After years of begging, negotiations and tears I finally gave in and let the kids have a dog.

We »tried« with the bunnies before to see if the kids are mature and reponsible enough to even have an animal. And they more than proved they are. Of course there were some days when they needed to be reminded to feed them or clean their cage, but otherwise they were and still are taking good care of them.

The first puppy we chose died during the sterilisation operation. After the first shock and desperate children’ cry we started to look for another. We were so eager now to get a dog. Still determined to get one from the shelter, we browsed the internet and called around. With very little luck. When we found a dog we liked one was already taken. Then we found another and no one answered the phone. At the third attempt their attitude was really awful.

Why is this happening to us? Why are we having so much troubles? What does this mean?
As if they were all saying »We are not giving you the dog.«

We were so focused and determined to get that dog at any price. Right there and then. We were pushing and pushing and of course it was just like banging on the wall. We were not allowing the dog to come to us, we wanted it just the way we thought was the right way.

It suddenly became too much of everything. We stopped and relaxed. We just let it be. We decided to have a dog and sooner or later we would get one.

Then we found that perfect dog. It was literally waiting for us at the first shelter we looked. And this one is exactly what we wished for. Small, cute, sweet and friendly. She’s adopting to our family and our life style. It’s like we’ve always had a dog. The girls are taking really good care of her, giving her food, taking her for walks, grooming her and cleaning after her. They even set their alarm clocks to take her out in the night.

The lesson?

Of course it’s esential we know what we want. It’s the first step to getting it. But after that we need to relax. Let it happen. Wait for signs and signals for our inspired actions. Not something our logical mind is telling us, or something we think we should do, but acts that we are feeling deeply inside that are the right ones and that will take us closer to our goals.

If you’re having troubles in your life, are you solving them by pushing your own solutions? Are you determined to have it your way? Do you just know how it needs to be done? How it’s supposed to happen? Well, maybe your way is not the right way or at least not the only way? If it was you wouldn’t had that troubles, right?

We just need to let go. Get out of our own way and allow things to happen. Listen to our hearts. Follow our feelings. And expect the best.

This month my dear daughter surprised me with her decision: »Mom, I will be a vegetarian.« Wow… this is something you don’t really want to hear, especially if your daughter has trainings every day for few hours and everyone believes that she needs meat (and I must say here that we don’t eat a lot of meat, but still…).

It was the same day that I saw an article on my Facebook wall describing the traps, teenagers fall in, when deciding to go vegetarian. According to this article, more teenage »vegetarian« girls suffer from eating disorders and health problems, related to food than the »normal« group. It could be the first step to eliminating other foods as well. You can read the whole article HERE.

Actually no one was happy about it. Her swimming coach asked us about our food preferences, in school they noticed she’s not eating everything as she did before… And I really started to worry.


But it also happens that at the time I was reading a great inspirational book by Sean Stephenson »Get off Your But..«. He has a rare genetic disease, that caused his bones to be incredibly brittle. At one occasion, when he broke his femur again, feeling sorry and discouraged, his mom asked him: Is this going to be a gift or a burden?

What better question to ask yourself? Am I going to allow myself to worry and be against just because… or are we going to make something good out of it?

So I gave my daughter a homework: »OK, you can be a vegetarian, if you provide me with information, how you are going to get all the essential nutrients.« She googled, borrowed a book from the library and really studied, and she came with a list of things she needed to eat. And I must admit those are the foods that we need as well, being the vegetarian or not.

My whole family is eating better now and we are making healthier choices for our meals. It turned out to be a blessing, Even though we still have a lot to learn, it’s a great start to watch our diet and become more conscious about the food we are putting into our bodies.

Every time, something »negative« happens in your family, ask yourself:

• Is this going to be a gift or a burden?
• Is there anything in your life, in your family, which you don’t like?
• Maybe you adopted a habit that you don’t like?
• Or maybe you wanted to change something for some time?
• Make a decision and create a situation that can be a turning point to ask yourself: Is this going to be a gift or a burden?

Teaching children secrets and values of life can sometimes be really overwhelming. I am promoting teaching through play, which I’m sure you are familiar with. But now I »discovered« another great easy way – showing them how someone else is doing it. And if this someone is a hero, a champion or someone your child admire, it’s getting even easier.

You know that my daughter is competing in swimming and just recently I bought her a book about Michael Phelps. (I have a good excuse for not buying it before:) She didn’t know enough of English to read it. Now she is willing to give it a try and I’m proud to say she understands most of it. Yet another benefit.). Michael is an exceptional athlete, winning 8 gold medals at last Olympic games.

Apart from it that the book is really an interesting read, Michael describes in every detail his daily training routines, how he prepares for the competitions and how he get to where he is.

He determines goals for every swim meet, for every competition. He writes them down . They are very specific, to one hundreth of a second. Then he visualize them. He says he has such vivid imagination that he can see every wave in the water.

Suddenly my teachings and what I’m trying to show my kids become a reality. They are not a theory anymore or something that I insist on doing every year. Someone she admires is doing it! Now she is telling me: »Mum, he puts his goals on refrigerator.«

Once Anja told me that all she wants is to be normal. More like her school friends, whose mothers don’t make them do vision boards or write down goals or meditate. But now goal setting and visualising become normal. If Michael is doing it and he even talk about it in the book, there must be something real about it. And it must be working:) The results are obvious.

Now she is looking at her wall poster with her goals in completely different way. Even if she doubted about them before, she feels now she can reach them.

Next time you want to teach your kid a lesson or two, find more about who she or he admires and let the role-model do your work. The child will recognise and see your ideas in action and more likely he will take them to the heart. The role-model is something totally diferent than a mother who one day teaches important lessons and another day is angry at you.

Even Napoleon Hill wrote his classic »Think and Grow Rich« by studying the lives of rich and succesful people. Why don’t you use the same strategy to teach your kids?

What do you think? Does your child has a role model you can use to teach him something positive? You are welcome to share your thoughts on the blog.

We had an interesting conversation the other day about, I guess, the everlasting issue in the parenting – how to make your kids to clean up their rooms. You know, when you tell your kids to do it, they come up with all kind of excuses and arguments: »It’s too much to do, it will take so long…«

What I found out is that many parents, even if they are usually patient and understanding, are frustrated with this. And despite all good intentions and the »training«, the rooms seem to be always messed and cluttered.

One way to deal with it could definitely be, that you don’t put any attention to it. That you just leave your kids alone. If they want to live in the mess, let them. If they don’t have nothing ot wear, I don’t care. But I’m sure we can agree that is not really a solution. Or at least not our, »law of attraction« way, when we want to focus on the positive and teach kids with good examples, not the hard and dirty way.

Do you know what first step in Law of Attraction is? To ask in a very detailed and specific way.

Not just telling them to clean up their rooms. For the children it would mean the same as if someone asks you to build a house. It could be really overwhelming and scary. And it’s not specific. If you would be asked to build a house, what would your first (logical) reaction be? You would ask all kinds of questions – Where? How big? What style? How many bedrooms? With a terrace? Etc.

It’s the same with the rooms. When you say “clean up your room”, your child doesn’t really know what you mean.
There are two other important issues that you must take into consideration.

One is to ask yourself for your own motivation and underlying feelings. Sometimes we just snap to kids because we got frustrated with some other issues. We came home tired and nervous and the kids are easy target. Maybe their rooms are not that messed, but we just need to take some control and let our own frustrations go.

Do you often use their rooms for punishment? If your child doesn’t spend much time in his/her room or if he is usually playing or doing homework in other areas of the house, he might feel the task of cleaning the room as a punishment. That’s why you might offer your support or help, but I’m pretty sure they won’t need it. Sometimes it’s enough that you are around.

Another issue is that often our own perception of clean and order is totally different from our child’s. We are looking the world through our own lenses. And our children can have a completely different idea what their rooms should look like. Remember that there are different types of people. And they are learning and experiencing the world in different ways – some like to read and see materials,, while others rather hear about it and some would try it for themselves. They are called the visual, auditory or kinesthetic type. You child might have a different view on the world and you should organize (or let them organize) their environment to support these preferences.

If I go back to the »ask« part. Be specific and detailed. Split one overwhelming task to smaller tasks, to little steps. Determine the milestones (just as any planning process) and let them do one thing at a time. Encourage them with some rewards, when they reach those milestones – offer a snack, some play time…

Good idea is also to limit the time. The children can’t really evaluate that sometimes a simple task requires very little time. They are usually in a defensive mode, feeling that it will take forever. But in reality often the arguments last longer than the tasks themselves. Make it fun and make it short enough. You can say: »Empty your trash bin and it will take you 3 minutes (and I can even measure time, so yu’ll be sure that it’s true and you will know for the next time), then you can go back to your games.« It will give them some control over the task with definiteness and a reward at the end.

When I ask my girls to tidy their rooms, I let them choose what they will do, but I often set a time limit. »Let’s do it for 15 minutes and what’s done is done.« It’s working much better than when they have a lot of time and usually it’s more done than in hours. And the best part of it is,that they often beg for more time to finish the task:)

After you get through your first step (ask), the other two – to believe and to expect the realisation – should not be that difficult, right?

How do you cope with this issue? What are your ideas, techniques…? Please share below.

Can you imagine what they are? No, I don’t mean cursing or calling him names. Those words that I have in mind are actually really polite, can be even nice and well-meaning, but they are deadly.

They will not kill your child, of course, but they will kill his ambition, his dreams and his motivation. And those are the things that we as a parents need to empower. What would happen to your child, when he grows up and find himself in the life with no future, no motivation, no inspiration and nothing to look after? He might just be dead as well.

And what are those 3 words?

You must

Whenever we say to our child “You must do something.” or “You must be something.” , we are giving him orders. We approach him from our authority perspective, giving him no choice whatsoever. When we say “You must…” the child understands it as “You better do this or…”.

There is always an alternative. We can ask a child to do something. We can suggest. We can explain, why we need something to be done.

You should

It’s similar to “You must…” It sounds a bit nicer, but still there are threats and expectations hidden behind those words. Again, the child understands it “It really doesn’t matter what you do, but you better do it my way. I am smarter here and I know what’s best for you.”

Why don’t you go through the option your child have together? You can discuss all the pros and cons and he can decide what’s better alternative.

You can’t

This one is the most vicious killer of dreams of them all. When we say those words, we are saying to our child, he is not good enough, not smart enough, not valuable enough. And often times that others are more important than he is. Because we don’t say “You can’t” just like that. Many times we think about our environment, our friends and relatives, or even worse, about the strangers, that might see our child doing something, we think he shouldn’t.

But guess what! All the great inventors, great adventurers, great men and women of our world… they all did, what they shouldn’t and what others said they can’t.

Give your child a wings, keep his dreams alive and avoid those 3 deadly words.

 Make it a New Year Resolution to eliminate those words from your vocabulary.

Need help? Check out Raising Sparkling Kids© program!

I would love to hear your thoughts. Post your comments below!

Related articles

• Love Daily: Words that heal, words that harm, Nov. 26, 2010 (ritawatson.com)
• 10 Most Important Things I Learned When Dealing with Children (gomestic.com)
• How to Say No in Language Your Kids Will Understand (socyberty.com)
• Child’s Play (greatergood.berkeley.edu)

Every evening when my daughers go to bed, I go to tuck them and kiss them good night. But the other day I was working on something and we say goodnight and kissed right after the dinner.

Tina said: “Will you come and kiss me again, when you will go to sleep?”
“Sure.”

But I didn’t. I completely forgot about my promise.

Next morning I was about to do laundry and while I was getting sheets from the beds, I also asked Tina to get her dirty clothes from her room. And that’s when she got me! “You didn’t come to kiss me yesterday. Otherwise you would see that I cleaned ant tiedied my room and that ther are no dirty clothes around.” Ooopss.

So, how many times are we saying or doing things that we don’t mean? Or that we say them just to go on with our lives and forget about them?

Even if it doesn’t sound much, it meant a lot to Tina. And I dissapointed her. I felt so bad. Not just because I broke my promise, I might even signal her, that she’s not really important. I skipped the ritual for other “more important” thing and it looks like I didn’t think of her at all passing her room to my bed.

Now think about your life and your situations.

Are there any little lies you are telling your child just to get peace, or just to send him off, or because you don’t feel like doing something. When doing those kind of things, think about your priorities. Remember, children grow up really, really fast and before we know it, they are out of our lives (or at least out of our houses). There are situations when you need peace and be calm or finish something, but explain to your child your situation. Tell him, that you will be there for him after that. Make a deal with your kid and trade your lack of time at that moment for something even more than he asks.

Then there are another lies, that are aimed to protect our kids. But are they really protecting? Those lies usually include some kind of accidents, mishaps, maybe death.. First think about yourself. Would you rather have the truth and deal with it or would you rather get vague, misguiding, misleading or even contradictory explanations. Because children see when there is something wrong. They sense it. You can’t really hide your feelings and emotions behind nice words. Of course every situation requires different approach, and you should explain kids in such a manneer that he understands, but the truth is always better than lies. And what if he hears it from someone else? Isn’t it better that you, who knows him best and knows how to tell it, give him explanations rather than some stranger, who might assume that your child already knows bad news?

What about lies about our money, wages, properties? Sometimes we are not exactly lying, but we are avoiding the topic. Children are often quite direct about money, they talk among themselves how much their parents have (money, car…). And when the car or the house are obvious posessions we really can’t (and won’t) hide, we are often embarassed to talk about money. Especially if we don’t have much. We often say to our kids, when they want something, that we can’t afford it or  that we don’t have that kind of money (or even worse – money doesn’t grow on trees). But how would they know? They have no idea how much money is required to pay the bills, the food, clothes, all activities… Usually, all the experience that they have with money, are alowance and occasional gifts and they usually spend it just like they wish. So talking openly about money, where it comes from and how we spend it, is not only fair to our children, it’s part of the “must-have” education.

What little lies are you telling your child? Please share your comments below, I would love to hear from you.

Related articles

• Is It Always Essential to Tell The Truth, or are There Circumstances….. (socyberty.com)
• True Mom Confessions Top 10: Better late than never (timesunion.com)

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This last weekend I spent at the golf tournament. I don’t play golf yet, but I decided I will sometime soon (like next spring). My husband was photographing the event and we were driving around in the golf car. It was so much fun:)

Once, we stopped to wait for the players to hit their balls and I was observing their decisions. They were standing at one side of the small pond, while the hole was on the other side. And they were pondering the length, which clubs to take, how to hit…

But the distance was quite large and I was calculating:”If I would be playing… if I hit hard, it might not be enough and the ball might end in the pond, but if I play safe, the ball would stay on this side of the pond and I would need to hit again, losing points.”

And then it stroke me. It’s just like our decisions in life.

Think about it! How would you play? Would you play safe or would you go for it no matter what? Would you rather go slow or give everything and risk losing something?

The other day we decided to spend the hot Sunday by the lake or the river. But we didn’t know which one:) So we looked on the map and found the lake not too far away we never visited before. We packed things and hit the road. We arrived only to find out that it is a great tourist destination, but not at all suitable for swimming. And we drove back looking for the perfect spot to have a picnic and to cool ourselves in the water. Which we didn’t find. And after driving around for almost 4 hours we all got frustrated and just wanted to go home to swim in our own pool in the backyard.

Just like when you are going on a trip, where you need to know the destination to decide about the road and stops and everything that comes in your way, you need to have direction for your family life too.

If you don’t know where you want to go, you will stay just where you are. You have to know what you want. But when it comes to the family, it is not just the sum of the needs and wants of the individuals, it is so much more than that. And I strongly believe that family as a whole should have its own vision. Think of a family as a ship. The ship has the final destination and is going towards her harbor and everyone on her can have different  reasons, motivations… but still the same goal.

Every member is important in the family and should have its own visions and goals, but if want the family to be happy, prosperous and supportive, we need to find the way to create environment where all members feel supported and valued.

So get together all family members and decide on the areas you want to define. You should include topics such as family relations, friends, work and school, home, health, fun (holidays and leisure time), education, spiritual matters and any other are you feel it is important.

Now for each of the areas define the parameters and qualities you want to follow and respect. Set also the boundaries for the things that are unacceptable in your family. Describe ideal situations. What would be the perfect state of the things? What would you do? Where would you vacation? Where would you live? How would your life look like in 10, 20 or 50 years.

Be as specific as possible. Think not only about what you see from your current stand-point but imagine the impossible and outside your box. Don’t limit yourself by your current situation.

It is a great family activity to create a family vision board and put it on the wall somewhere to be seen most of the times to remind each and every one of the destination they are going.

Once you have your general direction, it will be much easier to define shorter term goals and activities. You will be focused on your desired income and not side-tracked by life’s obstacles and trials. Each family member will know the path that family is going.

Of course the visions, plans and goals are not carved in stone and you should review them every now and then and adapt to any new circumstances and wishes that arise.

My husband recently took a job to type and design the book for a colleague. He asked our daughter Anja to help him with the typing. And promising her to pay for her part of work made her quite excited about the job. She already made plans how she will spend the money.

Until… she chatted about it with her friends. And to my surprise they were not supporting at all.

“We are having holidays. Holidays are for fun, not work”.

“You are getting only 100 euros! It is not worth the effort.”

“So much work for so little money.”

I was literally shocked. Do the kids today really have everything and get everything without any effort? Is work really so little worth? Is 100 Euros really little money? How about the effort to earn her own money to spend it however she wants?

We give our daughters allowances, but this is no big money, just to give them the sense of it. Actually they have (almost) everything they want and we provide them with everything they need. And they have to put the allowance money into five piggy-banks for different purposes, like rainy days savings, charity, investments and spending. But if they want something really special, they have to earn extra money doing different chores. They do most of simple domestic chores (like making the beds, emptying trash bins…) for free, as their contribution for the family. But something like washing the car or mowing the lawn, we pay them something extra.

And this was an extra job and Anja would earn significantly more than usual. But listening to her friends it was not worth the effort.

How do you manage money with your kids? Do they have to work to earn money? Would love to hear your comments and advices below!

Some kids are open and can make new friends quite easily where ever they go. And some are just nothing like that. They stick to their mothers and won’t move away for an inch. Their mothers usually say: “It is such a shy kid.” But in reality only part of this can be attributed to their nature. It’s also the result of their upbringing and circumstances.

Now at the beginning of new school year or going to the kindergarten for the first time, it can be quite challenging for some kids to be comfortable with new people.

Here are few tips how you can help your child to make new friends:

1. Examine your own thoughts, words and actions!

However strange it may sound, it all starts with you. How do you behave with strangers? What are you saying abut other people? How do you describe other kids? Are they adorable little creatures or those awful dirty screaming punks?

When you relate to others with negative words and even frightening your child, he will certainly feel insecure around new people. If they will be nice to him, he might even feel that he is betraying you if he is to return the kindness.

If you act reserved and going away from other people it’s great probability that your kid will act the same way.

2. Take it slow

Sometimes the kids are naturally shy and need some more time, even if you are very outspoken and open. In this case, keep your positive attitude, as it can help a lot. Approach other kids and communicate with them, making sure your kid see that it’s safe and that it’s ok to talk and play with them.

Encourage interactions with other people but don’t push your kid to make friends. He might need some more time. Allow him enough time and space to get comfortable with others. Maybe you can invite some families over your house for some ice-cream or lemonade. It will be much easier for your kid dealing with strangers in  familiar environment.

3. Keep it safe!

Even though most people are nice and friendly, there are some who are not. Let your kid know about dangers and how to react when faced with them. It is important not to scare or even threaten your kid. Explain differnet, possibly hazardous situations in simple and neutral terms.

How do you help your child when meeting new people and making new friends? Please share your thoughts and comme