This is a story about what to do with the happiness and sorrow in our life. I hope you like it.
At birth, God gave Adam two simple-looking gray boxes.
God said, “In one box, you will put all the wonderful moments of your life – the pleasures, the joys, the laughter and everything that makes you happy”.
“What about the second box?”
Read Happiness and Sorrow Boxes »
Telling people they should be donkeys may seem like a rude thing to do. When we think of donkeys, we typically think of being stubborn, but Gal has liked donkeys and says they are very smart animals. He says, “You can lead a horse anywhere you want, but a donkey has a mind of its own”.
Our friend’s light plane accident that has left him unable to walk (so far) has made me think a lot about donkeys. You see, I always say, life is not about what happens to us but what we do about it. Sometimes in life, things might happen that we cannot control, but at every moment, we can still choose how to feel and what to do next.
Sometimes, being a donkey is not that bad. Here is a story about it. Your kids will love it too.
Read Be a Donkey! »
Every relationship, with your partner, your parents or your kids, requires effort. No matter how compatible you are with the other person, each of you has a different background and continues to go through a different life. Each of you may be completely blind to the other’s experiences and feelings.
So typically, relationships involve a lot of guesswork. When we know the other person well, guesswork does an OK job in most cases, particularly when everyone is in a good mood and has enough energy to share.
Things get a bit messier when one person feels down and needs support and real storms can erupt when both people have gone through something unpleasant and both need an emotional hand.
In longer relationships, like a marriage over 10 years, a teenager or with your own parents, I would not be surprised if you have had a few storms already. Moreover, the same storm may have happened again and again, reaching full blast more quickly and increasing in intensity every time.
Last week, I wrote about writing your beliefs about kids. As I said, beliefs are a reflection of our parenting style. What we believe about kids becomes our reality. I realized this during my Special Education studies and I started making sure I always had the right beliefs, the most empowering beliefs that will make me the best mother in the world. And they have!
I examined all my beliefs and found out I had many I had received from my parents, my older sister, my teachers and other adults in my life that were very limiting, such as “Kids are cruel”, “Kids have no respect”, “Kids must be disciplined” and I will stop writing this list, because I would like to focus on beliefs that are better for parents to have.
So here I am opening my heart and telling you 100 of my beliefs about kids. I only write the beliefs that are empowering to me and that have made my parenting happier, healthier and more successful. I hope you will find inspiration in them and learn about the philosophy and vision I have for my parenting and for the Family Matters blog.
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.
Read Bad Start for Parenting »
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.
Read Projection »
My daughter Noff is 8 years old. Yes, this is late, but about 6 months ago, she started growing “Shark teeth” behind her lower front teeth. The orthodontist suggested pulling the baby teeth out and creating space for the “Shark teeth” to position themselves in the right place over time. So we scheduled a time to pull Noff’s baby teeth out and she was brave and managed the injections very well. When her lips went numb and she could not feel them, that scared her a bit, but other than that, everything was great.
Read Thanks to the Tooth Fairy »
I thought that as parents, making a list of thoughts and beliefs about kids is highly appropriate, because reading such a list can be a wonderful reflection on our parenting and a chance to do things even better.
In my parenting workshops, where parents get the tools to raise happy kids, we take stock of our beliefs to find empowering or limiting beliefs. It is amazing for people to discover how closely their beliefs about parenting or about kids match the challenges and the happy experiences in their life. Although we believe in things due to our life experiences, once we have those beliefs, they start to drive our experiences instead.
Buddha has said this beautifully, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought”. So if you are a confident parent, it is a result of what you have in your mind and if you are not confident in your parenting, you can be, just change your thoughts.
Someone very close to us lost her son to teen suicide. Her son was 18 years old, a great kid who took his dad’s gun one day, sat in his parents’ car in a park and shot himself to death.
He is gone and is probably not suffering anymore, but a whole family he left behind is still picking up the pieces of their shattered life and cannot find comfort.
I am writing to you because I pray you never have to be in the same position.
Read Teen Suicide »
Jill was one of the most beautiful, sexiest, most gorgeous woman on Earth. Miss Universe! She could easily have been Miss Universe, and there was not one person in the world – child, adult, man, woman, even really old person – that would want to take their eyes off her. She was stunning. Everything in her was perfect – her body, her eyes, her hair, her mouth, her skin and her nose.
Read Useless Beauty »
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