practical parenting / parents Tag | Family Matters

The Power of Bilingualism

My introduction to learning languages and bilingualism happened 24 years ago, when we moved to Texas, USA, and our daughter started to learn English. As a Special Education teacher, I knew she would be fine, but as a mother, I was scared, because at the age of 4, with the language of a 10 year old, I was afraid she would be left behind.

She wasn’t!

Since then, I have been working with inspiring people who specialize in language acquisition and with many children of migrants around the world. I have learned that parents and teachers play an important role in supporting language development. If they understand the challenges and consider the myths around language, they can help kids with healthy language acquisition.

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When Your Teen’s Friends are Bad Influence

As parents, we put all our heart and energy into raising our children to be the best they can be. We want them to be as healthy, friendly, successful and happy as possible. In their teen years, most of us are afraid that their friends will become the most important people in our teenager’s life. So we want to make sure those friends do not have bad influence over them.

Our investment in our children, both material and emotional, is tested several times during their life. Their social connections are one big test of parenting, because as parents, we try to pass our philosophy and values to our children. If they spend their time with friends who tell them the opposite, this may weaken their belief in our philosophy and our values.

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Kids Eating Healthy Food: You Can Be This Lucky Too

When it comes to kids’ healthy eating habits, I was lucky, because my children, all three of them, have no issues with eating healthy food. Our children eat healthy food and were never “junkies”. My youngest had a sweet tooth for a while, but as soon as she entered her teen years, with great influence of some of her friends, she switched to cherries and blueberries. I told you I was lucky!

My parents were not that fortunate. All five of their children struggled with our eating habits and with our health. Some of us still struggle as grownups today. As a child, I was on antibiotics for three months of every year until the age of 12. When we were kids, my parents spent many days with us in hospitals and clinics when we got sick.

I was in a hospital once with each of my children and it was a great reminder that I did not want to raise my children to be sick.

Food and health are strongly connected!

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How to Turn off Children’s Creativity

As an educator and a mother, I believe in the importance of developing children’s creativity. My first real job as an educator was in a very special project, called “Creative Thinking”. It was a very important part in my career and in forming my philosophy.

I think this is the reason creativity is such a high value for me. I have written a lot about creativity and how to “turn it on”. But today, I would like to give some negative examples of ways you can turn it off, just as easily as you can turn it on.

Please check if your relationships with your children or students include any of these things. If so, this may be limiting their creativity and future success.

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Education System on Trial and Found Guilty

Until I studied Education, I had not questioned the education system. I do not think I’d had the tools to question it. But by the time I graduated (in Special Education), I had realized something was wrong. It was easy to see this while working with kids who were different (both gifted and those with learning difficulties).

Why?

Because special education kids did not fit into the “education box” and the school system did not cater for them. It got worse when I realized, thanks to my amazingly wonderful teachers, that the system just did not care for any of the kids, because every child is special and different in some way. The system cared for itself.

It was devastating!

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How to Stop Bullying with Empathy: The Story of Two Apples

Bullying is an epidemic. It touches every part of our life and children are very vulnerable to bullying, because they do not have the tools to prevent it.

From the bully’s point of view, bullying is an act of fear. When the bullies feels inferior for some reason, they search for someone weak to pick on, in an attempt to feel better about themselves. Therefore, the best way to prevent bullying is to develop confidence and for children, this is still work in progress (it is work in progress for grownups too, but children are just at the beginning of this process).

What we need to change the world from bullying to respect and collaboration is empathy. As parents and educators, we can develop empathy in easy and effective ways.

This post is part 35 of 35 in the series Bullying

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How to Develop Kids’ Thinking: Ask the Right Questions

Parents often ask me how to develop kids’ thinking, so that they grow up to be successful and happy. My answer is: ask the right questions.

Beliefs form the boundaries around our thinking. They separate between what we think we can and cannot do. What we believe we can do is within the boundaries of our thinking. We call these “empowering beliefs”. What we think we cannot do is outside the boundaries of our thinking. We call these “limiting beliefs”.

We are all limited in the way we think. Why? Because we do not know what we do not know. Think of the brain as a map we design from the moment we are born. We are exposed to many things and form beliefs that we use to navigate life.

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How to Focus: Juggling Life with Goals

In How to Focus: 20-20-20 Vision, I explained how focus works and why it is essential in many areas of our life. I compared mental focus to clear vision. If we see well, we function well. If we are able to stay focused mentally, we also function well. Easy!

As I said before, when we focus on one thing, the rest is blurry. It is important to remember that we cannot focus on everything with the same level of intensity.

It is as if we juggle too many balls at the same time. Even highly trained jugglers can handle no more than six or seven balls at a time and they train for years to reach that point. If we want to juggle the things we need to do in life, we need to train for years, and the sooner we start, the better.

This post is part 2 of 2 in the series How to Focus

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How to Focus: 20-20-20 Vision

If you wear glasses, you understand focus really well. Why is it easy for people who need glasses? Because many of them just cannot see what is in front of them without their glasses. If you cannot see clearly, it is very hard to function effectively.

I have been shortsighted since I was 15 years old. Without my glasses, I cannot read well, drive, enjoy TV or notice facial expressions from half a meter away. Without glasses, I cannot do my presentations, coach, cook, clean the house or even choose what clothes to wear. My vision plays a big part in my life, and without it, I am crippled.

Mental focus works the same. If we are not focused, it is as if our vision is blurred. The lack of focus affects all aspects of our life negatively and we are crippled.

This post is part 1 of 2 in the series How to Focus

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Singing Family Full of Joy

On my happy list, I wrote, “It makes me happy to listen to my kids singing”. This was true even when they were babies. I remember my youngest daughter Noff joining us in Alicia Keys’ song Fallin’ when she was one year old. She always joined on time and it made us all very happy.

Singing is a very sensitive thing for me. Well, it was very sensitive. Today, when I run workshops or stand in front of a big crowd during my presentations, no one can guess that years ago, when I was young, I sometimes had no voice. Speaking was difficult for me and singing was not even an option.

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