24 Ideas for Creating a Happy Home
In teaching parenting workshops, I have found that one of the most eye-opening activities has always been the Happy Home Interview. Parents go home and ask their children two simple questions: “What is a happy home like?” and “What makes our home feel good?” Consistently, parents come back amazed by the honesty and simplicity of the answers they receive from their children. The answers are usually about small, everyday things. Almost never have children mentioned exotic trips, pools,...
Read More10 Parenting Lessons that Will Make a Significant Impact on Your Child’s Life
Have you ever received an instruction manual for something you bought that was 50 pages long, but included in the box was also a Quick Start guide? Do you ever wish our children came with a Quick Start guide? We spend years worrying about whether or not we are parenting our children correctly, and it often takes over 18 years for us to find out the results. Well, I’ve been parenting for almost 21 years now and so I feel pretty safe in writing this “so called Quick Start Guide”. It...
Read More10 Reasons Your Child is Always Hyper
NannyFlower.com shared a great article with Momnificent! readers on hyperactivity and what can cause this in our children. Hope you learn something from it. I know my own child can become hyper when he is overtired. Do you have hyperactive kids? Sometimes kids are just being kids and people are too quick to label them as hyper or having ADD or ADHD. There’s a lot more to the ADD and ADHD than being hyper. There are many reasons why kids can become hyper. Check out 10 reasons your child is...
Read More11 Ways Teens Abuse Their Smart Phones
My 20 year old son recently got his first iPhone. I cringed thinking about the first time he was going to lose it, drop it, get water on it, or do some other kind of damage to it. He informed me that he got a special case for it that would protect it. He said to me “The guy told me I could throw the phone across the parking lot and it wouldn’t break.” I asked him “Does the case protect you from losing the phone?” My son replied “What do you...
Read MoreThe #1 Food That’s Undermining Your Family
Candy Easter bunnies are headed your way soon. The table at the pot-luck school breakfast you just attended was piled high with donuts. The community event had a sweets table a mile-long. Sugary foods are everywhere, and our kids are reaching for it. It’s a real challenge to feed your kids well in a world that doesn’t! You know by now that sugar-filled foods are not good for your kids. You know it on a cognitive level, but often what we know doesn’t actually impact the choice you make. In...
Read MoreGet Radical – Make the Changes You Need to Have the Life you Want
The Good Life with Forbes Riley and Charlie What does it take to rev up your engine and get into gear, so you can get out of that muddy rut you’re in? We’re talking about making MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS people, and the time is NOW! As challenging as it may seem, you CAN bring radical change to your life and you WILL live to tell the story (longer, happier and healthier, we might add). But how do you do it? Enter Doreen Rainey, Get Radical success coach, who channels powerful forces to...
Read More5 Ways to Help Your Children Find their Gifts and Passions
My son Ian has recently found a new program called Google Sketch Up. It was a free download that enabled him to learn how to start designing 3D pictures of houses and buildings. Ian started developing a passion for houses a couple of years ago, and he has been drawing one dimensional house plans for about a year. After we downloaded Google Sketch Up, we watched a few beginner tutorials together so he could learn some basics of the program. I told him to practice and design his first house for...
Read More10 Reasons Strong Discipline is Needed for Children
National Nannies shared a great article with Momnificent readers about the importance of strong discipline for kids: To be clear when I refer to strong discipline I do not mean any type of corporal punishment. Kids when I was growing up could be disciplined by any adult that saw them doing something wrong. If you were bad at school you were sent to the principal to get a spanking. And they usually used a paddle to do the spanking. If your neighbor saw you and your brother fighting outside they...
Read More10 Ways to Stand Up to Sad, Puppy Dog Eyes
We all know just how cute our kids can be. And our kids know just when to throw us those sad, puppy dog eyes, or that cute little pout. It’s when we’re tired, or we’ve had an especially good day with them. But NannyClassifieds has some great tips for us on how to stand firm and be the mom our kids need: “He has you wrapped around his little finger!” That was the comment so often made to the parent or adult who just couldn’t resist the big sad look of the child who...
Read More5 Ways to Make Healthy Fun
When you tell a child to eat something because it’s good for them you’re probably going to be faced with a tongue being stuck out at you or a grimace in protest. Kids aren’t interested in being healthy; they’re interested in participating in fun activities and in eating delicious foods. With the rising childhood obesity rates though it’s becoming more important than ever to find a way to make being healthy the cool thing to do, not something reserved for nutrition nuts and exercise...
Read More8 Ways to Make Veggies Fun for Kids
I don’t know about you, but my kids have always been picky about eating vegetables. My older son didn’t start eating vegetables until middle school, and my younger son’s staple vegetable is salad made with romaine lettuce. When AuPair.org approached me with this great article to make eating vegetables more fun for kids, I just couldn’t pass it up. I hope this helps your children love eating more veggies. If it’s green, it’s a vegetable, if it’s a vegetable...
Read More5 School Success Habits that Will Make a World of Difference
I admit. I was worried about my son this morning. Not my 9 year old, but my 20 year old. I don’t think we ever stop being a mom. You see, he didn’t get away from Chicago last night until 8:00 at night, and he had to drive seven hours to get back to college in Columbia, Missouri. His first class started at 8:00 in the morning. I know I made some mistakes as a mom, but if there was one thing I know I did right, it was instilling great school success habits in my children. My son Kai graduated...
Read MoreHe’s a Bulldog, She’s a Yorkiepoo, The Kids are Confused
My husband and I used to disagree over how to discipline the kids. We wanted the same outcome, but our approaches to achieving that result differed. It’s quite normal for parents to have different discipline styles, and to disagree on what the rules should be. Normally one parent is stricter than the other. Sometimes mom is the Bulldog, and Dad is the Yorkiepoo, but other times it’s just the opposite. The problem is these differences confuse the children, and the result is often...
Read MoreTeaching Your Children About Healthy Boundaries
The subject of boundaries has been all around me lately. It was a topic of discussion at church last week. More recently, I’ve been preparing a presentation on boundaries for a half day retreat I’m doing in Chicago for the Power of Moms. What is interesting, though, is that both of these talks are for adults. Is it because we can only teach adults how to have healthy boundaries? Actually, I think the teaching is done better when we are children, but a lot of parents weren’t taught...
Read More10 Positive Family Communication Rules to Follow in Your Home
Our words have the power to build our loved ones up and guide our communications in the right direction, or they can have the opposite effect. But our words only account for 7% of the overall message that is communicated, which means that 38% of what we communicate is done through our tone, and 55% is done through our body language. Keeping that in mind, here are 10 positive family communication rules you can follow in your home to generate loving relationships: 1. Think before you speak. Take...
Read More5 Ways to Stop Behavior Problems Before they Start
Guest Post by Nancy Parker – former Professional Nanny Half the battle with kids is stopping behavior problems before they start. With a little planning ahead and a lot of discipline, you can avoid many behavior challenges before they become real issues. Try these five simple ways to stay a step ahead and avoid conflict. 1. Limit choices – A lot of conflicts start with too many choices. Number one, children cannot handle making complex decisions. It will stress them out. You want them...
Read MoreThe 3 Ingredients to Having an Extraordinary Family (free teleclass)
We just had a great teleclass where I talked about the three ingredients to taking the leap from an ordinary family to an extraordinary family. Caz Makepeace writes a blog called Mojito Mother, and she says “it really isn’t hard to live an extraordinary life. It only takes you concentrating on doing 10% more than those around you in the following areas: Dreaming Learning Taking Action Interacting with Others Living with Passion So what if you did 10% more than the ordinary...
Read MoreThe Effects of Bullying
This video depicts the raw truth of what bullying does to our youth. As parents, as schools, as a nation, and as a world, we need to do something to stop this craziness. And it starts in the home.
Read MoreCelebrating the Old and New Year – Family Style
Tucked away in the corner of our guest bedroom closet is a time capsule. It is set to be opened on my older son’s 21st birthday, June 30th, 2012. I don’t remember what is inside. I only remember that we put it together as a family on December 31st, 1999 when Kai was eight years old. A new year is always a great time to look back on the old year, and look ahead to what you want to create in the days ahead. It is a time for reflection, and a time for planning, not only for yourself...
Read More8 Great Goals to Make 2012 an Amazing Year
On Monday, we kicked off our first Momnificent! mom mastermind group, and I have to say, I was super excited. There is nothing that brings me greater joy than helping individuals define and reach their goals in life. My web developer always jokes “You’re the Tony Robbins for moms!” We started our call sharing what each mom wanted to get out of the mastermind group, what their challenges were, and what their goals were for the next six months. One of our mastermind moms knew that she...
Read More10 Sneaky Ways to Turn Fruits into Treats
FindaNanny.net shared a great article with Momnificent! readers on how to turn your picky eaters into healthy eaters… If you hand a kid a banana or a whole apple for a snack, you’ll usually find it under the sofa later; after they’ve eaten the bag of Cheetos. Make fruit fun and delicious, instead of boring. Fruit is the ultimate snack food. It’s sweet, full of great flavor, and mostly portable. No matter what fruit you have on hand, there is always a way to make it into a tasty, fun...
Read More3 Sources of Positive Youth Development
Parents, teachers, and all adults committed to positive youth development often wonder how children grow up to be happy, fulfilled, and engaged in life. While there are no easy answers, research shows that three things make a big difference. First, children need positive life experiences that engage them in meaningful activities. Second, they need adults who help them believe in themselves. And last, they need families, schools, and communities who model and instill positive values. The growing...
Read More10 Ways to Tell a Child You Are Sorry
Sometimes as moms, we make mistakes. The best thing we can do in that moment is to tell our child we are sorry. eNannySource shared a great article with Momnificent readers on 10 different ways you can tell your child you are sorry, mend their broken heart, and repair the broken trust in your relationship. Communication and trust are the hallmarks of a strong relationship; and, with all due respect to Erich Segal, that means knowing when to say you’re sorry. Sometimes knowing how to say...
Read More10 Times it Might be Okay to Leave Kids Alone
My son Ian is 10 years old. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told him we need to leave to run a short errand, and he’s told me “I’m not going. I’m staying home.” I always humor him by saying “Okay, I’ll see you later.” But inside I know that Ian would never in a million years stay home alone because he is emotionally not ready for that step. As soon as I walked out that door, he would be chasing me to the car. But how...
Read More10 Four Letter Words Describing Motherhood
I’m not sure if it was the baby feet or the sentimental nature of the article, but I just couldn’t pass up this great read shared with us by FindANanny. It’s always nice to pause for a few moments and reflect on all that motherhood has to offer us. Motherhood is probably one of the most wonderful, difficult, rewarding, thankless, exciting, terrifying, satisfying, amazing jobs on earth. It is full of ups and downs and all kinds of conflicting emotions and experiences. Can it...
Read More10 Situations Where Adults Often Model Bad Behavior to Children
We can talk ourselves blue in the face about what we want our children to do, but the single most powerful way to teach our children right from wrong is through modeling. Our children, whether we like it or not, are watching us for how to live their lives. More often than not, all of this modeling is taking place at a very subconscious level. And as tough as it is to swallow, many of our own behaviors are occurring at a subconscious level, and we aren’t particularly aware in the...
Read More10 Tips for Disciplining Children in Front of their Friends
Unfortunately, kids can have a tendency to want to show off in front of their friends, or become a little more out of control when they are in the company of friends. This can sometimes mean they step over the boundaries of what is right and wrong, and need to be disciplined. But the last thing we want to do is embarrass our children in front of their friends. eNannySource offers Momnificent! readers some great tips on the right way and the wrong way to handle disciplining our kids in front...
Read More10 Tongue Types to Develop
Yesterday as a client and I were talking about social media, she asked me if I had seen the video that an angry father had posted on his daughter’s Facebook wall. This video was full of angry words to his daughter, and him shooting his daughter’s laptop with his gun. You might be wondering what would have prompted such an outrageous act. This video was in response to his teenager daughter posting very ugly and mean words about her parents on her Facebook wall so that all her friends could...
Read More5 Ways to Encourage Good Manners at a Child’s Birthday Party
Birthday parties are a time for children to let loose and have fun with their friends. Because of this, a birthday party is an easy time for kids to forget their manners. Part of your job as a parent who is hosting a birthday party is to encourage good behavior and respect. You don’t often get to see your own child in a large group setting. So, a birthday party is also a great time for you to encourage your own child to interact politely and respectfully. Oftentimes our children are angels at...
Read MoreThe Importance of Patience
A weary mother returned from the store, Lugging groceries through the kitchen door. Awaiting her arrival was her eight-year-old son, Eager to relate what his younger brother had done. “While I was out playing and Dad was on a call, T.J. took his crayons and wrote on the wall! It’s on the new paper you just hung in the den. I told him you’d be mad at having to do it again.” She let out a moan and furrowed her brow. “Where is your little...
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