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Showing posts from May, 2014

Preparing Your Child to Make Good Choices in Mates

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I’m having great difficulty blocking out the news of another tragedy where senseless killings were carried out in Isla Vista, California. Another 20-something male decided to end his life, and took six innocent young people with him.  Books for Teens to Help Them Grow What makes this incident more difficult for me is the fear I feel for my 16-year-old who is starting to date. She is going to meet young men and develop relationships. But what if she rebuffs a young man who feels like the California killer did, alienated and rejected to the point where he decides that death is the appropriate punishment.  Domestic violence, bullying, and teen dating violence are very serious issues that too many people feel too apprehensive and uncomfortable talking about. But how can we stop these incidents? We certainly can’t know or make accusations about someone else’s mental stability, and we certainly can’t lock up our teens and young adults to keep them from meeting the wrong people. Wha

The Good and the Bad of Entrepreneurship

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Image courtesy of Stuart Miles and FreeDigitalPhotos.net Recently, I was asked what I learned along the way of building my nontraditional company, Cooperative Kids.  The writer was working on a piece on entrepreneurship and wanted to know if I had learned good things or bad things while growing my business.  Here is what I told her. I developed a love for helping parents with challenging behavior because of my own children. After taking a parenting class in 1994, I began to notice that my home was becoming more peaceful and my kids were becoming more cooperative.  All because of what I learned in the parenting class on becoming more proactive to the situations that tended to be more stressful with three kids.  I also learned to parent with little or no speaking. Get my entrepreneur book to show you how it's done I started my own parent education business as an affiliate of a larger organization and I did this all while being employed full time in Corporate America.

How to Teach Kids to Care

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Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net and Bill LongShaw I hear parents complain that their kids don’t appreciate what they have. So much is available to our kids today that it’s hard for them to imagine being without. Then when they push their parents for more, it triggers a feeling of resentment for the parents as they think about all they've done and provided for their kids so far. My own kids occasionally threw in the, “All my friends have an (insert anyone of these here: iPhone, TV, Xbox, Six Flags pass, etc.), why can’t I have one?” It’s common for them to think that every other child has what they want, even though it may not be true. Remain calm when they make these claims and stand firm in your position to not cave at their demands. Instead of reminding your children of all that you’ve bought or done for them, let their cries for more stuff be your reminder to get them involved in something that gives to others. From food banks, to pet adoption groups, to the Salvation