Twin Decisions

A few days ago, our friend Helen called. A kid had dies as a result of violence at her son Oliver’s school and he did not want to go there anymore. Instead, he wanted to go to his twin brother’s school, except his twin brother objected.

“What should I do?” she asked me, “If I move Oliver to Ashleigh’s school, Ashleigh will stop feeling special and will have to share his circle of friends with Oliver, although he chose a different school so they could be apart. If I tell Oliver he must find another school, I’m limiting his choices and I’m not being a good mother to both of them equally”.

At first, I could relate to the problem. Sometimes, parents face situations in which doing the best thing for one child means not doing the best for another. For most parents, this creates the immediate pressure of “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.

Now, this was a friend and not a client, but sometimes, doing “the coaching thing” is the best way forward, because it keeps the problem where it belongs and brings the solution from the same place – the mind of the person with the problem. So I started asking Helen some questions.

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Success Ripples

Have I ever told you about my ripple effect theory? For me, teaching, coaching and writing are ways to make a positive change in people’s lives. Sometimes, I say to myself, “I need to touch people, just touch them slightly and if I hit the right buttons, the change will happen by itself like a ripple – the small change will cause another change that will trigger another change and it will expand and slowly touch more areas of life”.

Even my success is like that. I succeed at a small thing that expands and my success grows.

A woman who came to one of my workshops was a wonderful example of this success.

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Bad Start for Parenting

When I saw Nathan, I did not really understand who she was talking about. He stayed at our place many times, played well with my daughter and I really did not know what Leanne was talking about. The list of troubles she had with him seemed endless.

“When I talk to him, I need to say the same thing five times before he understands what I am saying”, she complained, “It is so hard to get him to sleep. Toilet training was so hard and dragged for such a long time. You should see him at the dinner table – he has no manners at all. Getting him dressed in the morning takes forever. He has no respect for my stuff and he can go to my cosmetics and use them for his art project. My car is such a mess because of him. I hate going to the supermarket with him, I go by myself on late-night shopping days. With him, every shopping is a nightmare”.

Every time she talked about Nathan, it was as if she was describing some psychopath and he was just a 5-year-old kid.

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Projection

Picture yourself sitting in an old cinema all by yourself, watching a movie. Turn your head towards the back wall and see there a big window. Behind the window, there is a projection machine. In that machine, a long, wide film is running, a film you have created.

A strong light travels through the film towards the screen. You can see the beam of light getting wider as it travels through the air, showing flickers of colors and movement inside it. Follow the beam of light with your eyes as it keeps on going and getting wider, until you are facing forward and looking at a huge screen, which practically fills your entire fields of vision.

As you look, you become absorbed in the movie, finding yourself emotionally attached to some of the characters, fearing some of the others, hating a few and getting carried away with the story.

Real life is very much the same. We become absorbed in our own story, which we project onto the world. When we interact with other people, we each look at our own “film” and can get into all kinds of trouble.

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Nobody’s Perfect

Regrettably, we are all born helpless and unable to do most things at all, never mind perfectly. All kids start life in this position, no exception. From there, we do our best to learn the ways of the world during childhood using the only method we can – trial and, unfortunately, error.

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100 Ways to Say “I Love You!”

Giving flowers is a great way to say "I love you"

There are many ways to say “I love you” to someone – partner, children, family members and friends. But as you may know, not all of them are as effective. That’s simply because people are different. So here’s how to come up with 100 ways to say “I love you” and choose the best one for each person.

As you probably know, love is one of the most wonderful feelings. Some people claim there are only two feelings: love and fear. Every good thing in life is a form of love and all the bad things are forms of fear. A stronger version of this only recognizes one feeling: love. All the rest (fear, anger, sadness, etc) is lack of love.

Voltaire said, “Love is a canvas pattern furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination”. Whether you define love as the ultimate feeling or just an important one, there is no doubt that being loved and loving can make us the happiest ever.

This post is part 7 of 49 in the series Make a List

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Creative Kids (3)

Last week, I posted ways to boost creativity in kids and gave 5 tips to help kids with their creativity. Today, I will cover 5 more tips to boost creativity.

This post is part 3 of 7 in the series Creative Kids

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100 Exciting Activities for When Your Kids are Bored

Many parents struggle with keeping their kids busy. One of the things parents hate hearing the most is “I’m bored”. Parents are very busy nowadays and feel they need money to give their kids what they want.

Weekends and holidays are the main stressful times for parents and many of us need a holiday after the holidays to recover, because keeping the kids busy can be hard work.

But in fact, there are many fun and exciting activities you can do with your kids with little or no money at all. You just need to look around a bit.

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Dare to Dream

For many people, dreams are the fluffy clouds we see at night when we go to sleep (well, in fact, only the visual people imagine a picture while dreaming).

Another dream in daily use is the wish. We wish for things and by this we tell our subconscious that this is what we want.

Every special event in our life triggers dreams in peoples’ mind. Birthdays, a new job, moving to a new house, a new year and every other new thing that has a feeling of a beginning, has the power to trigger such dreams.

Funny, but we can, if we dare, dream every day of our life.

Every day is the first day of the rest of your life

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How to Stimulate Digital Kids

Digital kids have an outstanding ability to notice patterns, structures, rules and processes. They like to think, take things apart and put them together, possible in a better way. Knowledge is the source of their power and they continually look for opportunities to get more information and sharpen their mind. These kids learn best and expresses themselves best using systems, languages (including math, music and computer languages) and logic.

Digital kids think of things as being “interesting” or “boring”.

Here are some ideas that help digital kids learn better…

This post is part 3 of 4 in the series How to Stimulate Kids

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