Quality Time: The Gift of Your Presence

Love, as you know, is the most important thing you can give your children. Although you may not have any doubts about your love for your children, they often do. If you want to understand their doubt, think of your own doubts about your parents’ love for you.

Now, when I am a parent myself, I have no doubts about my parents love for me, but when I was a child, I had many doubts. It took me a long time to learn that what they called “love” was not my definition of love and I translated their behavior into “They don’t love me”.

In my parenting workshops and coaching sessions, many parents share the same feelings with me. There are things you discover about your parents’ love for you only when you have your own kids and when you get the opportunity to learn about “love languages”.

The great book “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman describes 5 different ways to express and receive love:

– Words of affirmation
– Gifts
– Physical touch
– Acts of service
– Quality time

This post and the next one are about Quality Time, because Quality time is very tricky for parents in this day and age.

This post is part 1 of 2 in the series Love Languages

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Fathering Adventures

Sometimes, the Universe seems to conspire to make us do something. In this case, I think it wants me to write about how important fathers are in the life of their children. We keep focusing on parenting in this blog, but there is a difference between mothering and fathering, which we have not discussed much.

I have a friend who goes on a men’s camp every year. When his boys were young, he went by himself and felt very supported there. As soon as his boys turned 13 and were allowed to go with him, away they went together and spent a great time bonding – singing, dancing, doing physical exercise and watching performances. He has been nagging me to come with him on that camp for a few years now, saying there is something special about the freedom and “safe space” it provides.

So far, I have not gone.

In the past few months, Ronit worked with several boys whose father had died or spent a lot of time away from home.

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Topsy Turvy World (4)

Our world is a weird and wonderful place, but sometimes, we act in weird ways that make it not so wonderful anymore. In many situations, there is a conflict between what is good for us personally and what is good for everybody. In others, the conflict is between what is good for us right now and what will be good in the future. Without considering the implications of our actions, they sometimes make the world just a little bit less pleasant.

Of course, when we do many of these things and lots of other people do them too, the decline accelerates. I often think of my kids and the kind of place I would like them to have when they grow up and it makes me worry.

When we lived in Texas, there was a period of frost every year. That was bad for the lawn, roads were slippery during morning rush hours and there were always accidents because of the frost.

Yet, a friend of mine found a way to have fun with his kids during that time. Before going to bed on Friday night, he would water his driveway, which was short, straight and steep. When his boys woke up on Saturday morning, the driveway would be ready for some extreme sliding!

This went on for a while and nearly became a family tradition, except one day, my friend’s mother-in-law came to visit on Saturday morning and slipped on the ice. She was thoroughly upset with my friend’s carelessness and promptly sued him (and her daughter, who was married to him) for her medical expenses.

The following year, my friend’s insurance raised his premium and he stopped wetting the driveway.

This post is part 4 of 4 in the series Topsy Turvy World

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Bejeweled Sharpens Your Mind

I am not a great fan of playing computer games, because I believe it takes children away from social interaction and from creativity. I must admit that when I was a student, I worked at the Special Education Library designing similar card games and board games and dreaming of creating something like a computer game to make things easy for me.

Computer games are not a dirty word if they support the development of the player. When a child plays a puzzle on the table, their cognitive skills are stretched as much as when they play a puzzle on the computer.

I remember preparing hundreds of pages that ask the kids to circle the “odd one out”. Now, they can play many computer games that are way more colorful and varied that reuse the same “cards” for the children to choose from. I was limited by the number of stamps and my drawing ability and used lots of paper to allow each child to have enough pages to experience and learn. Now, any simple computer game can give the kids endless opportunities to find the odd one out, with great graphics, sounds and animation.

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Grow Younger and Happier

It is amazing what we can learn from kids. Inexperienced and naïve, they have some truth they were born with and I wonder if we can borrow this naivety from them, until we also grow our happiness.

Do you not feel sometimes that “growing up” also means losing something?

I do!

For a long time, I held the belief that being around kids would remind me that I needed to unlearn some things in life and go back to the source, to the original state of trusting life, unexplained, to laugh at silly things and possess a strong belief that “everything is going to be all right”. Kids are great reminders of this state.

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul
– Samuel Ullman

Please do not get me wrong. There are frustrations, tears and problems for children, but most of them can be fixed with simple things like a kiss, a balloon or just a suggestion of a better option to choose. The younger they are, they easier it is to make kids happy. My two new nephews who live on the other side of the world and I see in photos, in videos and on Skype, remind me of this purity, this innocence and joy. Every time I talk to them, I find out how much they have learned from the previous week and realize that their mothers, my two younger sisters, probably learn lots more every day.

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Teen Drinking Party

We encourage our kids to have two parties a year – one at the beginning of the year to allow them to get have a great start for the school year and meet new friends in their new classes and one on their birthday. Every year, our kids have a great year.

Last month, our son Tsoof had his birthday party. Tsoof is 15 years old, but most of his friends are 16 or 17 and some of them have already started driving. When they come in the door, Tsoof’s friends always say they have been waiting for the party since the last one, because they always have a great time dressing up, playing games, singing and dancing.

This year, when he gave his friends invitations to his party one girl asked him, “Will you have drinks at your party?”

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Handy Family Tips: Kitchen Scissors

There are some things that make life so easy it makes you wonder why you never thought about them before. I did not think of adding this as a tip until a friend of mine opened my cutlery drawer and found scissors in it.

“Scissors?” she asked me, really surprised, “You keep scissors in the kitchen?”

Since many bags and packages have a little drawing of scissors on them, I assumed the best tool to use was scissors. I thought everyone had a pair in the kitchen too, but I guess not.

“What do you do when you need to open a sealed bag or cut the corner of a milk carton?” I asked her.

“I use a knife”, she said to me with that “Isn’t that obvious?” look, “And sometimes with my teeth…”

This post is part 3 of 24 in the series Handy Family Tips

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The Fun Incentive

Last weekend, I had a chance to talk to a mother about my better parenting skills program. She told me about her son’s behavior problems and wanted to know what was so magical about my program that made kids perform so well. I said to her, “There is no magic in the program. It is just based on understanding of the human brain, as every one of my parent coaching clients and better parenting skills workshop participants discovers”.

Although I like the thought that I work magic in my programs, I truly believe this magic can be done by everyone who understands the importance of having fun in the learning process and focusing their energy in a positive direction.

The woman told me her son was “hyperactive”.

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Make a list: Beliefs about Traveling

Traveling does not trigger the same thoughts and ideas in everyone’s mind. For some, traveling means carrying a heavy load, while for others, it means feeling calm and relaxed. Some are stressed by the planning and organizing, while others imagine the views and the pictures they will capture. Some fear the unknown, while others look forward to great surprises.

This list-making post is for the travelers among us. It is for those who love traveling and the thought of going out of their comfort zone to a new destination excites them.

This post is also for those who have never traveled (much), but wish they did (more).

It may even be for those who have had no desire to travel until now…

I can write about traveling because I am a world traveler and love every second of it.

But I was not a traveler all my life.

This post is part 22 of 48 in the series Make a List

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Another Buggy Story

It is funny how things evolve. Last week, I drove with a friend of ours in his car and I saw a buggy – a real buggy, not a Toyota or any buggy-like car, but a beautiful yellow buggy. I did not think he would understand, so I just smiled to myself and said nothing.

This week, on the way to one of my clients, I saw a red old buggy. There was no one with me in the car, so I said to myself “Kiss buggy” and smiled, although there was no one there to kiss.

I felt a bit strange.

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Quality Time: The Gift of Your Presence

Fathering Adventures

Bejeweled Sharpens Your Mind

Grow Younger and Happier

Handy Family Tips: Kitchen Scissors

The Fun Incentive

Make a list: Beliefs about Traveling

Another Buggy Story

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