Presidents Day - Let’s Not Forget to Honor the Big Three
February 29, 2008
Presidents Day - Let’s Not Forget to Honor the Big Three
by: Rev Michael Bresciani
Commerce was never meant to be at odds with congress or even juxtaposed with it. But Presidents Day, it seems, like other special holidays has gone the way of all flesh. Even as a boy I remember questioning how the Birth of a Savior could be overtaken by the notion of a fat little benevolent man who comes bearing gifts. How did the celebration of a risen Savior get replaced with a candy egg bearing bunny? How are the hopes of a new year brought in by ending the old one in a drunken stupor? These questions don’t need to be answered as much as pondered. The answers are largely understood, knowing how to back out of our clearly cuckoo behavior is not.
Would George Washington be glad to know that we have found a way to honor his work in the founding of this country by making deals on an invention he could not have imagined in his own time? Perhaps he might be let down by the fact that Lincoln at least got a car named after him. But where is the new Dodge George Washington four wheel drive SUV?
Teach Your Children How To Resolve Conflict Without Using Anger Or Power
February 29, 2008
Teaching kids to deal with conflict effectively and peacefully is perhaps the biggest challenge facing adults today. Children’s disagreements both at home and at school can be noisy, physical and psychologically hurtful. The approach to conflict resolution learned and practised in childhood often stays for life.
Conflict is part of daily living. Effective people resolve conflict in ways that protect relationships, honour feelings and lead to a resolution. They neither avoid conflict nor do they use power to dominate others or win conflict.
It is useful for parents to provide a process for children to resolve individual differences peacefully and effectively. When two children have a disagreement that is upsetting to one or either then they may need adult assistance to resolve the conflict. One process that is both easy to learn and highly effective is the Face-Up conflict resolution process that is a variation on some common processes in use.
In the Face-up process children face each other and maintain eye contact. This helps for greater openness and understanding. It generally requires an adult to be present as a third party so parents may need to stick around to make sure it works effectively.
Breastfeeding A Baby
February 28, 2008
Breastfeeding Your Baby..
Everyone tells you that breastfeeding is best - but why?
- It contains all the nutrients baby will need.
- Breast milk contains antibodies which help baby to fight infections.
- It is more digestible, so baby is less likely to suffer from diarrhea or other stomach upsets.
Breastfeeding is good for mom too.
- It burns off about 500 calories a day by using your body’s fat which was put on to help you breastfeed.
- Breastfeeding triggers the retraction of the womb.
It’s also free! When you think of how much diapers are going to cost, don’t turn down a freebie!
How Do I Do It?
Your baby is born with a ’sucking reflex’ which is especially strong in the first few minutes of life.
Teach Children The Skills Of Optimism
February 27, 2008
Optimists do better academically, socially and enjoy better health than pessimists.
Helping your child look on the bright side is a significant life skill to develop. When children think that can succeed they are more likely to give things a try. In other word, if they think THEY CAN, THEY WILL.
Optimists look at the flip side of negative events for some good, some hope and some reason to be positive. It means having a strong self-belief and confidence to deal with situations.
Experts in the area of optimism agree that there are five building blocks of optimism:
1. Having a go and persisting 2. Practising skills 3. Coming to terms with success and failure 4. Planning for the future 5. Having the belief and confidence to try again
Importantly, these building blocks link optimism with competence so when children experience success they are more likely to believe that they can achieve and have more success.
Some children are natural optimists. They are born with optimistic temperaments and have natural dispositions to deal with challenges and problems. Others expect the worst and tend to see catastrophes where really small challenges exist.
Who Are You When the Professional In You Meets Baby?
February 26, 2008
Are you a professional?
Notice how the questions differs from, “Do you have a profession?”
To enter a profession, you invested an enormous amount of time, energy and money. Then you put great effort into earning the respect of clients and colleagues. Now you continually sharpen and update your professional skills.
Your profession has become a major part of your identity. Your profession is a key source — maybe even the main source — of meaning and purpose in your life. You feel good when others affirm your professional status and skills.
Your professional role is so woven into the fiber of your being that your don’t merely HAVE a profession. You ARE a professional.
All well and good.
Your professional identity can bolster your integrity when you’re facing difficult clients or temptations to cut corners. You can take pride in the high standards you set for yourself.
At the same time, your professional identity is only one part of you.
Overwork can unduly inflate the “professional” part of your ID equation. In Work to Live (The Berkley Publishing Group, 2003), author Joe Robinson notes that a job can become “the tail that wags the dog.”
Eye-Opening Questions for Working Parents to Ask
February 25, 2008
I remember watching my 18-month-old son eat a big frosted cookie while I was carrying him out of the bakery. I asked him, "Can you give mommy a bite?" He leaned over and gently bit me on the cheek.
Kids take things so literally. What misconceptions and concerns might your child have about their working parent?
An in-depth study was done through the Families and Work Institute, to find out what children want from their working parents. Wouldn’t you think the study would show that kids want more time with working parents above all else? Surprise. They want their working parents to be less stressed. That’s right. Less stressed. It makes sense. Doesn’t it? Think of how you feel after spending time with stressed-out people.
Balancing the needs of work and family isn’t easy. It takes skill, planning, and a lot of positive communication. Even then, it’s easy to get stressed by time constraints and conflicting demands, especially around the holidays.
Try asking your kids these eight questions. Their answers might surprise you.
The Muffed Dance
February 24, 2008
Teri was 5. As younger siblings do, she looked up to her older sister, the dancer, in a big way. Sara was 4 years older and was excelling in ballet, tap and jazz.
So we enrolled Teri in the same dance school and she really seemed to enjoy the lessons and her new friends. She was now, of course, a dancer, like her sister. And Teri very much looked forward to the climax of her first dance season, the year-end dance recital this school put on.
If you’ve ever been a dance parent, you of course realize that the obligation is quite large. Aside from the weekly lessons, scheduled on different days in our case, there is the extra investment of time and money preparing for the ‘big event’ - extra lessons and rehearsals, fittings for the completely different head-to-toe costume required for each dance number and a parents meeting for each dancer to make sure everyone was on the same stage come recital night. Baseball parents have it easy!
As fate would have it, Teri had surgery to lengthen her heel cord a few weeks prior to her dancing debut. But that didn’t stop her from lugging around the heavy cast trying keep up with the other performers. That’s my girl!
A History of Baby Names
February 24, 2008
The history of names is so ancient that no one know quite where it began. Oral and written history both profess people having names. Earlier names seem to have some sort of meaning, usually descriptive. In contrast, today’s names are usually given based upon their popularity or pleasing sounds.
Early in prehistory, descriptive names were used continuously. Eventually, a collection of names were formed that identified that particular culture. Today, the meanings of many names are not known, due to the aging history of a name. As time goes on, languages change, and words that formed the original name are often unrecognizable.
The rise in Christianity transformed the history of names. Christians were encouraged to name their children after saints and martyrs of the church. Because of this influence, we now see names such as Mary, Martha, Joseph, James, Mark, Paul, and John prominent among many cultures. These names were spread by early missionaries throughout Europe.
By the Middle Ages, Christian names were seen predominantly. Each culture had its collection of names, which were a combination of native and early Christian names. However, the naming pools continued to evolve. Modern names often bear little resemblance of their predecessors. Surprisingly, the early Christian names changed very little in comparison.
Break it up, Break it Down: Paragraphing Strategies for College Essays
February 23, 2008
Some of us fill a page with a wall of words, with no paragraph indentations, no transitions, and no clearly defined topic sentences. Some of us have the appropriate indentations, but within each paragraph our sentences are out of order. Francis Christensen [1] devised a brilliant trick for paragraphing, one you can use at (and not before) the revising stage:
First, let’s imagine we are creating a couple of “outlines” for paragraphs about places in the world. [2] Fill in the blanks for the two paragraphs below, by pretending each word or phrase is a sentence, with the first word (1) the topic sentence:
(1) WORLD
…..(2) COUNTRY___USA______ (2) COUNTRY____________
……..(3) CITY___San Francisco__ (3) CITY_____________
……….(4) STREET__Haight______ (4) STREET___________
………….(5) BUSINESS_Amoeba Music_ (5) BUSINESS______
For this paragraph, we can see how each entry (sentence) refers back to (1), but is also a more specific reference to the place directly before it. So the sequence is tight/orderly.
But what if we tried to put another (2) next in this sequence, after the (5)? Would bringing in another country in the city, on the street, and at the business there work logically for our reader? Or would it throw our reader?
Kids and Sports: Fundamentals First
February 22, 2008
Would you hand a child calculus problems once she was able to count to ten? A geometry text when he began to recognize shapes? War and Peace as soon as she could recite her ABCs? Of course not! Not only is it preposterous to have such expectations of a child, but also it sets up the child for failure - and, most likely, a dread of and distaste for calculus, geometry, and reading.
Yet all too many children are enrolled in gymnastics, karate, dance classes, and organized sports before they’ve mastered such basic movements as bending and stretching, walking with correct posture, and bouncing and catching a ball. How is that significantly different from expecting a child who’s barely learned to speak to recite the Declaration of Independence - for an audience, no less?
The fact that a little one can walk doesn’t necessarily mean he’s ready to successfully - or fearlessly - walk a balance beam. Because a toddler is flexible enough to get her big toe into her mouth, that doesn’t mean she’s ready for ballet’s pliés and relevés. Even if a five-year-old can run circles around you, it doesn’t mean he’s prepared to simultaneously run and dribble a ball in a fast-paced game of soccer. And how much sense does it make to enroll an eight-year-old in competitive softball while she’s still demonstrating an improper throwing form?
