In the first post, our top parenting bloggers introduced themselves and their philosophy on life. In the second post, each parenting blogger gave their view on the top challenges of parenting (because knowing what we are facing is half the solution). Today, our top parenting bloggers discuss the best qualities parents should have. Like in […]
Read Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (3): Best Parent Qualities »
It was 5am and our 8-year-old daughter Noff came into our room. It was so dark I thought I was dreaming it.
It was early and dark and I sooooo wanted to go back to sleep, but when Gal came back from his search, I realized I had done it to myself.
“Do you know where Tsoof is?” she asked.
Tsoof is our 14-year-old son and shares a room with Noff. He never comes to our room so early in the morning.
I jumped out of bed with my heart pumping. Where on Earth could he be?
For a second, I imagined scenes from movies.
“Maybe he’s downstairs”, Gal said after searching every room upstairs and went down with Noff to solve the case of missing child.
Read Birthday Fairies »
Dogs are really simple creatures. Whatever they do, they give it EVERYTHING.
If you have ever seen a dog happy, you know they are happy with their whole body – they wag their tail like crazy, they jump around, the breath excitedly, lick every part of you they can reach and even yelp with joy. If you have a dog, just take its leash and stand by the door and you will see what I mean.
People, on the other hand, think too much. Particularly, people care about what others will think of them. So instead of being true to what goes on inside them and expressing it to the best of their ability, they aim for a response out of the people around them and behave in a way that will get them this response.
But that is being manipulative, really.
It is also far less likely to succeed than being honest.
Kids start out like dogs – they get all excited when Mommy pulls a breast out of her bra. They wag their little arms and legs, their face lights up with excited anticipation and they cling and suck with everything they have. When Mommy goes out of their room, on the other hand, they start crying bitterly, twitching their arms and legs in a futile attempt to chase her.
Read Like a Dog »
Loving another person is one thing, but making the other person feel your love is another matter altogether. Differences in communication styles may get in the way, love languages may not match and other circumstances may interfere.
So what you need to do is make your declaration of love stand out so big it simply cannot be ignored or overlooked.
And what better teachers do we have for this but our very own kids?
One day, our 8-year-old daughter Noff came back from school with a bookmark she had made at school. She brought it home with the utmost care, showed it to everyone and told us it was a special bookmark she had made for us and offered it to us to use for our books.
Read Love, Actually »
A year ago, I became the Queensland state coordinator for Together for Humanity Foundation. The foundation works in schools with grade 4 to 12 kids to fight racism and inspire cultural openness. It turns out that, out of 50,000 kids in Australia who have participated in the program, over 90% have had racist attitudes towards other cultures.
It may be hard for you to accept, but most kids are racist because they live in a racist society, in which stereotyping is a survival mechanism. It is not surprising to read their surveys and discover they think “Muslims are scary” and “Asians sell drugs”, mainly because they are exposed to this type of information at home or in the media.
Whenever I ask the kids, “Have you ever personally met a scary Muslim or seen an Asian selling drugs?” their answer is “No”.
… I spent hours closing my eyes and trying to wake up in a different life, where the scar is not so painful. I knew what it meant to have a broken heart. I was broken, damaged, feeling like my body had failed me. I had been through a caesarian section and I was in such emotional pain I felt nothing at all.
“I have Eden”, I told myself, trying to find some comfort. Our house was in a total silence. We had to take the new crib back to the store and pack all the little things we had already put in the baby’s room. I was grateful I didn’t have to take care of the funeral arrangements – Gal did that with Eden. The thought of him choosing a tiny coffin was too hard for me and I tried closing my eyes, but that did not help.
Read Baby Hope »
Parenting kids is a challenge for most people. There are many things that make parenting such a challenge, but one of the big ones is that a couple of parents is made up of two different individuals, each with their own upbringing, values, beliefs and preferences.
If life was just smooth sailing, this would not be such a big problem, except life is bumpy sometimes and when tensions are high, things can get silly and weaken the parents’ position of authority.
Even when things are pretty quiet, the ever-so-sensitive kids can detect notes of disagreement between their parents and immediately try to use them to their advantage (little buggers). Parents who are too preoccupied to notice end up facing the “But Mom/Dad said” and looking pretty stupid being caught unprepared.
Read When Partners Differ »
I have written about what is important to parents many times and I know that for some readers, it is not enough to read me saying that for hundreds of parents going through the parenting workshops, happiness and all forms of happiness are more important than what they spend most of their energy on (academic success).
Do not get me wrong. I do not know any parents who care about their kids that would say, “I want my kids to be failures at school”. We all want our kids to be academically successful. After all, whether we like it or not, we think their level of success says something about us…
Unfortunately, many parents think academic success is the entry ticket to “real life”, but although I believe it is very important, I think it cannot stand by itself and we need a balance between academic success and happiness.
What do you think?
Quotes are signs we put on our map to navigate through the journey called “life”. We need the signs to find our way through the happiness and sadness, joy and heartaches, challenges and success. They are the guidelines for how we choose to live our life.
My first quotes were sentences from songs I loved. When listening to songs, some people hear the melody. I always pay attention to the lyrics. Whenever I chose to carve them on my life map, I copied them into my diary and read them from time to time.
One song that was most meaningful for me as a teenager was John Lennon’s “Imagine”. It is not a coincidence that today, many years later, I am the state coordinator of Together for Humanity, a foundation advocating living in peace and harmony.
Finding and listing 100 quotes that you consider good guidelines for living is a good way to discover who you are, what you want for yourself in life and what your need to overcome. Through the quotes, you can find out what your thoughts, values, needs and beliefs are and direct yourself towards a good life.
My daughter Noff (the youngest girl in the photo) is a very inspiring kid, especially since growing up in a house with two very talented siblings is not easy.
This is the story of how Noff composed her first piece of music at the age of 8, with very little knowledge and a lot of ingenuity, and how she continually uses her older brother and sister not as competition but as inspiration to stretch herself and do the best she can in every area.
Read Inspiring Kids »
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