Handy Family Tips: Keys

I do not know why, but I have always had a problem with keys (not with the keys themselves but with keeping them). When I was a kid, my parents worked so much that when I came home from school, I had to use my own keys to get in. My siblings (I have 4) and I never had a good way of keeping our keys and most of the days, we would count on one of the others to open the door for us or used the spare key at our neighbors’ house.

Some people hid their keys under their welcome mat so their kids could enter the house while they worked long hours, but that was not really hiding at all, since all the kids in the neighborhood could find them easily.

The only thing on my mind was how expensive it was to make a new set of keys and the hassle my parents had to go through to get me new keys (not to mention the look on their faces saying I have failed them).

Never in my childhood did my parents or anyone else teach me how to make sure I could always find my keys. As a kid, I need that as part of life. As a teacher, I find it alarming that kids are not being taught how to be organized with their possessions (among oh, so many other useful skills).

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Bullying Facts and Myth

Love Shouldn't Hurt written on woman's bare back

Bullying is part of every kid’s life, unfortunately. It is estimated that every person bullies someone, is bullied by someone or witnesses someone else being bullied during childhood.

I am writing about bullying because some of my work with kids, although it seems related to academic achievements and learning difficulties, is overcoming emotional baggage that starts with some form of bullying.

To my surprise, most kids do not know what bullying is.

So first, let’s get the facts straight.

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Anorexia: Model Parenting

We happened to watch a TV piece on top models’ body image, eating habits and self-inflicted damages.

Top model Jessica Gomes (24) said the pressure on models to be slim was enormous and that models are afraid to miss out on work opportunities in the highly competitive fashion industry, so they use some excessive methods to keep themselves trim. She said models run for days on a mix of lemon juice and maple syrup, which also “cleanses”. To keep their energy up and be able to work, they drink coffee and use Cocaine.

The article mentioned Ana Carolina Reston (see her in the pictures), a famous Brazilian model who died from Anorexia at the age of 21, weighing 40kg (88lbs). Her mother told the press Ana had eaten nothing but apples and tomatoes for 2 months before she died.

Although the article did a very good job showing models who decided to eat normally and still got excellent jobs, Ronit and I were left with a very painful question:

Where are those top models’ parents?

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Jessica Watson

In case you have not heard, Jessica Watson is a 17-year-old girl from Australia who has recently sailed around the world in a 10m (30′) boat (a sloop). This is by all means an outstanding feat and can be deemed very inspiring for young people all around the world.

I tried to put myself in her parents’ shoes and consider what I would do if Eden wanted to sail around the world in a little boat like that.

I was absolutely horrified.

The chances of something going terribly wrong in the middle of the ocean are so big I would never let any of my offspring do it. Losing them would just be too much for me, especially with the thought I could have stopped them.

But Jessica Watson’s parents feel differently. They encouraged her on her way, supported her during preparations and all through her voyage and appeared alongside her on the news.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (7): What drives you nuts?

Parenting can be a hard task. Although we love our kids very much, there are many things in parenting that can drive even the calmest person nuts.

When I ask parents about their challenges, they talk mostly about their kids’ (bad or annoying) behavior. However, I think that is a reflection of other challenges we have. As you will see from the top parenting bloggers’ answers below, parenting challenges are varied and reflect our wider perspective on parenting.

In this part of Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss, I asked each blogger about the things they find challenging as parents. I told them it did not have to be their kids’ behavior but in parenting in general or anything else directly or indirectly related to raising kids. I believe you will find what they have to say very interesting.

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Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (2): Parenting Challenges

Last week, we started the new project Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss when every blogger introduced him or herself. If this is your first visit here, check each blogger on Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss (1): Introduction.

Parenting brings a lot of joy, but it also comes with many challenges. In the personal development world, we say that if you know what your problem is, you are half way to the solution. To get half way to the solution, I have asked each top parenting blogger for their list of the 5 biggest challenges parents face today.

Here is what they thought (some of the emphasis is mine).

What are the 5 biggest challenges parents face today?

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Alcohol for Teens

This week, I was at a conference and I had a talk about my book for teenagers with a woman named Jill. As often happens, our conversation turned into a “bitching session” about teenagers.

“Last night, I picked up my 15-year-old daughter from a party. I’m one of the rare parents who still come to pick their kids up. The rest takes a taxi”, she complained, “When I arrived, there were lots of police cars around”.

“Did anything bad happen?” I asked, worried.

“Oh, no, that’s usual. Every time she goes to a party, someone does silly things and the police arrive”.

My 20-year-old daughter and my 14-year-old son had never participated in a party where the police arrived, so I asked her, “What do you mean by ‘silly things’?”

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Health Insurance

I always say we pay for insurance to give us the imaginary belief we will be financially OK when something wrong ever happens to us, but instead, we should pay for insurance to give us the imaginary belief we will never ever use it.

Over a month ago, our Friend Tom had a plane crash and broke a bone in his back without feeling his legs (see A Lesson in Proportion). As you can imagine, we were very disturbed as his friends and looked for ways to support him. Using all our happiness-coaching skills, we helped him imagine a happy future and set goals for every day and week. Sure enough, he started feeling parts of his legs gradually and our hopes grew stronger.

For weeks, every time we came to visit Tom, he had a “story of the day” for us. Some stories were happy, but unfortunately, most were sad and disturbing. We tried to encourage him to write down his hospital “adventure” for several good reasons.

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Good Fences

Jim, the neighbor sharing our back fence, rang this week to ask if we would share the cost of replacing the fence that separates our back yards. He was very polite and patient, but made it clear he wanted to put up a “good fence”.

So let me tell you exactly what I think about fences and what I think about how they separate people.

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Popularity Counts

Though many parents tell their teens that popularity is not the only thing that matters, not wanting them to compromise more important things in life to fit in and be subject to peer pressure, I think in a way they are deceiving themselves.

If popularity is not that important to us as parents,
where did our teens get this idea?

Grownups compromise a lot to gain popularity at home, at work and among their friends and family. Most extended family struggles runs around popularity. Siblings fight to be the most popular kids and the most popular grandchildren. When a couple divorces, there is an immediate struggle for being the most popular parent and most couples, unfortunately, compromise many of their values and much of the wellbeing of their precious kids just to gain imaginary popularity over their partners. Whether you like to admit it or not, you compromise a lot and are subject to social pressure yourself.

I think popularity counts, not because I think it should, but because it just does.

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