Building Strong Families

Our Building Strong Families segment, focuses on helping parents build a meaningful life for themselves and their children.

Living the Dream

Families with purpose are families who dream together and work together to make their dreams and goals a reality.

Family New Year Resolutions - If you haven’t already done so, take time as a family this month to create a family New Year’s resolution. A family resolution is one the entire family can participate in creating and fulfilling, a goal the family works toward together.

Setting Family Goals - We spend a lot of time in life setting personal goals for ourselves in hopes of making our lives happier, healthier, and better, but how often do we set them for our family?

Tackling the Yeah But's - For any family goal (or personal goal for that matter) to be successful, families need to take the time to discuss the Yeah But’s; the hurdles of any family goal we don’t know how to overcome, and if we don’t will doom the success of the family goals.

Dream Big! - Dream big! I tell my kids this a lot. I believe there is a lot of power in dreaming big and encourage my children to do so.

How Will They Remember You? - My 9 year old daughter, Jennifer, has a real talent for saying it like it is. You will always know what she honestly thinks about something. Got a new hairdo? She will be the first to say you should have saved your money.

Family Travel Goals - My kids are big dreamers. Recently we sat down as a family to set some family vacation goals and at the top of the family’s list was a family vacation to Hawaii.

Family Fitness Challenge - Exercise has never been at the top of my list of fun things to do and I do whatever I can to not fit it into my schedule. My husband has a slightly more positive outlook and manages to fit in weekly volleyball games, bike rides in warm weather, and an occasional workout on our home exercise equipment. And if it weren’t for the really comfortable overstuffed chair that always seems to call his name, he would be more active as well.

A Family Journal - Sometimes it gets really hard to keep track of it all. Even though we have good intentions, keeping track of your family’s memories, family goals, and great times can be hard. It isn’t an easy task to sort through hundreds to family photo’s looking for the perfect one that you can absolutely remember being taken but for the life of you can’t find.

Planning Your Family Vacation - I spent hours and hours planning our family vacation to Disney world. I read the right books, visited and subscribed to all the popular websites, made reservations in advance, and when all of it was done I had detailed plans day by day of how we would spend our days at Disney World.

Staying Strong

A family with purpose is a family who acknowledges their problems and who work together for resolutions. They deal with their problems and issues with open communication and with confidence.

Have You Set Any Parenting Goals for 2008? - The New Year is a time for people to take stock and to make plans for the coming year. People often set personal or business goals but how about considering what you would like your goal as a parent to be for 2008?

When is Too Much Too Much? - I have had several interesting conversations this week regarding the term Helicopter Parents.

Parent Leadership- Learning to Lead with Love - When our oldest son was small, he often kept his room a mess. If I blew my stack and started yelling about what a pigsty his room was, my son would literally freeze.

Raising Emotionally Strong Kids - Here are 4 very important things every parent should be doing to raise emotionally strong children.

Are You Parenting with Consciousness? - I have been thinking a lot lately about two words, consciousness and ethics, and how they relate to parenting . . . they are both words that have been used a lot lately with parenting, so I wanted to explore the meaning and relate that to what I believe and think about parenting.

Should We Tell Our Kids the Truth? - I recently had a conversation with some incredibly bright well informed loving mothers on whether or not we should tell the truth when asked some of the tough questions by our kids. Questions like,

STOP IT! - Keeping Your Cool on Family Vacations - STOP IT! My yelling these two little words into the backseat of the car is usually the first sign that our family vacation is beginning to take a detour and if we don’t stop to regroup we will end up in a place that none of us wants to be.

How to Help Your Child Get Great Grades - When parents ask me to coach their teenagers they inevitably want their child’s school grades to improve and seem a little shocked when I say, “Yes, that’s easy.”

How to Avoid the Competitive Parent Trap - Ah, the beginning of a new school year, marking the end of the summer boredom blues and the return of structure to our days. A time when parents rejoice, teachers cry, and the sport of competitive parenting begins.