Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

Life Coaching Tips: Quote Cards

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goal, adjust the action - Confucius

Today, I would like to share with you, my coaches and mentoring clients (and even parents) a tool I have for working with my life-coaching clients. This tool is also useful for every form of therapy and even for teaching and parenting. This tool is quote cards.

Sometimes, it is hard to start a discussion with children, teens or adult clients, and we want the messages to appear as if they are coming from somewhere else and not from us. Quotes are a wonderful way to do that.

Generally, quotes are a wonderful tool in motivation, because they typically communicate an idea powerfully using a very short and concise format. Many times, when you read or hear a great quote, it reinforces a belief you already have, or already want to have, and you think, “I couldn’t have said it better”.

In coaching, our goal is to help our clients switch from one emotional or mental state to another. We need to be very careful about helping them get to where they want to go, not to where we think they should go. This is why getting to know them and their coaching targets is essential to our work.

Read Life Coaching Tips: Quote Cards »

What to Do if Your Child is Overweight and You Worry about Diabetes

Chubby baby girl

When there are so many overweight people in the world and diabetes is a common problem, many parents are concerned about their kids’ weight and developing diabetes. Statistics from around the world is not very encouraging. It is estimated that 600 million people will be living with diabetes by 2035. Whether you like or not, you and your children are part of this statistics.

In 2015, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) published their Diabetes Atlas, which estimates that:

– One in 11 adults has diabetes (422 million)
– One in two (46.5%) adults with diabetes is undiagnosed
– 12% of global health expenditure is spent on diabetes (USD673 billion)
– One in seven births is affected by gestational diabetes
– Three-quarters (75%) of people with diabetes live in low- and middle-income countries
– 542,000 children have type 1 diabetes
– Every six seconds, a person dies from diabetes (5 million deaths a year)
– China with over 100 million people with diabetes (ranked highest number of people with diabetes)
– Cambodia is the lowest in the world

Being overweight is just one possible cause of diabetes and it can be prevented. When children grow up with no health awareness, they become adults with no health awareness and their life can be harder, more expensive and shorter than average.

Read What to Do if Your Child is Overweight and You Worry about Diabetes »

The 10,000-hour Rule and Becoming a Facebook Expert

10,000 Hours

When my son had some friends over for lunch one day, we had a talk about what they did in their spare time. This question always interested me, because my son, Tsoof, never had any spare time in high school. In the last year of high school, he started at 7am and finished around 5pm most days of the week. Since he was in bed by 8:30-9:00pm, there was not much time left for other things.

I was very surprised when some of them told me they spent 3-4 hours during weekdays on Facebook, and on the weekend, they even got to 6-8 hours.

I was shocked!

It made me realize why Tsoof was in a different state to them. Back then, he had no Facebook account, he was a student leader, he was taking a university course, he had 8 before-school and after-school activities every week and he was an excellent student.

I told them that if they understood the 10,000-hour rule, they would see that they were gearing up to be experts in … Facebook.

Read The 10,000-hour Rule and Becoming a Facebook Expert »

How to Join Your Kids’ “Fun Club”

We don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing

Last week, I worked with a 7-year-old kid and when I asked him what mom or dad can do to make him happy, he said, “Be fun”. When I asked him if he liked his teacher, he said with a big smile, “Yes. She’s fun!”

I have heard this phrase from children many times. For them, fun is a currency. This is how they measure their relationships with their parents or with other people. First, you need to be fun. Then, you fit on a scale from “a little fun” to “great fun”.

The opposite of fun is old

I have written about the fun incentive as a motivation tool. It is also a trust tool, because it is a fantastic way to build rapport with your children. From working with many kids and raising my own children, I know that if you are not fun, you are old! Every time they say it, I feel I deserve it.

So as a parent, you need to get into your kids’ “fun club”. If you are in, they consider you as a partner for life and you can instill many thoughts, beliefs and ideas in their mind, as the best role model. If you are not at all in the club, you stand no chance.

Read How to Join Your Kids’ “Fun Club” »

Why (and When) You Should Not Ask Your Kids “Why?”

Woman looking up in front of a blackboard full of question marks

Recently, I ran a professional development course for teachers and we had a big discussion about the simple question “Why?” When I told the participants we had to consider the use of this question carefully, they were confused. To them, “Why?” was an open question that allowed children to express themselves.

Why should we consider not allowing kids to express themselves?

When asked “Why?”, all the people in the world activate a mechanism in their brain that searches for the answer. Even if you ask the question and give the person a long time to find the answer, their brain will not rest until it finds the answer.

Therapists and teachers can make very good use for this when they want to develop mindfulness and critical thinking skills.

But “Why?” is a bad question when someone has done something we wish they had not done, like mess up the carpet, break our favorite vase or forget to do their homework.

Read Why (and When) You Should Not Ask Your Kids “Why?” »

How to Get Rid of Procrastination

Procrastination is the thief of time written on a blackboard

Procrastination is a big problem for anyone who would like to achieve anything. Although from the outside it looks like it is not a problem to do nothing at all, it is not a state of doing nothing from the inside. Inside, there is a fear that right now, doing nothing seems better than anything we can think of doing.

It is important not to confuse a state of bliss and contentment with procrastination. Bliss is doing nothing and enjoying it. Procrastination is doing nothing from fear of the outcome of anything we do.

Procrastination and anxiety are twins and anxiety is the elder. Anxiety is a fear of some imaginary bad future and procrastination is our coping mechanism with anxiety (not a very effective strategy, but a very common one).

When we use it too often, we reach the “whatever” stage, when we “pretend” we do not care what the outcome will be. We always care! Unless you are a Buddhist in your heart and soul (which is a good aspiration), you care about the outcome. You can say you do not care, but you cannot cheat your own subconscious mind into believing you are the Dalai Lama and will be happy with whatever happens.

When our mind thinks we are in danger (because of something someone said or because of what someone might say), it has three choices: fight, flight or freeze. Procrastination is equivalent to the “flight” response – running away at the sight of danger.

Read How to Get Rid of Procrastination »

How to Calm Anxiety: 25 Easy Tips

When we fill out thoughts with right things, the wrong ones have no room to enter - Joyce Meyer

In What is Anxiety, I explained the process of creating anxiety. Today, I want to start describing how to calm anxiety with simple, everyday tips anybody can do.

It is important to remember that Anxiety is a thinking process that we do in the present of imagining a negative future. Anxiety is the modern evolution of the “fight or flight” response. We are not certain about the future and we predict a horrible one. Most of us are very bad fortunetellers, but still most people try fortunetelling in hope that the future will somehow change from being scary to being great, if only in our mind.

It won’t, unless we change the way we go through that process, and actively, with intention, change it!

In this post and the next, I will share with you 59 tips on how to calm anxiety. Each of those tips can do the trick for short time and if you continue doing them, they will become a habit. All you need are 2-3 tips that you feel conferrable with and alternate them.

Some of the tips are very much applicable to children, so teach your kids to develop strategies to manage and calm their anxiety as soon as possible. Research shows that kids as young as 3 years old already experience anxiety, and if they live in a very anxious house, they will master anxiety very early in life.

In schools, we see many anxious kids and this can be very exhausting for the body. Think of your body in “fight or flight” mode 30 to 40 times a day. An anxious child becomes so sensitive that every word said around them becomes a lion or a snake. The road from here to developing full-blown anxiety disorder is not too long.

This post is part 2 of 3 in the series How to Deal with Anxiety

Read How to Calm Anxiety: 25 Easy Tips »

How to Deal with Anxiety: What is Anxiety?

If you live in the past, you will suffer depression. If you live in the future, you will have anxiety. If you live in the present, you will be content. Lau Tzu

What is anxiety? Anxiety is one of the biggest problems of our society today. Research has found that it is one of the main reasons for sickness, relationship problems, crime and failure. People who are anxious have a bad physical reaction to thinking about the future.

Everybody feels anxiety sometimes. It is a natural reaction to what is perceived as danger – an evolution of the “fight or flight” response. While for most people, experiencing anxiety in small doses is normal and healthy, for others, feeling anxious about the future or about situations over which they have no control may cause real interference with daily living.

The problem is with the frequency of the fear and the perception of danger, when in fact there may be no real danger. When people experience mild anxiety, we call it “worrying”. When the fear takes over and blocks the person from living a normal life, we call it “Anxiety Disorder”.

Think about it this way: anxiety is when your mind goes towards a possible, horrible, bad, unpleasant future and you react to it NOW. No one is anxious when they think about getting compliments, or having a great time. We are anxious about something that MAY go wrong in the future.

This post is part 1 of 3 in the series How to Deal with Anxiety

Read How to Deal with Anxiety: What is Anxiety? »

15 Parenting Mistakes

Teenage girl looking anxious

Parenting is the oldest and most important jobs in history. Without it, we would not have over 7 billion people living on this planet. Most people want to be good parents. They want to raise responsible, happy, independent and successful kids. Even if we have kids for the purely biological reason of reproducing, we must ensure the future of our offspring, right? So nobody wants to make too many parenting mistakes.

I have been a parent for 26 years. As an educator, I also worked with many kids and had a lot of contact with parents on the way to becoming a parenting expert.

Over the years, I have written over 1,500 articles about parenting, happiness, and education. All my articles focus on the mission of raising happy, successful, friendly, smart, responsible and independent children. The rules of parenting are very clear and there is a variety of things you can do as a parent to ensure that your offspring will survive, be happy, be successful and your bloodline will continue for years to come. What you need to make sure is that you pass on to your kids more than just “blood”, more than just the things that transfers the second you conceive your kids (those genes stored in sperm or egg).

Parenting is also about transferring what is in your heart – your attitude. If you have the right attitude, you are more likely to be able to ensure a good future relationship for you and your kids. If your attitude is bad, you run the risk of being erased from your children’s lives. If you want to know how serious this is, read our post Divorcing Your Parents to see how many people are not in a relationship with their own parents. Imagine trying to pass on your legacy when you are not involved in the lives of your kids and grandkids.

Some parenting mistakes are not easily fixed, but it is never too late to start making a change. Here are some of the parenting mistakes that many parents make that can destroy the relationship between them and their children.

Read 15 Parenting Mistakes »

Healthy and Powerful Character Traits for Children (A to G)

Parent watering a child

This saying is as true for grownups as it is true for kids. We are what we think. If you want to know who your kids are, ask them what they think of themselves. Whether they think they are smart or not, happy or not, friendly or not, they are always right.

If you want to build their character, you need to instill character-building thoughts in their minds. Their thoughts become words, their words become thoughts, and their thoughts become actions. These actions become habits that become their character. Their character determines their destiny.

As I said in the previous chapter, a belief is like a seed, if you repeat the belief over and over again, it is like watering the seed. When the child hears the belief expressed enough times, the seed develops strong roots and becomes a conviction, like, “I am a very responsible kid”. The child stops thinking of it as a behavior and it becomes a character trait, a personal quality that they possess, “I am a very responsible kid”.

Here are examples of thoughts that will help build your kids’ character. If he/she adopts these thoughts/beliefs, they will turn into character of time. It is important to talk to kids about their character, what it means to them and what it means to you. Give them examples of times when they have shown a particular trait in a nice way and how it helped them in life. If you cannot find examples from their life, give examples from your own life, when you showed this trait and how it helped you in life. This will make it is easier for them to adopt the trait.

This post is part 2 of 8 in the series Helping Kids Build Character

Read Healthy and Powerful Character Traits for Children (A to G) »

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