Are Your Kids Driving You Crazy? How Character Building Charts Keep You SaneWritten by Jean Tracy
Who lives in your house? Are they driving you “crazy?” Do you have a Winnie Whiner, a Sammy Slacker, or a Bubba Bully? Perhaps you’ve yelled, you’ve lectured, and you’ve even spanked to get your Winnie to stop whining, your Sammy to do his chores, and your Bubba to stop hurting his little brother. How can you get your Peter Cheater to play fair, your Larry Liar to tell truth or your Tilly Tattle to mind her own business? Our greatest task as parents is to raise children with strong healthy characters. Let’s find out how Character-Building Charts helped one mother and how they can help you too. I remember counseling a young boy who was a ‘Sammy Slacker.’ One day his teacher confided, “When I tell my class, ‘Children, please take out your readers,’ Sammy leans back in his chair, his arms hanging over its back, and calls out, ‘I can’t find my book!’ Sure enough, a little girl scrambles over, looks his messy desk, and finds it for him.” Sammy irritated his teacher, lost respect of his classmates, and had no friends. These are not consequences most parents want for their children. To help Sammy, I worked with his parents, especially his mother. I found out that her mother and grandmother believed it was their duty to be servants to their families. They were to pick up after everyone, do all housework, and be happy too. Sammy’s mom finally understood that she was spoiling her child, making him weak, dependent, and distasteful to others. She decided to turn off internal voices of her mother and grandmother. Sammy's mother did three things:
| | Make Your Own Gourmet Gift BasketsWritten by Donna Monday
Everyone loves to receive a gift basket. Corporate gift baskets are often given by businesses to their customers as a token of their appreciation. However, most gift baskets are person to person expressions of love and friendship.You can find a great selection of online gift baskets from very expensive to cheap. Or, you can come up with your own unique gift basket idea and surprise a cherished friend or loved one. It’s not difficult to make your own personalized gift baskets. Most gift baskets involve a theme. Here are some sample ideas to get you started: ** Cookie Gift Basket – bake up some homemade cookies and enclose them in colorful plastic wrap, include a personal card or poem. ** Chocolate Lovers Gift Basket – include individual fancy chocolates, boxed chocolates, or person’s favorite chocolate bars along with hot chocolate mix. ** Holiday Gift Basket #1 – a Christmas holiday gift basket idea could include small stocking stuffers, candy canes and homemade Christmas cookies. ** Holiday Gift Basket #2 – a Halloween holiday gift basket can be stuffed with candy, throw in some plastic skulls, spiders, cob webs and assorted creepy items. ** Wine Country Gift Basket – wine and cheese baskets are favorites, include two bottles of choice wine from your favorite winery or wine shop, add cheese and crackers.
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