Isn’t it to prepare your kids to be happy, healthy, successful people in their own lives?

What’s best way to do this?

One effective method of preparing them for their own lives is to give them a heavy dose of word that not enough kids are getting today. That word is “N” word, or word no.

We all deal with a certain amount of frustration in our everyday adult lives. We are frustrated at our jobs, in our relationships, and by circumstances that we have no control over. Over time we learn to handle frustration better and to turn it into challenges and opportunities that we work through.

People who can handle frustration successfully tend to have happier and more successful lives. They learn to be resilient and to appreciate what they’ve accomplished and what they’ve received.

How about your kids?

Are your kids being frustrated enough? Are there high enough expectations being placed on them? Are you saying no enough and are you allowing them to have opportunities to be frustrated and to work through it?

There are a lot of kids today receiving boatloads of gifts and gadgets from their parents who aren’t being given many responsibilities within their families.

If you’re not allowing your kids to be exposed to responsibility and frustration, and if you’re not liberally giving out N word to them, you may be creating monsters within confines of your home.

Many parents have gone through hard times in their lives and naturally want to spare their children same fate that they experienced. They have a very difficult time seeing their children struggling and allowing them to deal with it.

The result of this choice is that many children today get almost everything they want in terms of clothes, electronic gadgets, toys etc. The amount of stuff they receive and new products that they want keep growing every year.

Try comparing what your children get in terms of their most wanted items to what you get in your life. Is it a close comparison?

On this evening things certainly didn’t seem to be like they were before. This evening had been difficult. As I was trying to get my kids to bed, my daughter was whining and crying about tomorrow’s school clothes while my son flopped around on floor without a care in world.

It was well past their bed time and I was simultaneously: upset with myself for getting behind schedule; preoccupied with a project I was late on; angry with my kids for not cooperating; and worried that they’d have another crabby day from back-to- school stress and a lack of sleep.

I could feel tension envelope my shoulders and jaw. My mind was moving at a dangerous rate.

Then moment happened.

My four year old son looked up at me as innocently as humanly possible and said, Dad, what do snails eat?

Everything slowed down and relaxed. The drama of moment disappeared. My worry and concern had been revealed as a hoax. All that seemed to matter now was getting my kids down to bed in a warm and caring manner.

After stumbling through a snail diet answer and thanking my son for putting things in perspective for me, I marveled at how quickly my emotions could change. Unfortunately, this shift is not always very rapid or easy for fathers in stressful situations.