choice Tag

Posts tagged 'choice'

Raising Babies: Demand Feeding and Emotional Eating

Many new mothers consider demand feeding “the right way to feed my baby”. Every new parent considers the various choices: breastfeeding vs. giving the baby formula, feeding every 3 hours, maybe 4, vs. feeding on demand, waking the baby to feed vs. letting him or her wake up when hungry, giving water vs. not giving water, using a nipple shield vs. not using one, using a dummy (pacifier) vs. not using one, and many others.

These are serious decisions when you have your first baby and the more you ask around, the more confused you become. My oldest daughter recently gave birth to my first granddaughter (she is GORGEOUS). Watching her, I have discovered a relationship between breastfeeding on demand and emotional eating. It was amazing to notice things I never thought of when I had to make a decision how to feed my own daughter when she was born.

The stories I have from the last six weeks, since my granddaughter’s birth, can spread over hundreds of posts about raising babies. Today, I want to discuss one of them, which is demand feeding.

This post is part 7 of 7 in the series Raising Babies

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When Your Teen’s Friends are Bad Influence

As parents, we put all our heart and energy into raising our children to be the best they can be. We want them to be as healthy, friendly, successful and happy as possible. In their teen years, most of us are afraid that their friends will become the most important people in our teenager’s life. So we want to make sure those friends do not have bad influence over them.

Our investment in our children, both material and emotional, is tested several times during their life. Their social connections are one big test of parenting, because as parents, we try to pass our philosophy and values to our children. If they spend their time with friends who tell them the opposite, this may weaken their belief in our philosophy and our values.

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Kids Eating Healthy Food: You Can Be This Lucky Too

When it comes to kids’ healthy eating habits, I was lucky, because my children, all three of them, have no issues with eating healthy food. Our children eat healthy food and were never “junkies”. My youngest had a sweet tooth for a while, but as soon as she entered her teen years, with great influence of some of her friends, she switched to cherries and blueberries. I told you I was lucky!

My parents were not that fortunate. All five of their children struggled with our eating habits and with our health. Some of us still struggle as grownups today. As a child, I was on antibiotics for three months of every year until the age of 12. When we were kids, my parents spent many days with us in hospitals and clinics when we got sick.

I was in a hospital once with each of my children and it was a great reminder that I did not want to raise my children to be sick.

Food and health are strongly connected!

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Save Your Marriage with Better Time Management

Relationships are a sacred thing. Some say it is the only thing that matters. At the beginning of every relationship, we dedicate a lot of time to each other and over time, it gets harder.

Every married couple with children will tell you how their life changed as soon as their first child was born. Suddenly, quiet time to hold hands or cuddle becomes a rare event that must be carefully planned. Therefore, good time management can often make or break a relationship.

I have been working with many couples who come for coaching with the hope to save their marriage. Most of my clients think that to save their marriage, we need to focus on the big things, but for many of them, the problem is time management. I know it sounds funny, but it is one of the simplest one to fix.

This post is part 30 of 30 in the series Save Your Marriage

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Make a list: Life Lessons Learned

Old people often reflect on life and give the younger generations their list of life lessons learned. It is as if experience gives them the credit to give tips to the young on how to live life.

Well, it does! Experience is important and the best thing about it is that it helps develop perspective.

Unfortunately, not all old people with lots of experience have the perspective to give “young ones” and many of their tips are not applicable to the way life happens now. What worked for my parents, who are now in their 80’s, might not work for me or for my children.

Does this mean I cannot learn from them? No! I can learn a lot from them, but it is best to develop my own lessons, because the lessons I learn by myself are the lessons I can live by.

This post is part 39 of 41 in the series Make a List

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Assertiveness: Successful Communication Summary

You can learn assertiveness skills at any stage of life and you can always improve them and gain more respect for yourself and others. In this post, I have gathered all of my assertiveness tips in one big list. I hope this summary will be useful for you and for your children and students.

If we create a society full of assertive people, we will not have conflicts and we will live with each other with respect, so pass this along to everyone you know.

This post is part 6 of 6 in the series Assetiveness

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Body Piercing: Laws Without Teeth

My eldest daughter Eden wanted a body piercing in her belly button when she as 15. She was already in 11th Grade and some of her friends had them. When she said that it would be beautiful, I could not disagree. It would be beautiful, but the thought of her damaging her body was very unattractive to me.

At first, I felt a bit hypocritical. I had my ears pierced when I was young. In my neighborhood, kids had their ears pierced when they were one to two years old. I was “old” (6 or 7) and did it at my neighbor’s house. At the time, it was not a choice but a social obligation. Back then, this defined me as a girl.

I got my second piercing when I was 21. This was my choice. It was a compromise, because having seven earrings in one ear was the norm at the time. Still, I did it due to peer pressure. It was accepted, it was common, it was cool and it was pretty.

How could I blame my daughter for wanting to do the same 25 years later?

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Assertiveness: Live by Your Own Standards

Assertiveness is a helpful skill in life, yet most people do not have it. They do not have it because they could not learn it at home or from anyone else except professionals. You see, the people who teach assertiveness must be very confident and not afraid that you might use assertiveness with them, and these people are hard to find.

Am I assertive all the time? No, not really. Sometimes, I choose avoidance or aggression, and every time I use them, I feel uncomfortable. They either hurt me or others, which is not very good. Still, I aim to use assertiveness in my communication with others and most of the time, I do.

Assertiveness requires confidence to express your own thoughts and feeling without fear and without the need, desire or intention to hurt anyone else. It is important to distinguish between having the intention to hurt and actually hurting someone else.

This post is part 4 of 6 in the series Assetiveness

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Assertiveness: Things You Should Keep to Yourself

Keeping things to yourself does not mean keeping them a secret. Assertiveness comes from confidence, while secrets come from fear. Sharing is expressing yourself confidently without reservation and without any pressure to convince others or justify your own thoughts and beliefs.

Here is a list of things you can keep to yourself or share selectively. If you are confident about them, you do not need validation, approval or to have the majority with you to hold them. If you want someone’s opinion, ask. If someone asks for your opinion, respect their choice not to accept it or to do whatever they want with it. If they disagree, do not like it or do not want to use it, it should not create any doubt in you. Some things are yours to keep and you can share them, but never with pressure. Pressure is not assertiveness.

This post is part 3 of 6 in the series Assetiveness

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Assertiveness: Keeping Things Private

In order for us to be assertive, we need to create clear boundaries between us and other people. In the previous post about assertiveness, I explained that assertiveness is the ability to express our needs and desires without hurting others and that this skill is important, yet nobody learns it at school. In this post, I will describe the things we do (and should not do) that sacrifice our own best interest and let other people into our personal space.

In order to be assertive, we must understand that everyone is entitled to his or her own thoughts, beliefs and actions. At the same time, we do not have to accept them as applicable to us. We should always stick to the things that are important to us and take care of ourselves first.

This post is part 2 of 6 in the series Assetiveness

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