Search Results for: What is

When I was a sophomore in high school, my parents sat the family down in the living room, opened up an enormous binder and asked my younger brother and me to pick a sister, any sister, from any country around the world.

We chose an eighteen-year-old, trumpet-playing, tall and strong-minded Finnish student who did, indeed, become a real sister to me over the course of the following year.

My parents had made rumblings in the past about hosting a foreign exchange student. We lived in a tiny, rural town in Central California, so they saw the exchange experience as a double-blessing: My parents could share the wealth of our small-town lives and the beauty of our diverse state while culturally enriching their own children’s lives. We had previously hosted a German teacher for a summer, and my brother’s baseball team had provided temporary housing for players from Russia — the USSR at that time. We were no strangers to strangers in our home.

But when the day finally came to choose the exchange student, I was nervous about the change. My life was filled with academics, sports and other extracurriculars, and my parents both had busy jobs in addition to being key participants in their children’s activities.

This experience was going to put me outside my comfort zone, and I wasn’t sure I would like it. Would there be enough room for another sister?  Would my parents have enough love to go around?  What would we gain by shaking up our seemingly comfortable lives?

As it turned out, quite a lot! While that year certainly came with ups and downs—as they do in any family—the lifelong friendship, the bond of sisterhood and the cultural experience I gained from having Karo in my life outshone all the extra squabbles over the shared curling iron.

It was such a worthwhile experience, that here we are, over 30 years later, preparing to choose another sister. Only this time, it’s my own family—my husband, myself and our three daughters. And this time, there will be no binder, no leafing through pages of possibilities, since we have already chosen our sister-for-a-year: Karo’s daughter from Finland. [Read more…]

Going to school for many kids is like going to war each and every day. It is a battleground where they are faced with the responsibility of making all kinds of decisions and having to deal with the consequences of their actions.

You see, making decisions independently is hard enough for a child. However, when faced with pressure from their peers to make a decision one way or the other, it becomes a whole new ball game.

There are so many more pressures that kids face today than ever before in history. The traditional pressures of smoking, drinking and drugs continue to pervade our society. But these days children have to engage on two different fronts: making wise decisions in person, and while using technology in the cyberworld, in particular on social media.

As a middle school teacher of 20 years, I have seen the evolution of challenges and the social pressures and expectations that kids face. Peer pressure to look and act a certain way, say the right things to be accepted into the “in-crowd,” play the “cool” games everyone else is playing, wear the latest designer clothing brands everyone else is wearing, and — nowadays — partake in the social media forums everyone else is taking part in. [Read more…]

Imagine this –

A three-year-old boy gets angry while playing a game with his friends and hits another child hard and pushes him down.

The mom comes and gives the aggressive child a hug and asks him politely not to hit his friends, and then returns to her table where she was sitting.

A few moments later, the child repeats the offense.

These are the kinds of scenarios dreamed up by those who say positive parenting doesn’t work.

At the heart of their disdain for positive parenting is the ill-conceived belief that positive parenting is permissive parenting.

They believe that positive parents fail to set boundaries, let children make and break the rules, and decline any discipline whatsoever.

And they think we try to solve every problem with a hug, are afraid of upsetting our snowflakes, and just want to be our child’s friend.

I’m sure you’ve heard this rhetoric before.

Let’s set the record straight and define what positive parenting really is and how it differs from permissive parenting. [Read more…]

At the beginning of summer, when the weather was heating up, I walked into my 11-year-old son’s room to find his windows smeared with something gunky.

What craziness was this? I felt my eyebrows raise and then pinch together. My lips pursed.

Luckily, my curiosity as to what on earth he’d been up to won over my frustration over the mess he’d made.

So I asked him. “What have you done to your windows?”

He replied, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, “I put sunscreen on them.”

My face must have shown the disbelief and even the dismay I felt. He began to falter, noticing my reaction.“Would that not work?” His face fell. “Sorry, Mummy.”

I opened my eyes wider and hesitated for a moment, caught between anger and incredulity. I very nearly snapped, shouted, and made him feel small. Thankfully, in the nick of time, I caught myself, remembered my Parenting Superpowers… and smiled. [Read more…]

I have to admit. Of all the challenges that I am facing as a parent – as an aspiring positive parent – communication is by far the most difficult for me.

For some, positive parenting comes easy and naturally. For others, (like myself) it is a constant struggle and a huge shift in mindset.

Wouldn’t life be easier if there were a positive parenting guide that tells us exactly what to say in any given situation?

I have come to realize that children are a beautiful blend of intelligence, honesty, curiosity, bluntness, sensitivity, empathy and so much more. They understand things and pick up on cues more than we adults realize. One lesson that I have learned is to never underestimate your child.

One of the greatest tools at our disposal as a parent is the ‘power of words.’ Words – how they are used and the way we communicate with our children – can have a ‘make it or break it’ effect. They can either uplift a child who is feeling down and give them that boost of self-confidence or they can crush a child’s self-confidence and self-esteem massively.

Following is a list of phrases that we usually say which are better avoided, and what to say instead. I have also delved a bit into the ‘why’ aspect of these phrases so you can have a better understanding of just how these words impact our children. I hope you will find this as informative and useful as I have and that it will lead you to nurture your child in a better and more positive manner.

Here we go – [Read more…]