The good news is that love can be kept alive, even in long-term relationships. Love is kept alive when each person is more devoted to learning about being loving to themselves and to each other than to getting love. The moment intention is to get love, controlling behavior takes over. In any given moment, we either want to be loving and share love, or to get love. Trying to get love diminishes love. Being loving and sharing love keeps love alive. Being loving and sharing love means:

• Each person learns to take responsibility for your own feelings rather than making other person responsible for your feelings of worth, lovability, security, happiness, joy or pain.

• Each person has your own and your partner’s highest good at heart. Each of you supports your own and your partner’s joy and well being. Both of you are considerate of other person without giving yourselves up.

• Each person chooses to be honest and authentic about how you feel and what you want and don’t want. You are willing to speak your truth without blame or judgment.

• Each person stays open to learning about your own and your partner’s wants, needs, and fears, especially in conflict.

What keeps love alive is each person’s willingness to do whatever inner work is necessary to keep heart open to loving and learning. Controlling behavior is motivated by fear – of loss of self and loss of other, of engulfment and rejection, of smothering and abandonment. When each person is willing to do inner work necessary to heal these fears, they are able to keep their hearts open more and more of time. Love flows freely when hearts are open to loving and learning.

Practicing Six Steps of Inner Bonding that we teach is a powerful way of doing this inner work. Partners who both consistently practice this process discover great joy of keeping their love alive. Even when it seems that there is no way to get love back, it does come back when both partners are devoted to learning to take loving care of themselves and to sharing their love with each other.

We cannot give to another what we do not have within. Inner Bonding is a process for creating so much love within that it comes spilling out, to be joyously shared with others.

One thing a majority of them struggled with was organizational skills. They were always losing things - notebooks, pencils, coats, assignments, anything they could possibly lose. Their lockers looked like tornadoes had gone through them. And I heard from parents that their bedrooms were same story.

Too many of students that I taught tried to avoid reading and writing because it was so difficult for them. It was a common practice for me to help them read tests because they 1) couldn’t read words, or 2) didn’t understand either question or multiple choice answers they were given.

Notetaking was always difficult for Michele. She couldn’t get notes from chalkboard, overhead, or even her textbook onto her paper. She had to have help in her classrooms so she could work around this problem.

Everyone has problems with something. But when these problems interfere with your child’s education, and they are not showing improvement they should be showing, it is time to consider getting him evaluated.

For more on having your child evaluated, read "To test or not to test" at LDPerspectives.com