Strengthen Family Bonds by Playing Board Games

Mobile devices are everywhere.

They’re just soooo entertaining and addicting.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are many things in our society that end up paying the price for this, but perhaps the biggest issue is that mobile devices steal quality family time.

And as we all know there is only a finite amount of family time – or even the opportunity for family time.

Many families wait to have family time primarily on vacation.

But these are too far and few between – it kind of sends a hidden message that there is our regular life where we don’t really have time for one another, and then there are these special times that pop up every several months or even every year where that’s where we’re a real family.

This is strange.

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Why I Don’t like the Word “Shy”

Every once in a while one of my boys will say something to the effect of “I don’t want to do that. I’m shy.”

This really rubs me the wrong way.

I’ve heard the term shy since I was a small kid.  Sometimes used to describe me, many times to describe others.

I really don’t like that word.

Why?

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Why Tattling Is Worse Than You Think

My boys love to tattle. They tattle over small stuff. They tattle over big stuff. They tattle to one-up their brother. They tattle to get back at their brother. They tattle to show their parents how much better they are than their brother.

Tattling may seem annoying to us as parents, but I think it’s much worse than that. It can lead to much larger life problems down the line.

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The Waltons family

The Importance of Extended Family

Raising kids in today’s fast-paced, modern-world can be incredibly challenging, tiring, and frustrating. However, one need not look to far into the past to find something that can be an big help: living near the extended family.

Having the larger family around not only lightens parents’ load, but also helps kids feel part of a larger social unit, exposes them to those who have accumulated lifelong wisdom, and can help reinforce a good value system.

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How to Help a Child Overcome a Phobia

Yesterday, after telling my boys for the 10,000th time to finish their piano lessons, I sent both of them to timeout. Outside. Apart. When it was in the 90s. (Chill out, they weren’t in the sun and it was only for 10 min)

Now for many parents, this may sound like it’s not much of a punishment at all, but my boys tend to like staying inside more than outside, and they definitely like playing with each other more than being alone. In fact, they really don’t seem to know what to do with themselves when they’re outside alone (that’s a story for another day though).

Anyway, after I had sent my first boy outside for a period, I heard him crying a bit so opened the front door.  He was pretty freaked out and rambling on about bugs, and insects with wings, and all sorts of stuff related to creepy crawly things.  After talking with him a bit, it appeared he has at least a partial phobia to insects (My wife confirmed this to me later).

I decided to try an interesting approach with him based on exposure therapy, I’m hoping will help him get over his phobia.

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An Easy Way to Get Kids to Clean

If your kids are like mine, they have a nasty habit of not cleaning up after themselves. And when they’re told they need to clean something up (their room, the play area) they drag their feet or do a crummy job that requires more “discussions”.

I’ve stumbled on a technique that is a nice alternative to the parental nag approach.

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What Do Tech-Workers Know That We Don’t?

Parents who work in tech are often much more restrictive than non-tech worker parents when it comes to their kids and tech-exposure. Why is this?

Because digital devices can often come with a lot of downsides.

It’s long been rumored that Steve Jobs didn’t allow his child to have an iPad. A recent story on Silicon Valley parents details this trend by describing a couple of parents who work for Apple and a small high-tech startup:

The Koduris’ life is that of the quintessential Silicon Valley family, except for one thing. The technology developed by Koduri and Shahi’s employers is all but banned at the family’s home.

There are no video game systems inside the Koduri household, and neither child has their own cell phone yet. Saurav and Roshni can play games on their parents’ phones, but only for 10 minutes per week.

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How to Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing

This article is based on Episode 3 of the 99 Parent Podcast.

One of the most challenging things parents encounter is how to communicate values and ethics to kids.

If you’re like many parents, it’s done in a very informal way.

However, doing things in an ad-hoc manner can be problematic. When we don’t clearly state what’s right and what’s wrong, we end up leaving that up to the rest of society to do.

And a lot of times the lessons our kids learn from society aren’t the ones we want our kids living by.

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Free Range Parenting on the “Stuff You Should Know” Podcast

The Stuff You Should Know Podcast has a great episode right up our alley. This topic of the episode? The Free Range Parenting movement.

Free Range Parenting centers around the philosophy that parents should give their kids freedom have time away from overseeing adults. This gives kids the opportunity to learn independence and how to participate in self-governing peer groups.

The movement arose in reaction to the popular culture trend of kids being hyper-protected and hyper-scheduled. This rigid environment has caused kids to grow up anxious and not very confident.

The Free Range Parenting movement makes recommendations such as allow your kids to walk to school by themselves, go to the store by themselves, or play in a park without a supervising adult.

Whether you are familiar with Free Range Parenting or not, this episode is worth a listen.
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Why Self-Reliance Can Be a Kid’s Super Power

This article is based on Episode 2 of the 99 Parent Podcast.

Self-Reliance is the greatest gift any parent can give a child, for it is a habit of mind that follows him all his life and levels the mountains as he goes.

-Willard and Margeurite Beecher, Beyond Success and Failure

Children face a lot of struggles in today’s world. From keeping up with mountains of schoolwork, to dealing with the stress of internet-fueled peer pressure, to being hovered over by helicopter parents.

Ironically, even though kids are growing up in a time of information abundance, one of the most important things kids should learn about while they’re growing up is one that is seldom taught: self-reliance.

What exactly is self-reliance? In short, it’s the ability of an individual to handle the problems required of them in life. But it’s even more than that. What comes with self-reliance is deep confidence in one’s own abilities, the knowledge that one can rely on an unchanging part of him or herself, and that one’s success or emotional stability isn’t reliant on the whims of others.

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