How are your days, after you’ve managed to get your eyes to stay open? Are you doing what you love, and do you love what you’re doing? Do you feel successful, empowered, fulfilled?

Goal-setting is the key to a successful life. You can’t “get there” if you don’t know where “there” is!

Another part of goal-setting, though, is making positive affirmations. We all have enough negativity in our lives. Our parents and relatives may have started it, unknowingly, by telling us what we can’t do. Some of it was important – “you can’t run across the street without holding a grown-up’s hand.” Some of it was crippling – “you can’t do that, that’s absurd, who ever heard of a grown person doing that for a living!” Think carefully before you speak to your child. Allow him the pleasure of his dreams!

Being a positive person is as simple as deciding that you want to be a positive person. Whenever you feel a negative thought pop into your head, stop yourself! Consciously change your negative thought to a positive one. Then say three or four positive things in a row, and don’t forget to grin. Not just a wimpy little lift the corner of your lip half-smirk, but a big, wide, show-all-your teeth grin! Learn to embrace life, and to enjoy it! Your children will reap the benefits. They live by your example. They will learn to be positive thinkers. They will learn to set goals and not only achieve them, but far surpass them!

If you don’t think you know how to be positive, here is a little four-year-old girl to teach you. The first words she says are, “I can be a SARK.” There was a lot of discussion on the internet about what she meant by that. Some thought she was being imaginative, and saying she could be a “shark”, but her speech is actually very clear. I think she meant to say, “I can be a SARK.” SARK, or Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, is an author of several uplifting, positive thinking, self-empowering books for children and adults, including “Make Your Creative Dreams Real.”

So, watch this adorable video. Read great books, and fill your life with uplifting, encouraging, positive friends. Limit the time you spend around the nay-sayers in your life, for they will only drag you down. You owe it to yourself to live life fully and abundantly.

Great books to read:
The Holy Bible
Make Your Creative Dreams Real
Succulent Wild Woman
SARK’s Journal and PlayBook
The Secret
See You At the Top

A great website, to learn more about setting goals and achieving them:
www.goalsmentor.com

Dusting Off Your Dreams
by Shanna Beaman

When your children nap or start kindergarten, take some time for yourself to dust off your dreams.

As a mother or a father, giving 100% of yourself to your family is natural and you love and enjoy every minute of it. There does come a time when you have time to think about doing something for yourself, your future, and the future of your family.

What are your goals and dreams? What do you aspire to or hope for? Goals help turn these “wishes” into reality. You can have what you desire with some planning and that is what goal setting is all about. Goal setting gives you the necessary confidence you need to know that you can have anything in life that you want.

What is a goal?

Why should you set goals?

Goals give you direction; they give you a road map. You can’t arrive at a specific destination if you don’t know where you are going. When you know where you are going you will stop driving around in circles and head straight for your destination.

Goals create enthusiasm. Enthusiasm comes from within and when you have a goal, you have a purpose. Every day when you awaken you are excited to get up because you know where you are going and you are getting closer to reaching your dreams!

Goals make you happy. Your mind is alive because it has something encouraging to focus on. Goals help eliminate negative thoughts and discontentment.

Goals help you overcome obstacles. Obstacles are what you see when you take your sites off your goals, so if you don’t have goals, you’re forced to focus on obstacles.

Goals give you discipline. Goals make you mind yourself. Instead of just going through your everyday actions, now you will be asking yourself “Is this action taking me closer to or farther away from my goals?”

Goals give you confidence. When you have clearly defined and written goals, you move toward those goals with unshakable confidence. You don’t let anything get in your way.

If goals are such a great thing then why don’t more people set them? The only reasons that seem reasonable are that people don’t know how and/or they just don’t understand the importance of setting goals.

How do you set goals?

You write them down using these key factors:

• Your goals must be written in a present, positive state as if you have already achieved your goal.
• Your goal must be measurable, attainable and tangible.
• You must have a deadline, a timeframe, in place for when you will reach that goal.
• You must list the obstacles and the solutions to overcome the obstacles you may encounter.
• You must reward yourself when you reach predetermined milestones or when you reach your goal.

It is imperative that your goals incorporate these factors in order to be effective.

Be sure you set goals in every area of your life. A balanced life is a good life. The areas in which to set goals for are:

• Physical and health
• Financial
• Family and relationship
• Spiritual
• Educational and mental

Get serious about doing something for yourself. Writing down your goals and having a purpose to achieve your goals will benefit not only you, but your family and others around you.

Shanna Beaman

For more information on setting goals, visit: www.goalsmentor.com

Photo Credits:
Reaching the top: D. Sharon Pruit
I made it! D. Sharon Pruit

We teach our children not to talk to strangers, and then, all of a sudden, because of something called “the Family Reunion”, that is exactly what we want our kids to do! The young child is often timid around strangers, even when those strangers are actually relatives that you just don’t get to see very often. So how can you help your child feel comfortable around his relatives, without forcing him to give hugs and kisses to such strange people?

There are several steps you can take, to make sure that everyone enjoys the reunion, create some wonderful memories, and forge some new friendships for your child that may last a lifetime.

The first step is to introduce your relatives using a photo album. Take large, clear pictures of each relative, alone. Using a magnetic photo album, insert copies of the pictures into the pages, along with large, clear labels of each name. Magnetic albums are not good for your photographs. Over time, the colors will fade. For albums that you want to keep, you’ll need to look for “archival quality” paper, that is acid-free and lignen-free. But for a toddler’s picture book, nothing quite holds up like a sturdy magnetic album. That’s why you’ll make duplicate copies of your photos. One to put in your child’s magnetic picture book, and another to save.

This magnetic album is your child’s. Let him look through the pictures often. Read the names aloud to him. Ask him to tell the names back to you. When that relative calls on the phone, get the album out, and point to the right picture. Let the relative say “hi” to your young child on the phone, and encourage him to say something back. When you go through the book again, tell him short stories about each relative. Some little thing that may help him put names to faces. Like, “this is Great-Grandma Biggers. She likes to paint, and has a swimming pool at her house. This is your Great Aunt Liesa, she lives on a farm with lots of cows.” The stories can get longer as your child’s attention increases. The idea is to make that person seem real, so when your child meets them in person, they won’t be total strangers.

Bring the album with you to the reunion. Let your child make a game of finding each relative in his book among the group that has gathered.

Finally, plan some activities in advance. You can ask every person attending the reunion to come up with one child-activity and one adult-activity. Getting together and talking may be exciting for the old folks, but the young ones will be bored to tears. Make sure they have fun, and they will want to come again!

At one of our family reunions, one aunt brought a gallon of bubbles solution and a variety of wands and blowers. There were twelve young children there, who absolutely loved this simple activity. They took turns blowing bubbles and catching them, chasing the bubbles, and trying to catch them on their tongues. Another organized activity was a simple scavenger hunt. Later, someone brought out paper and paint, and yet another got them all in a circle for a game of duck-duck-goose. Nothing was difficult, but without pre-planning, it might have been challenging to come up with materials and games on the spur of the moment.

Don’t forget to keep your child somewhat on his schedule, even when on vacation. If he normally takes a two hour nap, and you don’t have him take a nap at all, you may be setting him up for a major tantrum when he gets over-tired. Nothing spoils the fun quite like a two-year-old acting like a two-year-old, and a bunch of older relatives giving you unwanted advice on how they never let their kids get away with that kind of behavior.

Finally, if there are some touchy subjects that you really don’t want to talk about at the reunion, you might list them in the invitations in advance. Otherwise, try to think of all the annoying questions that really push your buttons, and think how you might answer them without causing conflict. Is there one relative that always brings up spanking? How do you usually respond to them? Is there a better way to handle that then what you’ve tried in the past?

When my children were young, my husband and I decided to homeschool them. Unfortunately, many of our relatives were public school teachers! As you can imagine, there might have been a lot of conflict at our get-togethers, but there wasn’t. My husband and I informed everyone in advance of our decision, and why. Then we went ahead and did it. We’d already earned the reputation for being a little “odd” because we didn’t let our children watch cartoons. I felt that most cartoons (except Tom and Jerry) were violent, crude, scary, or perpetuating bratty behavior that we did not allow. So I had been censoring their television viewing habits for years before the homeschooling issue came up. At first, I remember hearing some relatives remark that cartoons were harmless, but a couple of years later they noticed how well-behaved and creative and intelligent our children were. Then when they heard someone else disparage children’s television programming, I heard those same relatives inform them proudly how we never let our children watch that stuff!

Family reunions can be a wonderful way to build relationships. They can be a celebration of life, as we honor our elders and enjoy the newest generation. I have heard it said that the two most important things you can give your child are roots and wings. Roots, to know where he came from, and the freedom to fly from the nest when he’s ready. So enjoy your roots! And don’t forget to take some pictures!

Further Reading:
Family Secrets: The Path to Self-Acceptance and Reunion
Great Games: 175 Games and Activities for Families, Groups, and Children
The Berenstain Bears Family Reunion

Related Articles:
Building Family Through Tradition
Traveling with Tots
The Family Meal

Photo Credits:
Cousins:http://www.flickr.com/photos/philscoville/ / CC BY 2.0
Great Grandma with book:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomeppy/ / CC BY 2.0
Bubbles:http://www.flickr.com/photos/slollo/ / CC BY 2.0
Kissing Cousins:http://www.flickr.com/photos/makelessnoise/ / CC BY 2.0

When I think of being ninety, I’m not usually so enthusiastic. I think of myself being old, infirm, and maybe a burden to others. I picture the forgotten generation drooling away in nursing homes wearing disposable underwear. It’s not a bright future at all. But then along comes someone – two someones – a couple who have been married for more than six decades, to show me that my future has not yet been written! It will be whatever I make of it.

Marlow and Frances Cowan believe that the secret to their longevity is love, laughter and the Lord. I encourage you to watch their performance. It won’t take long. And I bet you won’t be able to keep from smiling! By embedding this darling video to my webpage, I’ll be able to watch it again, whenever I feel the need of a happy-gram.

Find what makes you happy. Share all your love. Live every day as if it might be your last. Then when you are old, you will have no regrets… only wonderful memories.
Lorelei

Young children get so engrossed in their activity, that they do not want to quit just because you say so. It doesn’t matter if they’re playing in the sandbox, coloring quietly, or throwing toys all around the room. If they are busy, and you tell them to stop, they are likely to pitch a fit. Depending on their basic temperament, they may merely sulk a bit, or they could wind up on the floor, kicking and screaming. So, how can you teach them that this is not appropriate behavior, without feeling like you’d like to join them on the floor for a tantrum of your own?

One method that works for many parents is the count-down method. This is more of a tantrum-avoidance technique than teaching control, but when it comes to a two- or three-year-old, it can be a real life-saver. Very simply put, you start counting down. But not like you are counting from ten to one to keep your own temper. Rather, you give your child several warnings that his activity is going to be ending soon.

For instance, the child is playing, making a great mess, but it is nearly time for clean-up, lunch, and nap. If you just tell him to pick up, you can be certain he’s going to balk. Instead, you announce, when you are certain he is looking at you and hears you, that he has five more minutes before clean up time. Then, after a bit of time, you tell him he has four more minutes, then three more minutes, etc, until it is clean-up time. He still might try to argue, but he won’t be as out-of-control as he would be if you just announced clean-up in the middle of his fun.

Young children don’t understand time. When you tell him he has five more minutes, it doesn’t really matter if you give him five minutes, two minutes, or fifteen minutes. You don’t need to set a timer, unless you really only have five minutes to allow him. What you are doing, is giving him clues, alerting him to the schedule, and allowing him time to prepare for the next event.

I use this at the children’s library with a lot of success. Our children’s library has a lot of toys. Young moms love to meet there, to let their preschoolers and toddlers interact, while they visit quietly. It has house-keeping toys, puzzles, blocks, trucks, trains, play food, a plastic house, and much more, besides shelves of books, and also a sturdy computer with a child’s sized keyboard and mouse. My granddaughter loves to go there, and used to throw a tantrum when it was time to go. Now, I let her know that she has five more minutes, and then we’ll be leaving. When the count-down has ended, she picks up the toys she was playing with so the librarian will reward her with a sticker, and she races me to the elevator so she can push the buttons. She knows we’ll be back next week. No more tantrums in the library.

I use this technique at nap time, too. I lay down with her on my big, queen-sized bed. She has several books, and I take a romance novel. I read two books to her, then I let her look at her books, while I read. After a few minutes, I give her the five minute count-down, then we both put up our books. She rarely cries at nap time now. She usually hands me her books, rolls over and goes to sleep. Sometimes I may have to rub her back for a bit, but naptimes are not the major battles we once had.

You can use this technique when it’s almost time to leave McDonald’s playland, or time to finish eating supper if your child is a food dawdler. You can count-down when it’s nearly time to leave the sandbox, to take a bath, to go anywhere, to leave anywhere – any time your child needs to transition from one activity to the next.

After you have used this technique for a year, your child may actually be ready to learn to tell time. Then you can reward him with his own watch, and let him tell you when his five minutes are up! By then, hopefully, his tantrums will long have disappeared.

Other Resources:
The Happiest Toddler on the Block: How to Eliminate Tantrums
Raising Your Spirited Child, revised edition
Ten Days to a Less Defiant Child, the Breakthrough Program

Related Articles:
Why Two Year Olds Have Tantrums
Common Bedtime Mistakes Parents Make
Hassle-Free Bed Time

Photo Credits:
Tantrum:http://www.flickr.com/photos/citril/ / CC BY 2.0
Naptime Smile:http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/ / CC BY 2.0
Swinging:http://www.flickr.com/photos/phild41/ / CC BY 2.0

Don’t forget – if you subscribe, you will never miss another post again! Click the link at the right, and chose your preference for email or RSS feed.

Some parents are able to dispense with the pacifier when their baby is about six months old, but others find that their child really needs it to calm themselves, to be able to sleep, or get back to sleep after waking in the night. Some time between the ages of two and four, most children will give it up. The question,then, is how to help them through this painful process?

Here is one method that has worked for many families:

1. First, gather all the pacifiers you can find into one location. If your child is very dependent on them, you may find over a dozen in the car, your purse, the diaper bag, the crib, the toy box, and the silverware drawer. Make sure they are all clean. Because they are often wet and stored in dark places, they can be breeding grounds for bacteria. Now place the pile of pacifiers in a clear container in a prominent location. Perhaps a big, clear plastic jar on the kitchen counter.
2. Next, talk to your child about this. Tell him that he is growing, and soon he will not need a pacifier any more. Maybe you only spend a day on this step, or you might need to spend a week on it. Get some library books out on the topic of “growing up”. Help your child see that this is normal, that every body grows up. That it is okay to feel like a big boy sometimes, and still want to be held and rocked and kissed. Growing up does not have to be like going up a crowded escalator. Your child can take the stairs all by himself. Sometimes he’ll go up two steps, but then come back down one. Maybe he’ll run up three steps, but trip on the third one and want to sit there for a spell.
3. When your child is okay with the concept of “growing”, then you explain that every day he may have one pacifier, but it must stay in his crib. He can climb in his crib if he feels he really needs it. He may use it at nap time, and at bed time. But he may not take it out of his crib. And in the morning when he wakes up, HE will throw it in the trash. You will watch him do this, and make sure he doesn’t dig it back out! (Yuck!).
4. Gradually, the pile of pacifiers will diminish. As it gets smaller, praise your child often. Hold him a lot. Rock him. Comfort him. Sing to him. Don’t make him feel that he is losing your love and affection. All he is losing is something to suck. It may help, subconsciously at least, if you serve foods that require sucking. Don’t get him addicted to lolly pops! The pacifier is undoubtedly the lesser of those two evils! But you could make some frozen fruit-juice popsicles or put a straw in his glass of milk or juice.
5. Finally, the last day will come. He will throw away the last pacifier. Make it a party. Serve cake and ice cream and his favorite food for supper (assuming he has one). Take lots of pictures. Play a special game, and let him stay up just a little bit later than normal. Keep him busy all day. This would be a great day to spend at the park! You want to make sure that he is very tired at bed time, not over-tired and cranky.

Go through your regular bedtime routine, whatever that is. Often that means taking a bath, putting on clean pajamas and cuddling in the rocking chair to hear a story or two. Then put him to bed.

He might fuss a little. He might fuss a lot. Do not pick him back up. Do not bring him into your bed. You may go in his room, lay him down again if he is standing. Cover him and rub or pat his back. You may put on some soothing music. Reassure him that you love him.

Some children will cry for a day or two, but rarely longer. Then get the pacifier-be-gone photos developed and add them to your child’s scrapbook or album. You’ve done it!

If your child continues to have problems sleeping, you may want to get additional information. Here are two books on getting children to sleep. I haven’t yet read either of them, but I read all of the parent reviews posted, and they gave the books a five-star rating. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and The No-Cry Sleep Solution

Related Articles:
In Praise of Pacifiers
Why Two-Year-Olds Have Tantrums
Hassle-Free Bedtime

Photo Credits:
Upper:http://www.flickr.com/photos/chimothy27/ / CC BY 2.0
Lower:http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidanmorgan/ / CC BY 2.0