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A Practical Way To Help Your Child Succeed

Winning is overrated. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war. ~Al McGuire

We all want our kids to be successful. And we are willing to do just about anything to make that happen. Here is a way to help your child succeed that is a lot of fun. Simply put, get them involved in sports.

It is amazing how many researchers have studied the effect of sports on academic achievement and how almost each and every study found the same thing – kids who are involved in sports are more successful.

There are a few different reasons given for this in the articles. One interesting reason given is that it helps kids learn how to deal with failure and overcome it. We all know people who once they fail keep “stewing” in the bad feelings and have a hard time moving on. This is obviously not productive or helpful and it will only keep the person from movong forward.

When we teach our kids to deal with failures, they will learn how to overcome them and move forward. Obviously, sports is a great way to do this because the only lasting effects of winning or losing is the mental and emotional strength that it will build.

I love the quote by Michael Jordan that goes, “I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”

Another advantage of taking part in sports is that it teaches kids how to deal with others. Unfortunately, much of what happens in school is done all alone. Schools and teachers have been talking about cooperative learning for the last 20 years, but most of what happens, day to day in the classroom involves each student working individually.

There is certainly value in learning to work alone. But most of our lives we are interacting with other people. This skill is not taught in many classrooms. It is taught on every sports team. And, yes, here I am talking about team sports rather than tennis or karate.

Which brings me to my final point this is, our kids should play on teams. If you child loves tennis, then help him or her to excel at tennis. But there is also a value to playing in the little league or on the school basketball team. This will help your child to build the skills needed to work with others.

The benefits found of kids playing sports are greater academic achievement, including better grades, improved chances of attending college, and success in the labor market.

Of course, kids who play sports will also have a lower risk of child obesity which is rampant in the world today. People who play sports as kids are more likely continue as adults and stay healthier and slimmer as adults as well.

And one of the best reasons to have your child participate in sports is that it will give you a chance to have quality time with the kids. You will see your child in a whole new light and it will give you something to bond over.

So, as Nike says, “Just Do It!”

Feel free to use this article on your website or ezine. If you do, include the following bio. If you would like to print and distribute this article, click here.

Shaya Kass, PhD is a parenting coach.

I help parents create relationships with their kids that give a lifetime of smiles. Sincere, deep, loving relationships. Having a parent coach can help you create one of these fabulous relationships. I offer tips and techniques for growing happy, inspired kids and parents at http://www.PositiveParentPlus.com.

Visit now for a free report on The 7 Key Steps to Being A Positive Parent.

Shaya can be reached at DrShaya@PositiveParentPlus.com

Why We Should Teach Our Children To Be Grateful

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you're going to live your life. ~ Joel Osteen

In addition to all the other good reasons to be happy, I recently read some research about why we humans are grateful.

Firstly, gratitude lets the other person know that you received benefit from them. The more benefit we receive, the more grateful we are. Apparently, we are also more grateful if the giver has no ulterior motives. I thought about kids when I read this. I guess it makes sense that our kids are more grateful to strangers than they are to us, they may perceive that we have an ulterior motive – namely, we are their parents.

Another good reason to be grateful is that when we are grateful, the “giver” is more likely to continue giving. So, for example, if our children regularly thank their teacher for help, the teacher is more likely to continue giving help. A very practical example of this is that when a waiter or waitress writes “Thank You” on the bill, the diner is more likely to leave a larger tip. So in a selfish way, being grateful will benefit ourselves and our children.

Now here is one of the things that surprised me the most. Researchers found that those people who were most grateful, acted the nicest. The word they used was “prosocial” behavior which means that you act in a way that is helpful toward others and toward the group. So when we teach our kids to be grateful, they become more helpful and they will “fit into” the group better.

They were also more likely to help the person they were grateful to and they were more likely to help complete strangers. So it was not just reciprocity that drove the grateful to be helpful, being grateful actually makes you a nicer person!

Another experiment showed that when people journaled for two weeks about what they were grateful for, they offered more emotional support to friends and they also offered more tangible help. Also, people who are more grateful are more trusting.

But here may be the most important reason to teach your kids to be grateful. I know from my experience as a teacher, and any teacher will agree, that when a child thinks they are in control, they will work harder. And it makes sense. If I control the outcome, then I will work harder to become more successful. If it is out of my hands (the teacher doesn't like me) then I won't bother trying harder.

Well, kids who are grateful tend to attribute another person's good fortune to stable causes under their control rather than attribute good fortune to pure luck.

It is so important for kids to feel in control of their fate. It is also important for kids to take responsibility for their actions and outcomes.

I have not discussed much about how to get kids to be grateful, but I will give you just one simple strategy. Ask them what they are grateful for! At least once a day, ask you child to complete the sentence, “I am so happy and grateful that _______!” That's it.

And when you and your kids are grateful, nicer, more helpful, and take responsibility, just imagine how great a relationship you will have!

Feel free to use this article on your website or ezine. If you do, include the following bio. If you would like to print and distribute this article, click here.

Shaya Kass, PhD is a parenting coach.

Visit now for a free report on The 7 Key Steps to Being A Positive Parent.

Shaya can be reached at DrShaya@PositiveParentPlus.com

Practical Ways To Teach Our Kids To Be Non-Judgmental

“It takes a good deal of character to judge a person by his future instead of his past” – Ralph Waldo Emerson(?)

You have most probably heard the story of the man who gets onto a subway in New York City at a very late hour with many of his kids in tow. The kids are being very boisterous, to put it mildly, and the man is distracted and not controlling them at all. A fellow passenger is getting more and more annoyed until she finally says something to him about controlling his kids. He looks up, still distracted and when he understands what the lady is saying he apologizes. “I'm sorry. I am just coming from the hospital where my wife just passed away and I am thinking about how things are going to be different.”

While most of us never verbalize our judgments about others to them, that doesn't stop us from thinking them. And often, we tell our judgments to others – also known as gossip. This really is a scourge in our society.

If we look at it from the perspective of evolution, it makes sense that we have a negative bias, always seeing the worst possible outcome. If you were a hunter walking in the meadow and the grass started rustling, you had to decide if it was the wind moving the grass or if it was a lion getting ready to pounce on you. If you has a positive bias and thought it was the wind but it was really a lion, you were in really big trouble. On the other hand, if you had a negative bias and you thought it was a lion and it was really the wind, you would run and nothing would happen. You would get to laugh about it the next day. From this perspective, a negative bias is a good thing. But, like so many things that served our species well 10,000 years ago, we have to change with the new reality that faces us.

Today, having a negative bias about people distances us from them. As Mother Theresa tells us, it prevents us from loving one another. And it certainly does not help to create good relationships.

Even most adults don't realize this, so how could we expect that our kids will know it intuitively? We have to teach them to minimize their judgment of others. How do we do this?

First, our kids have to be aware of it. We could do this by telling them how we ourselves are sometimes judgmental of someone. How we realize we were doing it and how we stop ourselves. Also, if our kids are ever being judgmental, we can gently tell them that it is not such a good idea.

The next step is to accept people just the way they are. We know that we really cannot change others, heck, we can barely change ourselves. So instead of “knocking our head against the wall”, just accept people as they are.

Finally, love them. Love the people that we are judging. I know it is difficult, but if your kids practice this, they will be loving to everyone – to strangers, to friends, to you, and most importantly, to themselves! And wouldn't that be nice!

Feel free to use this article on your website or ezine. If you do, include the following bio. If you would like to print and distribute this article, click here.

Shaya Kass, PhD is a parenting coach.

Visit now for a free report on The 7 Key Steps to Being A Positive Parent.

Shaya can be reached at DrShaya@PositiveParentPlus.com

Do You Want To Raise A Courageous Child?

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. -Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is certainly a character trait that we want in ourselves and in our children. But what makes someone courageous? How can we foster courage? And, perhaps most important, Can we even agree on an answer to “What is courage?”

As Redmoon tells us, courage does not mean that we have no fear. In fact, quite the opposite, if you have no fear, you have nothing to overcome so you don't need courage. You can only be courageous when you have fear and you figure out a way to overcome the fear and do what needs to be done anyway.

This tells us that there are as many kinds of courage as there are fear. To help your child be courageous, you have to find out what they fear.

A child who is afraid to feel foolish if they try to make a goal and miss, will build courage by trying to make a goal that is “iffy”. A child who is afraid that his or her classmates will laugh at them if they get up in front of the class shows courage by making that speech in front of the class.

Now one might say that you can live your whole life without these forms of courage and you can still be happy. After all, many people have never made a goal in soccer and I have seen that as many as 75% of people have a fear of public speaking.

But think, for a moment, about the courage of Rosa Parks, or the courage of Gandhi. Or for a more modern example, think about the courage of the many dissidents in China or Iran who are jailed for speaking their views in public.

Does your child have the courage to ignore ridicule if a classmate is being treated poorly? Does your child have the courage to speak their mind if all their friends will disagree? Being courageous is important if it means that a victim will be saved.

The way to become courageous is by doing courageous things. Talk to your child about what they fear and about overcoming those fears. Talk to your child about doing the right thing even if it means others may not agree with you.

Another way to teach courage is by talking to your child about situations in which you overcame fear. Perhaps it was a fear of public speaking. Perhaps it was a fear of asking for a raise.

When children get to practice courage and are taught the value of courage, they will learn to be courageous. This is an important skill and value in life.

And by sharing their values, you will create a better relationship with them and help them to become great kids and great people!

Feel free to use this article on your website or ezine. If you do, include the following bio. If you would like to print and distribute this article, click here.

Shaya Kass, PhD is a parenting coach.

Visit now for a free report on The 7 Key Steps to Being A Positive Parent.

Shaya can be reached at DrShaya@PositiveParentPlus.com

Why You Should Teach Your Child The Art Of Giving

“If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.” Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama

I just started reading a wonderful book by Stephen Post and Jill Neimark called “Why Good Things Happen To Good People”. Let me start by saying that this book is all about science. Dr. Post is the director of an institute at the medical school of Case Western University. He commissions scientists to do studies that are verifiable – which is the gold standard of science.

The studies that Post and Neimark quote in the book show that people who give are healthier and live longer. Other studies show that people who give are happier. And most of us have experienced that feeling as well.

These research studies show that giving does more than makes us feel good in the moment. Giving has long term effects on our lives.

Post and Neimark quote studies that show that people who volunteer as teenagers live longer lives. Imagine that! Volunteering as a teenager can change health outcomes 50 or 60 years later! What an effect! People who volunteer as senior citizens also live longer.

And think back to your own experience. Think back to a time that you volunteered. Perhaps you helped out serving meals to the homeless during the holidays. Or brought meals to needy families. Perhaps you went to a school to help kids who were struggling. Or even helped at an animal shelter.

How did you feel when you finished? You probably felt pretty good. You were probably pretty proud of yourself. Let's say you went back to the office and met the staff curmudgeon. You know – the guy who tell you what's wrong with any and every situation. Was he able to get you down when you got back to the office that day? I bet not. You were probably walking on air the rest of the day.

Have you made sure that your child has that feeling? Have you let your child have that wonderful experience? What are you waiting for? Even a 2 year old can help deliver meals over the holidays. You and I both know it may be easier without their help, but let them help.

Make sure to explain to your kids that these people are nice normal people who happen to have some bad circumstances. And hopefully, those circum-stances are temporary and things will get better soon. And in the meantime, your are just helping out a little.

Your child will learn that circumstances don't “make” the person, that if they themselves are in a little trouble it doesn't make them a bad person or a loser. They will learn that even if they are in a little trouble, their circumstances will change and they can look forward to that. And they will experience that good feeling you get when you help out someone else!

When your child learns to enjoy these experiences and learns to give more often, they will be doing the very things that will help them to have a long and healthy life!

Do You Want To Teach Your Kids Respect?

To download this as a PDF that you can print and send home in a weekend packet, click here

“A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do you know that his future will not be equal to our present?”

- Confucius

I am sure you know of some families where the kids are always provoking each other. When one kid says something another has to tell them that they are wrong or just put them down.

There are even some families where the kids are insulting at the parents and putting the parents down for things that they say.

Guess how much fun it is to be around these families. I sometimes wonder how the parents put up with it!

Now I cannot say what the parents in these families did or did not do, but I do know that this NEVER happens in my family and I have an idea why.

My wife and I were talking recently about our kids. ( Okay, we always talk about our kids, but that is besides the point!) We noticed that our kids are always respectful to us and to each other. They often play around with each other and even wrestle sometimes. There are even tears occasionally when our 11 year old takes on his 20 year old brother – but our oldest son never intends to hurt the little one, it just happens during the play.

My wife and I were wondering what we “did right”. My theory is that we always showed them respect.

What exactly is respect? Part of it is that we often asked their opinion and then took it into consideration. If we did not take their advice we explained why. When I made mistakes with my kids, I apologized. I let them know that their feelings are important, that I value their feelings and that I was sorry that I had hurt their feelings. And there were times I punished my kids or “forced” them to do things they did not want to do. That is part of parenting. But, again, I made sure they knew that their feelings and opinions were important, but that in this case I had to overrule them.

I guess the simplest way to make a long story short is that I valued my kids and made sure they knew it.

Another VERY important way to model respect for your kids is to respect your spouse. Do you listen to your spouse's opinion? Do you interrupt? Do you help and support your spouse, not only around the house but with their own work?

What is the outcome of all this? I see two outcomes. Firstly, your child will learn to respect others. They will respect their teachers, they will respect other adults, and they will respect their friends. The outcome of this is that all these people will, in turn, respect your child.

But there is a MUCH more important outcome. Your child will have self-respect. A person who has self-respect is positive, pleasant and takes care of themselves. A person with self-respect most likely will not have addiction problems.

Self-respect is so important. Teach your child self-respect by respecting them!

Does Your Child Sit Out Group Activities

To download this as a PDF that you can print and send home in a weekend packet, click here

"I visualize things in my mind before I have to do them. It's like having a mental workshop."

- Jack Youngblood

Little Brian brings home a flier from kindergarten about basketball tryouts for 5 year-olds. As soon as he gets home he gives it to you and asks if you can go right away. You have to explain that he will have to wait a few days because the event will be on Saturday and today is only Tuesday. Brian practically sleeps with his basketball the rest of the week.

Finally, you get there on Saturday morning and, all of a sudden Brian clings to your leg so tightly that you practically loose circulation to your toes! He just will not let go. What the heck happened??

Brian may have been very enamored with the idea of basketball but simply did not realize everything that went along with it. He didn't think of the 100 other kids that would be there or the level the chaos and commotion and he simply was not prepared to deal with it all. So he shutdown, clung to you and would not listen to any words of reason.

The worst part is that you know that he would enjoy himself. How can you help him get over this shyness or crowd aversion so that he can enjoy himself?

One possibility may be that part of Brian's personality is having difficulty in large crowds. But that would be VERY very unusual. Most kids will do fine. But kids like Brian need a little help.

Brian was probably a little shocked by the commotion. Perhaps if you had sat Brian down beforehand and told him there would be lots of kids and lots of commotion, he may have been able to deal with it. Perhaps it was only the shock and a little preparation may have been enough.

Going just a little further up the scale, perhaps Brian needed a little more preparation. You might tell him that all great athletes visualize situations beforehand. Perhaps if you would have done a visualization with Brian beforehand, he would have been okay. You would ask Brian to close his eyes and picture a big gym with 100 kids in the gym. There are 20 basketballs being bounced. There are parents screaming to kids from the sideline. Kids are screaming to each other on the court. While Brian is visualizing this, ask him how he feels. If he feels stressed during the visualization, you can be sure he will be stressed when you get there. You might want to help him to visualize staying calm and sticking with it. You might help him to visualize dribbling the ball, passing it to teammate or making a basket. The more you prepare him beforehand, the easier time he will have when he gets there.

So the way to make sure that your child takes part in activities is to help him or her prepare as much as possible beforehand. Talking about it might be enough or you might have to do a full blown visualization. But take the time, because this skill will serve your child for a lifetime!

The Ultimate Father’s Day Gift

Happy Father's Day. Today you may have received a tie or a coffee cup or a picture frame. These are all wonderful presents and we both know that it is the thought behind the present that is most important. They brought a smile to you today and will tomorrow when you use it. But I would like to offer you a present that will bring a smile to your face every day for the rest of your life.

The present I am offering is a wonderful relationship with your kids.

You get to choose the relationship you have with your kids. Your wife doesn't get to choose, your parents don't get to choose and even your kids don't get to chose. You have all the power.

I am sure you look around at others fathers and their kids and sometimes you are a little bit jealous. Their kids give them a high five and a hug when they get to home base. Those fathers know exactly what to say when their kid loses an important soccer game.

Or perhaps you look at fathers of more grownup kids who have a great relationship with their kids. Their kids do well in school, they go on ski vacations together and these Dads speak lovingly of Thanksgiving dinner.

Perhaps you believe you could never have this. Well your wrong. Recent psychological research shows that you can change your beliefs, and furthermore, by changing your beliefs you can change your personality. Don't you want that “Dad personality” that these wonderful Dad's have.

So what do you have to do? The absolute first thing that you would have to do is believe that you can! Believe that you can be the kind of Dad that has a wonderful relationship with your kids. Believe that you can be the kind of Dad whose kids actually enjoy his company. If you don't believe you can, then you can't! Once you believe that you can be a great Dad, it is just a matter of tweaking a few beliefs here and there that will give you that great Dad mindset, that will create you as a great father.

It was James Joyce who said “I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.” So what should you start “establishing” or believing?

Firstly, that you and your son or daughter can have a great relationship in which you share your hopes and wishes, accomplishments and disappointments. You can share your feelings with your child and you can make your child feel secure enough that they will share their feelings with you. The first step here is to start making them feel secure. That means keeping your word to them, respecting them and their opinions, listening to them when they speak and asking them their opinion. All of these things make kids feel respected and cared for, in a word, it makes them feel secure. If they know that they can feel secure with you, they will feel secure and this will lead to a wonderful relationship.

Next, you have to believe that your kids trust you. Are you trustworthy with your kids? Do you have integrity around your kids? This is actually very easy unless you've made a mistake. Most kids are trusting, perhaps even too trusting. That is why we have to warn them to be wary of strangers. Your kids will trust you until you tell them that you will be home to tuck them in and you get home an hour later – for the tenth time. They will trust you until you tell them you will make it to the baseball game and you don't even make it to the pizza shop afterward. Things come up, but just communicate with your kids as soon as you know. Practice as much integrity with your kids as you expect your business partner or the people who work for you to practice with you.

And finally, you have to be sincerely interested in your kids. You have to believe that what goes on in their life is more important, than watching the evening news, playing fantasy football or checking your stocks. If you believe that what goes in your child's life is more important than just about anything else you could be doing, you will be sincerely interested in them.

These three simple beliefs will bring you the ultimate relationship with your kids and truly make every day of the rest of your life Father's Day!

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