them got it, and as he was getting up, turned and stuck his knee in the face of the other player, who was still lying on the grass. I was horrified at this, but not so the commentators.

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Parenting the Socrates Way: Types of Questions

Over the last two weeks, I presented the technique of parenting the Socrates way through questions. The first chapter introduced the benefit of asking questions. The second chapter discussed the right and wrong questions to ask. This week, we will explore the types of questions that you can use to stimulate thinking, creativity, focus, proportion, clarity, motivation and growth in your children.

“An honest man is always a child”
– Socrates

Open questions – Questions that make kids think.
For example, “What do you think?”

Closed question – Questions that can be answered with “yes” or “no”.
For example, “Would you like to come with me to the shops?”

Why questions – Questions that go deep in order to find reasons (and can encourage the kids to give excuses or to blame someone, so be careful about them).
For example, “Why are your hands dirty?”

Rhetorical questions…

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Sarcasm – The Weapon of Helplessness

Ronit and I have a very good friend, who has been in a difficult personal situation in the past couple of years. He feels very frustrated by his circumstances and sees himself powerless to break out of them and live a happy life again.

Often, when he talks to other people, he uses sarcasm.

For example, one day he was contacted by a large company, which I was not familiar with. He got excited about it, but wanted to seem like he was keeping his cool, so as not to get disappointed if he did not get an order from them later on. So he said to me, “Gal, I just got off the phone with company XYZ”.

“What is this company?”, I asked.

“Oh, it’s just a small company nobody knows”, he said in a seemingly casual tone.

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Ronit Baras’ Success Experience Theory

Kids having a success experience at the computer

The more success experiences kids have when they’re young the higher their self esteem. Your role as a parent is to provide your children with opportunities to succeed.

Many parents ask me about their kids’ self-esteem. It’s hard for parents to accept that the kids they love so much and worked so hard to raise the best way they could, may still have low self-esteem and that it affects their happiness and success in life.

Parents who are on a quest to have happy kids, need to take into consideration that much of the self-esteem is developed during childhood. This takes us back to the early years, which I believe are the most important in our development.

This does not mean that self-esteem cannot be changed at any other time in life by choice. It just means that your child, just like you are doing now, will have to make extra effort to change it later.

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