10 Ways to Raise a Good Kid

1)  Model Compassion
Compassion means identifying and sympathizing with others' emotions and needs. Help your child see what it means to be compassionate. Volunteer to help those in need. Open doors for others. If you see your child doing or saying something hurtful, ask him, "How do you think that made him feel? How would you feel if the situation were reversed?"

2)  Take a Walk in Another Person's Shoes
Empathy means to feel what others are experiencing. Understanding others' joy and suffering helps us care for them. Help your child understand what others are going through. As you read books and watch movies together, ask him what he thinks various characters are feeling and thinking.

3)  Show Tolerance and Respect Differences
Tolerance allows us to understand and accept different cultures, beliefs and points of view. Be open to differences and teach your child to celebrate diversity. If your child comments on someone dressing, explain that people often wear clothes that reflect their culture or home country.

4)  Be a Person of Your Word
Honesty means telling the truth to others and ourselves. Owning up to our mistakes and admitting the truth can help others. Demonstrate honesty for your child by practicing it yourself. Discuss what honesty is and what honesty is not. Teach him that honesty should be practiced with kindness. Tell your child to avoid saying something mean even if he thinks it's the truth.

5)  Promote Fairness & Equality
Fairness means equal treatment and opportunity. Standing up for others' rights and playing by the rules shows respect and responsibility. Talk to your child about how he thinks fairness is demonstrated in a family, with friends and in a community. Ask him, "Have you ever seen someone be treated unfairly? What did you do?"

6)  Be Kind to Yourself and Others
Self-respect is earned by showing compassion, honesty, fairness and humility towards others and oneself. Boost your child's confidence by praising his good qualities. Ask him, "What does it mean to respect yourself? How do you show respect for yourself?"

7)  Build Character by Being Responsible
Responsibility means taking ownership of one's behavior and actions. Help your child understand how he has control over his actions. Discuss examples of how his actions influence what happens next. Explain that growing up means taking responsibility by helping around the house and taking care of siblings.

8)  Encourage Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is practicing the control to create and follow through with a plan. This means developing the patience to deal with emotions in a healthy way and delay gratification (for instance, finishing up homework before playing outside). Help your child set and reach realistic goals: Break larger tasks into smaller parts, then encourage him to pick a task and set a deadline.

9)  Encourage Good Judgement
Good judgment requires careful decision making. Remind your child to think about the consequences of his actions, reason through feelings and facts, and consider impulses before acting on them. Discuss difference scenarios with your child and brainstorm what the best course of action would be in each situation. ("If your friend asked to copy your homework, what would you do?")

10)  Do the Civic Duty
A responsible citizen cares for his community and actively works to help the greater good. Model good citizenship to your child by spending time in his classroom, volunteering with the elderly, donating items for those in need and voting in local elections.


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How to Let Go of Hyperparenting and Learn to Relax With Your Kids

If you’re a hyperparent, you might not even know it — we parents tend to be in denial about that sort of thing. But if you are, you might want to learn to relax — for your kids’ sake, and for yours.

Hyperparents are spotted when they are trying to educate their child from the womb, and expose them to the most intellectually stimulating music and art and literature before the kid can crawl. They obsess over everything, from whether the child is learning fast enough to how safe every single thing is to every little scrape and bruise. They are overprotective, overbearing, overwhelming to the child.

Here are some ideas to help you relax, help your child feel freer and less controlled and be more able to explore and learn on their own, and possibly result in a better relationship with your child and a happier child overall.

1. When you get angry, pick them up and hug them. Instead of scolding or spanking or time outs or other controlling methods, try love. It’s a much better response, and you’re teaching your child through your actions rather than your words.

2. Make this your mantra: treat them with kindness, treat them with respect. Seems simple, but it’s surprising how little respect we give to kids, because they’re kids.

3. Drop your expectations of the child. Often parents have high hopes of the child doing well academically, or in sports, or of becoming a professional, when that’s not what the child wants. Or the parent hopes the child will be a certain type of person, and tries to steer the child toward that — a mild, kind child, or a bright, cheerful child, or a studious, hard-working child — but that’s not who the child is. Drop these expectations, and celebrate the child, as he is.

4. Let them play, let them explore. Stop being so overprotective. Allow kids to be kids. Let them run around outside, ride a bike, explore nature, play with fire. Teach them, of course, about safety and dangers, but let them be kids.

5. Say yes, or some version of yes. Instead of saying no. Often parents have an instinct to say no. But this is controlling and stressful, to both child and parent. Stop trying to control the child, and give him some freedom. That doesn’t mean you can say yes all the time, because you have needs too, but it does mean you can say “Yes, we can do that … but perhaps later, when I’m done with what I have to do now.”

6. Stop trying to overeducate, and get out of the way. Parents try to impart all kinds of knowledge on kids. So do schools. But kids learn naturally, without us. Get out of the way, stop trying to force the kid to learn what you think he needs to learn. Encourage him to explore, and read, and figure stuff out. Get him excited about things. When he’s excited about something, he’ll learn. When you force it on him, he’ll do what he’s forced to do, but not learn much other than you’re controlling.
  
7. Just focus on making the next interaction with them positive. Many of these changes are difficult to make for parents, as we have deeply ingrained habits, stemming from our own childhood. So just focus on the next interaction. Just try to make the next one a good one. Don’t worry about when you screw up — just apologize if you’ve broken a trust, and move on.

8. Take a moment to pause, and see things from your child’s perspective. If you get angry, it’s because you’re only seeing things from your perspective. The child has a completely different view of things, and if you can understand that view, you won’t be mad at the child. You’ll try to make things better for him.
  
9. If the kid is “acting up”, try to figure out why, and meet that need. Often it’s a need for freedom, or attention, or love, or to be in control of his own life. Figure out what that need is, and find a more productive way to meet it.

10. The kid is already perfect as he is. You don’t need to change him. You don’t need to mold him into the perfect person. He’s already perfect, just as he is.

And now, relax. Enjoy every moment with your child, because they are too few, too impermanent. Cherish this time with them, and make every moment a good one. You’ll never regret those moments of happiness, those moments when you said yes, when you let your child play, when you stopped controlling and started loving.






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7 Habits of Highly Successful Teens

For teens, life is not a playground, it's a jungle. And, being the parent of a teenager isn't any walk in the park, either. How will they deal with peer pressure? Motivation? Success or lack thereof? The life of a teenager is full of tough issues and life-changing decisions. As a parent, you are responsible to help them learn the principles and ethics that will help them to reach their goals and live a successful life.

While it's all well and good to tell kids how to live their lives, "teens watch what you do more than they listen to what you say". So practice what you preach. Your example can be very influential. Here are the seven habits, and some ideas for helping your teen understand and apply them:

Be Proactive
Being proactive is the key to unlocking the other habits. Help your teens take control and responsibility for their life. Proactive people understand that they are responsible for their own happiness or unhappiness. They don't blame others for their own actions or feelings.

Begin With the End in Mind
If teens aren't clear about where they want to end up in life, about their values, goals, and what they stand for, they will wander, waste time, and be tossed to and fro by the opinions of others. Help your teen create a personal mission statement which will act as a road map and direct and guide his decision-making process.

Put First Things First
This habit helps teens prioritize and manage their time so that they focus on and complete the most important things in their lives. Putting first things first also means learning to overcome fears and being strong during difficult times. It's living life according to what matters most.

Think Win-Win
Teens can learn to foster the belief that it is possible to create an atmosphere of win-win in every relationship. This habit encourages the idea that in any given discussion or situation both parties can arrive at a mutually beneficial solution. Your teen will learn to celebrate the accomplishments of others instead of being threatened by them. 

Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
Because most people don't listen very well, one of the great frustrations in life is that many don't feel understood. This habit will ensure your teen learns the most important communication skill there is: active listening.

Synergize
Synergy is achieved when two or more people work together to create something better than either could alone. Through this habit, teens learn it doesn't have to be "your way" or "my way" but rather a better way, a higher way. Synergy allows teens to value differences and better appreciate others.

Sharpen the Saw
Teens should never get too busy living to take time to renew themselves. When a teen "sharpens the saw" he is keeping his personal self sharp so that he can better deal with life. It means regularly renewing and strengthening the four key dimensions of life – body, brain, heart, and soul. hostgator discount HyperSmash

Girl Brain, Boy Brain—What's the Difference?

1) Bustling Brains 
Fact: Girls' brains have 15 to 20% more activity.
Male and female brains are wired differently. The male brain distributes its activity into less parts than the female brain. Different sections of the female brain can simultaneously work together in ways that the male brain cannot.


2) Feeling Fibers 
Fact: Females have more nerve fibers in their skin than males.
What does this mean? Males are less sensitive to pain than females. A boy's body and brain generally feels less pain at any given moment than a girl's.

3) Gray and White Matter: It Matters! 
Fact: Boys' brains have more gray matter, and girls' brains have more white matter.
Gray matter concentrates brain activity into a single area of the brain. White matter connects brain activity to different parts of the brain, including emotion centers.


4) On/Off Button 
Fact: Boys' brains enter into a rest state more often each day.
Boys and girls have different ways of paying attention, finishing tasks, relaxing, experiencing emotions and even talking to others.


5) Spatial Sernse 
Fact: Boys' brains have more neural centers in the right hemisphere (which is involved in spatial reasoning).
Males tend to relate to others by using objects (such as playing with balls, darts, paint guns and rocks)

6) Structural Separateness 
Fact: Since boys' and girls' brains are designed differently, boys and girls tend to behave differently.
Boys and girls process information in different parts of their brains. Boys tend to relate to others with more physical and aggressive activity.


7) Retaining Collections 
Fact: The hippocampus, the memory center of the brain, is more active in girls.
Females are more adept at remembering emotional and relational experiences. These recollections help girls to multitask in daily life.


8) Lobe Linkages 
Fact: Female brain lobes are more active. Memories and sensations are more connected to each other in a female brain. Girls are more apt to connect their experiences to feelings, memories and senses.



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