Larson Institute of Self-Mastery » Parenting

How to Stay Happily Married With Kids

Guest — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 08:02:26 +0000

Guest author Bonnie Foshee

Keeping your marriage alive is very important for having a happy and healthy family. You need to work on your marriage as well as having family time. Do you know the happy marriage recipe?

Raising a family can be challenging and stressful at times. However, the common goals and emotional, financial, and physical investments made can be a common bond between husband and wife. One that compliments their marriage relationship.

Of course, like anything else worthwhile, maintaining a healthy husband and wife relationship with children underfoot takes effort. The following tips can help keep marital bliss alive:

Happy Marriage Recipe

Every happy marriage begins and ends with the same ingredient; the willingness to negotiate. The stumbling block in some relationships, however, is that while the husband was taught to take the upper hand, the wife may have been trained to cooperate. Marriage partners in an equal marriage need to define their husband wife role, to themselves and each other. This lays the groundwork for mutual respect; and the understanding that when there is a conflict, both parties must be ready to negotiate.

A Touch of Romance

Every bit as important as remaining best friends throughout married life, intimacy in marriage is vital. This includes emotional intimacy as well as sexual intimacy. Time alone together to share feelings is a must. An occasional romantic dinner or romantic weekend getaway can work wonders in bringing the two of you closer together and reducing stress. Go on a date with your spouse! And remember, intimacy doesn’t always have to lead to sex; nor should it. Time to just hold hands or cuddle is crucial for maintaining a close, happy relationship.

Rituals and Routines

A family ritual such as mom gets to sleep late every other Saturday morning while dad gets up with the kids, and visa versa, is a habit that can become a fun, meaningful ritual. And although having a daily routine sounds mundane, routines are essential for a happy, harmonious family life. For instance, weekly or monthly family activites, and a pizza and movie night every other week can be fun parts of a family routine. Agreeing upon rituals that support family values and a daily routine as a couple is another key to a happy marriage.

In Summary

The best advice I received was from my sister, “You have to work on your marriage. The children will grow up and move away. You still want to have a relationship with your spouse after they are gone.” Your relationship with your spouse has to come first if you are going to be a good parent. The children will be happier and more secure if they see you have a strong relationship. Besides, after your children grow up and move away, you don’t want to look at your spouse and wonder who this stranger is because you do not know each other anymore.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bonnie Foshee, Parenting Expert, Discover 11 Free Powerful Parenting Tips. If you need help with your marriage, go to Save My Marriage Today!

Father Daughter Relationships

Guest — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 05:19:06 +0000

Guest author Johnny Frost

All human relations needs some sort of effort from us to maintain them and nourish them. From all the relationships we have, family relations will be without question the toughest and at the same time the more important relationships we have in our lives. The reason that family relationships are often so difficult is the fact one can’t modify your family; you can’t simply resign and start over. We’ll have the same mom and dad, siblings, sons and daughters throughout our lifetime. This is the reason we ought to work to get the best connections with the family members.

From all the relationships in a family the one that is seen most neglected is the father daughter relationship; This is the main reason, we as dads have to give the most of our attention to our father daughter relationships.

The connection we have with our daughter will shape the way forward for our daughter’s life a lot (in many cases over the relation with her mother) that we can’t simply put aside this relationship.

Each and every father needs to work hard enough to get a relaxed and supportive relationship together with his daughter.

Studies demonstrate that women with an effective and healthy father daughter relationship tend to perform more effective in many aspects of life. Daughters who grew having a communicative, strong and supportive relation with their dads usually shine with regards to:

Self-confidence: these daughters are definitely more positive and self reliant. Preventing in this way many problems in life (from eating disorders to early pregnancy or abusive connections)
Academic: They have a tendency to do greater at college and after that they frequently have better jobs and incomes.
Setting long term objectives and achieving them: The women that grew up with a healthy Father Daughter relationship have a strong base so usually they shoot higher and achieve their targets

As a father I don’t really worry about the reason people overlook these facts. I just want to have the most effective father daughter relationship I can with my girls. That’s why I designed Father Daughter Relationships. I’m only a regular father that is blessed with a couple of daughters and I will make my best effort to develop the most excellent Father Daughter Relationships I can.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Johnny_Frost

Smart Parenting Tips

Guest — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 02:46:27 +0000

Guest author Charles Lloyd

Parenting tips can be found everywhere. You can read them in parenting books and also on the Internet. There are many websites in which the main content is about parenting and other relevant things about it. But always remember, not all the tips given are effective. Only a few of them are effective. Let me give you some of the effective parenting tips that really work.

Instill good behavior through positive reinforcement, not through punishment or bribery. Be your child’s greatest encourager Always encourage them to do better. Don’t intimidate them. That will not do any good for your child. So as much as possible, encourage your child for their efforts. Praising and encouragement are two different things. Praising would be a gift or reward you can give to them for a job well done. Encouragement is given for their effort. Encouragement will always give them the spirit to strive for the best. Always encourage them to do good things. If your child is doing something you don’t like, talk to them, without screaming at them. Screaming and shouting should be eliminated. Remember that a level head will always prevail, screaming will only elevate the situation.As parents we all want the best for our children, whether in school, sports or any other extra-curricular activities but we have to watch how hard we push. Parents that are overly competitive can raise the bar too high for their children and end up setting them up for failure. Learn the difference between motivation and pressure, sure we all want are kids to get all A grades but if they get a B, be satisfied, don’t discourage or show disapproval. Learn how to encourage them through positive reinforcement, young children take great pleasure in pleasing their parents and would do anything to get their approval, nurture this.

When your child asks for your help, make sure you make them feel welcome. This one is important. By making them feel welcome you will always be the first person they come to, when in their time of need. They will always trust in you to have the solution that they seek.

You don’t have to shower your child with gifts to show your love. Your first priority should be quality time spent with your child. If you make sure you provide them with enough quality time they will surely feel how you love them. Play with your child. Read books together, that will mean so much to them. Quality time with your child will surely lead to a good child-parent relationship.

I got one more tip for you, HUGS, yes in capital letters, it’s that important. The magic of hugging, this simple act of affection will deliver major gains in your child’s health, disposition and overall development. Child experts advocate hugging as an invaluable element in child development. Children that are hugged often are likely to be warm and very expressive, while the child not shown much affection grows up distancing themselves from others. So in closing, hug your child, it will make them feel loved, it will make them feel welcome and will develop a child parent bond that will last a lifetime.

So, that’s it. I hope that these few tips on parenting will help you establish a wonderful relationship with your child.

Discover parenting tip parenting tips on how to raise happy and responsible children in the 21st century. This parenting book parenting book will give you the tools you need. visit http://effectivesmartparenting.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charles_Llyod

The Power of Biting Your Tongue

Gary N. Larson — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 03:38:59 +0000

Have you ever said something you later regretted? I certainly have. Many times. One time when I felt like letting my daughter have a verbal lashing, I didn’t. I bit my tongue and learned an important lesson in the process.

My oldest daughter Erika was home from college for the summer and for one reason or another we were just not getting along. This is what I recorded in my journal that day:

Today was Mother’s Day. It was a good day. However, first I want to note what I feel was a significant thing that happened to me today. My relationship with Erika lately had been less than warm. It seemed we were clashing about something on a daily basis and I was so down and depressed about it. I just was so sad inside. I had no smiles in me. It was like I had a dark cloud following me around. And of course last night it happened again when we had some not-so-nice words about what you call a car gas cap, of all things! I wanted so bad to just chew her out and tell her how I really felt about the way she talks to me. I felt like telling her if she wanted to live here she better treat me right or she should just go live somewhere else. But I bit my tongue and said nothing.

Well, this morning I still had the gloomy cloud over me. I was in the bathroom about to shave when Erika came in. She smiled at me and then apologized about what she said last night. I told her that her apology was accepted and that I forgave her.

I was really amazed that the dark gloomy cloud over me totally lifted. From that point on my whole day was great. I felt so good inside like a light had been turned on. Even my headache went away.

Two things I learned: First the value of holding your tongue. If I had chewed her out I’m sure we would still have bad blood between us. The second thing I learned was the power of our moods and how much they affect everything we do – for good or ill. Interesting.

Next time you get the urge to verbally berate someone, think twice and bite your tongue. You may be surprised at the outcome.

How Strict Should You Be with Your Goals?

Gary N. Larson — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:23:30 +0000

Good morning! I want to talk about how strict or rigid should you be in keeping goals. For example, in my case I set a goal to go to bed each night at 10:30 p.m. How rigid should I be with that and should there be exceptions?

My answer to that is that there has to be exceptions at times but they should be few and far between.

For me last night was one of those exceptions. The only time there should be an exception is if there is a higher priority at play here that supersedes the lower one. For example, a higher priority would be my family and my relationships with my children. In this case it was attending a performance that my son was in.

Let me just explain what it was about. My soon-to-be 17-year-old son is a member of the local high school marching band. He plays the sousaphone. (Yes, that’s him in the center of the photo.) I thought it was called a tuba but apparently a tuba is played sitting down such as in a concert. A sousaphone is simply a version of the tuba used by marching bands. Anyway, my son and his band have worked extremely hard on their performance. For those of you who have never been involved with marching bands, they actually have competitions where many marching bands get together and compete. Each band puts on a performance that includes a number of elements. They have judges who judge the competition and they give awards at the end. This is a huge event that begins in the early afternoon and goes on until after 10:00 at night.Of course we wanted to be there to support our son and watch how his band did. My son’s band was scheduled to perform at 9:15 p.m. After they performed there was one more band to perform and then the tallying of all the judge’s scores and then the awards ceremony which lasted quite a while. (Incidentally, our son’s high school band took first place!) Anyway, following the awards ceremony we stayed to help clean up the stadium. So we didn’t get home until around 11:00 p.m.

Now here my goal was to be in bed by 10:30 p.m. What do you do in that situation? Well, you have to have priorities. I can’t, for the sake of my goal to get to bed by 10:30 p.m., ignore my son and not support him. There has to be reasonable exceptions. Those exceptions should only be for events and things that are of a higher priority than the goal of getting to bed on time.

I think there were two lessons learned from last night. The first was one is what I just talked about: Only allow higher priorities to cause exceptions to the rule.

The second lesson on self-mastery that I learned from the band competition last night can be divided into two parts. The first one is to simply watch the performances of these high school kids and see the self-mastery that they have achieved in the performance they put on. It was amazing the way that they learned to work together, to stand at attention, to march in unison, to flow as an entire unit together as a small part of a large whole. To me it was an amazing display of self-mastery to watch these marching bands.

The second part was even more amazing. A storm had been blowing in most of the day. We watched the dark clouds gather and the wind pick up as this competition went on. By the time my son’s high school band performed it was pouring rain. Not just rain but cold, pouring rain. Remember that it’s October. You would think in most situations that they would cancel a big event such as this because you wouldn’t expect anyone to stand out in that rain and put on these performances. These are huge marching bands all dressed in uniforms, carrying their instruments.

I asked one of the organizers of the event if they were going to cancel it. He said there was only one thing that would stop one of these shows and that was lightning. If it begins to lightning only then will they stop the show. Other than that, regardless of whether it’s raining or snowing or windy, the show goes on.

I was amazed at this fact that they go on no matter what. I was astonished as I watched these kids standing there at attention, not flinching as the rain was pouring on them. It was incredible self-mastery. And then to watch them go through their performance, totally ignoring the rain and playing these magnificent songs and marching their complicated formations – it was wonderful and showed supreme self-mastery.

Master Yourself, Master Your Life

Thank you.