Recently, we took the kids out of school for a month of holiday. Usually, we do our best to avoid missing school, not because we think our kids cannot catch up, but because they are doing so many wonderful and exciting things at school that we would not want them to miss all the fun (Can you believe it? They would not want to miss it either – strange kids…). This time, we had no choice.
Read A Month Away from School »
Here is a typical scene in many homes these days: you come in the door, pass by the living room and see the TV on and one or two kids holding something in their hand, with a wire leading to just under the TV. They kids are totally absorbed in what is happening on the screen and ignore you completely, while pressing buttons and pushing little levers on the box in their hands.
Read Parenting for Tomorrow »
One typical topic appearing in each couples’ counseling or coaching session is the lack of communication between them. It is not that they do not talk. They do, but they talk to themselves in a never-ending self-talk that happens to be negative.
One theory about the reason for marriage breakdown is that one or two of the married couple seem to be trapped in a conversation, in which they talk and they answer on behalf of their partner. In this conversation, their partner is critical and demanding, which makes them treat them with anger later on. When I ask them about their communication, they are very surprised to discover they never actually had these conversations with the other person.
Self-talk is a natural emotional outlet for people. Self-talk is the internal conversation a person has with himself or herself. It is the way to verbalize a person’s thoughts. Self-talk is a good way to handle stressful situations. When they are too overwhelming, people talk to themselves to find ways to handle the situation. They tell themselves the problem is not that big, they tell themselves they have solutions, they tell themselves things that will encourage them to “survive” the situation. Self-talk can be very helpful.
The problem in every relationship appears when the thoughts are negative and later on, the attitude towards the partner can be hostile and negative. People fearing a reaction may tell themselves things on behalf of their partner and react to them as if they have already happened.
Negative self-talk gives freedom to many feelings that do not support marriage like fear, jealousy, anger, frustration and even hate. Such feelings are fertile soil for divorce. It is impossible to find a divorcing couple having feelings of joy, happiness, love or satisfaction. In many cases after divorce, it takes years for people to awaken such feelings.
When I tell people my mom is a chef, they look at me in respect. It is natural. As a daughter to a chef, people think you have the advantage of knowing all the trade secrets. In the old days, knowledge went from parents to children and special knowledge in cooking was a woman’s way of finding a match. My mom always said to me that the way to a man’s heart was through his belly. This worked well for her, because my dad loves her cooking.
Read When Your Mom is a Chef »
I remember it from the time I was young. We loved celebrating the holidays with my mom’s side of the family, where there were many kids and lots of space. Grandpa and Grandma gave us candy and we slept on the floor and stayed awake until late at night, sharing silly jokes. Dad’s side of the family was not as much fun and every year, when the time came and dad said we were celebrating with his family, we were counting the seconds for the holiday to end.
Occasionally, the question “Are motorcycles worth the risk?” comes up when someone wants to buy one. It’s rather topical in our family, so I wanted to share a story for the benefit of other families having this discussion.
It was Monday morning and I had just taken my 7-year-old daughter to school. On the way back, I passed my son’s high school. As usual, the high school intersection was full of parents dropping their kids off.
I turned left after a motorcycle. A parked car started making a U-turn and hit the motorcycle! The rider flew in the air over 30 meters and his motorcycle dragged on the ground after him.
Read Are Motorcycles Worth the Risk? What You Need to Consider »
Last week, I wrote about the things that parents say that turn off communication between them and their teens. Today, I would like to talk about the buttons teens push to set their parents off and “make” them lose their minds.
From their early years, kids have an inherent sense of their parents’ weaknesses. They learn it by themselves – they do not need to go to school to study what works and what does not work. They are so sophisticated, they can tell you what works on Daddy and what works on Mommy, even if they are very different.
It is amazing sometimes to see a young baby, stepping as much as possible on the toes of his parents and making them behave in funny ways. This thing works both ways. Our children know us so well, they can make us do silly things out of joy or out of anger or guilt.
Whether we like it or not, parents are human beings. What can we do?
So sometimes, we have bad days. Sometimes, we need something to be proud of, because otherwise, we would feel pretty bad about ourselves. Sometimes, we just need reassurance that things will get better, preferably thanks to us. This is why we have kids.
If you are working a full time job, fostering aspirations of promotion and glory, you may be spending much of your time at work, or at least being preoccupied with it. When you come home, you are not in the best of moods, your head is filled with things that still need to be done, by you, for which the due date has not moved, despite the sad fact you have not done them today.
Read While You Were Sleeping »
Somewhere between parents and teens, the messages of love and caring get lost. Bringing fear and anxiety from their own experiences, parents sometimes forget what works and what doesn’t. It is amazing to find that the sentences we say to our teens are the same sentences we hated when our parents said to us.
A long time ago, one of the mothers in my early childhood center brought me a book about expressions mothers use. I laughed really hard and I could swear the author wrote the book about my mom. Is it possible, I wondered, that all moms uses the same phrases?
Well, surprise, surprise, when I talk to teenagers, regardless of their gender or cultural background, they all claim parents of teens use the same expressions. You have heard one, you have heard them all!
Did you know?
There are about 46 million abortions worldwide every year.
There are about 126,000 abortions worldwide every day.
On a worldwide average, each woman will go through at least 1 abortion in her lifetime.
Only 22% of abortions take place in developed countries.
Only 26 million (56.5% of the 46 million a year) are legal.
Book your private life coaching with Ronit Baras and learn how to be happy in life
