Family MattersPractical Parenting Blog

Force of Habit

What we do on a regular basis, even with little things, becomes our future.

Yes, this is a bold statement, but it is true. The main challenge is that sometimes, we may not realize that what we have just done or said came out of habit. It is easy to see that we eat the same cereal for breakfast every day. That is a simple one to spot, as is driving the same way to work, choosing a certain style of clothes and the likes.

What is much harder to detect is a particular kind of thinking. Today, I want to talk about focused, persistent, determined thinking, as opposed to scattered, carried away, wishy-washy thinking.

We have many defining moments in life, but we do not always know that they are defining, because they simply add a little, or chip away gently, to the definition of who we are. Over time, however, these tiny changes in our self-definition become a whole different person than the one we could be otherwise.

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Handy Family Tips: Pre-Marinating

Being efficient is every parent’s dream. Time is a limited resource and the faster we do things, the more time we have left to spend with our kids. So when I meet “the girls” for an evening out, we always talk about household stuff and share ideas.

Making dinner is one particular task that takes lots of energy. I have heard many parents saying they come home at the end of a working day and start making dinner. As you know, if you do not buy fresh meat just before you cook it, you may need to take it out of the freezer and wait for it to thaw or spend valuable time to defrost it in the microwave or in tons of running water.

This post is part 2 of 24 in the series Handy Family Tips

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Just Kidding

Kids are very gullible. They love colors and sounds and quickly catch on to new trends and new celebrities. Being young, unfortunately, they do not notice to the messages being delivered straight into their little brains in bright color and pleasant sound.

Our 8-year-old daughter Noff brings home a kids’ magazine called Just Kidding. The name is great and so is some of the content, offering riddles, jokes and general information our kids proudly quote for us. Alas, the good stuff spans about 11 pages out of 48. All the rest is advertising, some of which is cleverly disguised as articles.

Ronit and I were pretty happy about this magazine at first, because our kids like to read, seemed to enjoy the contents and even benefited from having something to talk about at dinner time.

However, through some weird coincidence, one particular magazine lost its cover page and the bare contents found their way to our office desk, where we had a chance to examine them more closely.

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Handy Family Tips: Dishwasher

Last month, I visited my sisters and nephews. One of my sisters is in her late 30’s and the other is in her early 40’s and both became moms just last year. For years, they had lived on their own and managed a household perfectly, but when their babies arrived, they started dedicating most of their time to their “bundle of joy” and managing their house became a challenge.

Although it seem like a gradual progression from living on your own to living with a partner and then living with kids, the shift from managing a house as a couple to managing a house with kids is huge and can shake the most organized people just as it happened to my sisters.

As a parent, you probably remember yourself saying, “I don’t have a spare second to do the basic things anymore”. My younger sister was happy simply because I was with her baby so she could take a shower in the middle of the day. “Sometimes, I don’t have time to eat”, she said.

This post is part 1 of 24 in the series Handy Family Tips

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If I Were Santa Claus

If I were Santa Clause - presents under a Chritstmas tree

Before Christmas comes, I always think about kindness. Santa Claus is a very nice guy, don’t you think? He makes so many people happy and it is not only the kids, because what makes kids happy also makes their parents happy (in fact, to some extent, it even makes their parents kids again for a while).

Playing Santa Claus is a very good game for everyone, especially for kids, because it gives them the opportunity to enter the “Santa Club” in their mind and feel the joy of giving, even if it is just in thought. For older people, it is an exercise in financial freedom, very much like playing “If I were a millionaire” or “If I won the lottery”, only this game is all about giving to others and being kind.

I like this Santa game and find it uplifting and easy to play. I invite you to join in.

This post is part 28 of 48 in the series Make a List

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Who You Are Makes a Difference

A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in High School by telling them the difference each of them had made. She called each student to the front of the class, one at a time. First, she told each of them how they had made a difference to her, and the class. Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon, imprinted with gold letters, which read, “Who I Am Makes a Difference.”

Afterwards, the teacher decided to do a class project, to see what kind of impact recognition would have on a Community. She gave each student three more blue ribbons, and instructed them to go out and spread this acknowledgment ceremony. Then they were to follow up on the results, see who honored whom, and report to the class in about a week.

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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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Work-Life Imbalance

Every economic crisis brings to the work–life juggling act out of balance. The greater the economic crisis, the harder it is for families to maintain their lifestyle and values and therefore questions what work-life balance is.

Everywhere around the world what was considered proper work-life balance is no longer the same as it was 50 years ago. Whereas in the past, the working 9 to 5 seemed to be demanding, today, working 9 to 5 as a parent is a rare luxury.

Are you feeling some of this too?

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Better Parenting Skills

… The most surprising reason I got was from a father who was not from the school. He said, “I have a teen son and three weeks ago, I had a fight with him. It was such a big fight, I was willing to send him to a boarding school. That night, I met a friend of mine who is a teacher at this school and told her about what had happened. She looked at me and said, “You need the Ronit Treatment”, so I begged the principal to allow me to participate. I’m here for the Ronit Treatment”.

Everyone laughed.

“I’m an accountant and a contractor. I gave up a paid day in order to come here today, because my friend said it’s worth it,” he continued.

By saying this, the man raised the bar for all the participants in the room. I knew the level of expectation from the workshop was high and I was very happy about it, but this took things up another notch. If you have been reading my posts for a while, you know I believe that the more you expect to get, the more effort you put in and the more you will get in the end. These parents expected a lot and now they expected even more!

I asked the group to open their workbooks in page 2 …

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Responsible Parenting

When someone becomes a parent, it usually starts by being handed a small bundle. The bundle typically weighs around 3kg (6lbs), makes sweet sounds, looks cute and feels nice and warm. That moment feels so great, most parents list it high on their list of the greatest moments of their life.

Hidden inside that bundle, there is something much heavier, though. Nobody can see it – not the doctor, not the nurses and not the security guard that watches you as you leave the hospital with your new baby – but it is there. As a parent, you start feeling its burden pretty quickly. More often than not, as soon as you are back home and the door closes behind you.

One day, you left your home looking like a big balloon or helping one, but essentially being an independent person, and the next, you return being bound to a tiny helpless creature you must care for even when it sleeps, at the expense of your time, your energy, your comfortable old routine, all your other interests and even your relationships with your partner.

Man, that’s heavy!

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