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How to Motivate Your Stepchildren: A Stepparent’s Guide

Being a parent is one of the biggest challenges a person ever experiences. Being a stepparent is even harder. If every family needs goals, blended families need them even more.

Think of a family like a ship. Parents are the captains of the ship, and as captains, we need to make sure our family arrives at its destination safely. In every sea, there are storms and calm waters, and we need to prepare ourselves for every ride.

What do ships need in order to move? They need two coordinates. They need to know where they are and where they are going. Without them, we don’t know how much supplies to take, what direction to take, what to avoid and where to stop on the way to have some fun.

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My Parenting Book “Motivating Kids” is Now in Print

Over 20 years ago, people said to me that books were going to be a thing of the past. The prediction that we would no longer see any printed newspaper or book was devastating for me, because my desire to be an author and a journalist just didn’t seem right without them.

When I heard that, I grieved the lost experience of touching books, taking my kids to the library, smelling the printed paper and sitting in the kids’ corner, reading, enjoying the moment and imagining we are in a different world. Inside, I prayed it wouldn’t happen. At least, I prayed it wouldn’t happen too quickly.

I think my wish came true.

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How to Be Creative and Get Ahead

Many people will tell you that if you want a better life, you have to be different, think differently and avoid being “just like everyone else”. Being part of the majority is not appealing at all, because most people struggle with their daily life, while they dream of a better life.

One way of getting ahead is keeping an open mind and allowing yourself to think “outside the box”. People who think outside the box are called “creative”. I truly believe that everyone has a creative side, but most people can only access it when they relax.

Here is a beautiful quote that I think is very relevant: The mind is like a parachute. It only functions when it’s open.

Wow! So true.

We want to be creative because it makes us very good at solving problems. Creativity makes us find efficient ways to do things. It makes us attractive to others, turns us into entrepreneurs and allows us to express ourselves better. Creativity helps us relieve stress, builds our confidence and more.

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Raising Gifted and Talented Kids with Music

Every parent wants their child to be gifted and talented. We want our kids to be able to manage themselves throughout the challenges of the education process, which takes between 13 and 18 years. My kids have done that, and people who know them often ask, “What have you done to raise such gifted and talented children?”

Recently, I was at an event, where my son Tsoof performed a piece he had written in front of hundreds of people. After the event, some people came to me to congratulate me for his successful performance, and I stood there like a peacock, as if I had played it myself. It felt great, but the real benefit of playing music was in the development of his brain.

I specialize in children with learning difficulties, as well as gifted and talented children. After studying and doing Special Education work for many years, I developed methods to make sure my kids wouldn’t develop learning difficulties, and if they did, to get rid of them quickly (I am a great believer in the plasticity of the brain). But beyond that, I used these methods to make them gifted and talented.

Why? Because life is easier that way.

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Speak Your Truth for a Strong Relationship

I’ve been in a relationship for 38 years, and I know it’s not always easy to speak your truth. When you bring two people together, they both need to compromise a lot and can’t easily balance the ratio between “give” and “take”.

Just recently, I had the chance to be on my own for 6 weeks when my husband went to drum in Africa. I realized that as partners and parents, we compromise many times, to the point where we might forget who we truly are.

When I say “compromise”, I don’t mean that anyone has any bad intentions. It happens naturally. When you live with other people, you can’t just do what you feel like doing. My son was also in Africa and my youngest daughter, who is 17, spent her time studying and having get-togethers with her friends, so she was not home either most of the time.

During those weeks, I examined 3 of my habits: sleep, eating and fun time. I realized I didn’t follow my natural cycles of sleeping, eating or doing fun things when my family members were around, because, first and foremost, I think of their timetable and their needs, and I juggle everyone else into a plan that would work. Me and my cycles are normally not part of the picture.

Don’t get me wrong. It was my choice. I just realized I had neglected part of myself.

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100 Things to Do When You Are Alone

In the previous post, Home Alone: How Not to Have a Boring Time,, I wrote about being on my own for 6 weeks, the many things I wanted to do and why being bored was not on my agenda.

Many people wait for a chance to be on their own, but when the time comes, they don’t know what to do. I think having a list of ideas can be helpful in that situation.

In this post, I have gathered 100 ideas for things to do when you don’t know how to entertain yourself. As you can see, I wrote some of the things I did recently. I could easily write 1,000 things, but I’m sure that after 100, you’ll get the idea.

You can repeat some of the activities, because you like them more than others. And even if you just pick some of them, you’ll have thousands of active and busy hours.

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Success vs. Talent: How I almost made the Olympic team

Some people think that talent is the only thing we need to succeed in life. I thought so too when I was young. I was very talented in gymnastics and I thought that talent was the only thing I needed. It was very hard for me to realize that talent was just a baseline and guaranteed nothing.

I’m all for helping our children find their talent, but finding it, and even pursuing it, is not enough for success. They need something more.

Not long ago, I had the honor of working with two amazing young athletes on the Australian Olympic team. They were both equally talented and had all the physical skills, but one of them had what it takes to succeed, and the other didn’t.

Working with them reminded me of my Olympic team adventure as a child and why talent is not enough for success.

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Make Your Bed to Make Your Day

Believe it or not, if you make your bed in the morning, it will make your day. You’ll be happier, clearer and more productive. There’s research showing it’s true.

I have been on a search for family tips from the moment I had children. Almost 30 years ago, becoming a mother made me realize that efficiency can help me a lot in managing work and home, and that being efficient gave me more time with my kids.

As parents, we need to choose how to balance our time across many important things. Slowly, we tend to let go of some things we care about for other things we find more important.

In my leadership training, I emphasize that life is not hard when we need to choose between things that are very important and things that are less important. That’s an easy choice! It is much harder to choose between things that are equally important to us. When children appear, we have to do that a lot, and that’s not easy.

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

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Best Family Quotes by the Amazing Virginia Satir

The family quotes in this post were written by Virginia Satir, the mother of Family Therapy. I appreciate her and have learned a lot from her over the years, and some of her best quotes hang where I can read them again and again.

Virginia Satir’s quotes about family and her philosophy about family relationships have become a great compass for me. I would like to share them with you and inspire you to consider and adopt her ideas about family.

One of the reasons I enjoyed Virginia Satir’s work was that she started as an educator, and so did I. I have a soft spot for people who are educators as, because I think their spin on their work is different and more effective.

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How to Have a Hot Relationship

Having a relationship is like playing a game of “hot-cold”. We used to play it when we were kids. In this game, someone searched for a hidden object and we gave them clues by saying “hot” when they got close to it and “cold” when they moved away. I remember we used to say “steaming” when the person was very close and “freezing” when they were really far.

Relationships are exactly the same. If both partners are closer to fulfilling each other’s need, they have a hot relationship. If they are far from fulfilling each other’s needs, the relationship is cold.

When two people come together, each one is different from the other. They have a different history, different needs, different expectations, different styles of communication, different skills and talents. Yet, they find something in the other person that makes them attractive to them.

Think of attractive as “hot”, very attractive as “steaming”, unattractive as “cold”, and very unattractive as “freezing”. The scale from “freezing” to “steaming” can predict the quality of the relationship depending on where people sit on the scale.

I work with many couples who come for coaching to save their marriage or long-term relationship. Too many of them say that there is no warmth in their relationship. They have a freezing feeling which makes it hard for them to sustain the relationship.

This post is part 33 of 33 in the series Save Your Marriage

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