Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

How to Inspire Your Kids’ Natural Kindness

Toddles showing natural kindness to baby

Humans are kind in nature. Just watch young children. They are born with natural kindness. This is the main reason it’s so wonderful to be around children. They constantly give and engage in a way that makes you want to give in return.

Research has found that kindness is contagious. If you want to see it in action, try smiling at people as you pass them on the street. Smiling is an act of kindness! And when you smile, people smile back.

When babies see a puppet show with kind and affectionate characters, followed by rude and mean ones, they prefer the kind puppets. Yes, they were just babies. But they have an innate ability to mirror their surroundings. They can notice the tone of the voice and actions.

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How to Vaporize Psychological Pain with Psychological Painkillers

Bronze sculpture of man holding his head

Everyone understands what physical pain is. And the medical world is full of treatments and painkillers to eliminate this pain. But psychological pain is not that well-known and treating it is a bit more challenging.

Physical pain comes from damage to the tissues of the body. Psychological pain is a suffering with no apparent physical origin. You can even say that all the feelings we don’t like – sadness, grief, anger, contempt, frustration, rage, depression, etc. – are forms psychological pain.

Physical pain is often localized, temporary and associated with some harmful or damaging physical trigger. Psychological pain is a more generalized, lasting, unpleasant feeling resulting from an inability of to cope with emotional challenges. But sometimes, it manifests just like physical pain does.

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This Is How To Take Charge Of Your Life

One smile in a crowed of frowns

Many people want to take charge of their life, but simply don’t know how to. It’s one thing to understand that taking charge is important and another thing to actually do it. If you’re looking for tips that will help you, keep reading!

I wasn’t always in charge of my life. For my first 16 years, other people and circumstances ruled everything. I had no control whatsoever and my life looked, well, out of control.

I was sailing in the sea of life without a captain and was knocked around from side to side, crashing and tumbling when strong winds came. Without direction, without resources, with no captain and no crew to support me, every breeze turned into a storm.

For every two steps forward, I took one step back. Even when I made progress, I still felt I was going nowhere.

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How to Make Every Relationship You Want Good

Good relationship - holding hands

What makes a good relationship? Are there signs of a good relationship? What questions would you ask to find out if a relationship is good? How to have good relationships?

Every year, as September gets closer, my husband Gal and I think about relationships. This year, in September 2020, we’re celebrating 40 years of friendship. We’ve learned over the years that friendship is a special relationship worth celebrating.

When you spend many years with one person, you learn a lot about them. But mostly, you learn about yourself and what relationships mean.

This post is part 46 of 48 in the series Make a List

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Practice Fearless Parenting Under Pressure: Do It Your Way

Mother and daughter in nature

Parenting is one of the most important and difficult things we’ll ever do in life. And it becomes even harder when we doubt ourselves and stop trusting our own judgment. When others try to impose their methods of parenting on us, and we let it affect us, we have an even greater challenge.

I was lucky to start my parenting journey when our close friends didn’t have children and our family was too far away. Until our daughter Eden was 14 months old, Gal and I relied solely on our own judgment. We had no Internet and no people telling us what to do.

Eden was born after I finished most of my education studies. Although my course didn’t cover things like the best time to feed babies, or when to start giving solid food, it did help me build the confidence to raise her.

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How to Motivate Your Stepchildren: A Stepparent’s Guide

Woman and little boy blowing bubbles

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

Motivating Kids

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

Woman covered in colorful pain like a bird

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

Girl playing the piano

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

Weird Old Couple

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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