The Five Best Gifts to Give Your Family

Written by Margaret Paul, Ph.D.


The following article is offered for free use in your ezine, print publication or on your web site, so long asrepparttar author resource box atrepparttar 111264 end is included. Notification of publication would be appreciated.

Title: The Five Best Gifts to Give Your Family Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 744 Category: Parenting, Relationships

THE FIVE BEST GIFTS TO GIVE YOUR FAMILY By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

When we think of giving gifts, we usually think of things to buy for people. Yet if you think back on gifts you’ve been given, it might not berepparttar 111265 material gifts you received that are foremost in your mind – it might berepparttar 111266 kind of gifts that deeply touched your heart and soul. It might be various ways, other than material things, that people expressed their love to you.

There are five gifts of love that we can give to our families that can make a huge difference in their lives.

THE GIFT OF CARING AND COMPASSION

We all yearn to feel cared for, yet many of us withhold caring and compassion for others. A profound gift we can give to our loved ones is to listen with our heart, to understand and accept rather than to judge, and to stay open to learning rather than to protect against being hurt.

Think aboutrepparttar 111267 last time someone actually listened to you and gave you understanding and acceptance. The feeling of being understood and accepted with caring and compassion is one ofrepparttar 111268 best feelings inrepparttar 111269 world. Instead of focusing on getting this from others, why not focus on giving it to others? You might be surprised at how wonderful you feel in giving this gift to your family.

THE GIFT OF COURAGE

One ofrepparttar 111270 best gifts we can give our loved ones is our own courage. This means being havingrepparttar 111271 courage to stand in our truth, to be honest about what we want and don’t want, what we will do and won’t do, what is and what is not acceptable to us. It means havingrepparttar 111272 courage to take good care of ourselves, even if others don’t like it. It means not succumbing to our controlling behaviors that come from fear: anger, withdrawal, compliance, resistance, but instead being honest and above-board about ourselves. It means being willing to face conflict rather than give ourselves up to avoid it.

When we haverepparttar 111273 courage to face conflict and tellrepparttar 111274 truth, we not only provide our family with a role model for courage, but we provide opportunities for our loved ones to step up torepparttar 111275 plate inrepparttar 111276 face of our truth and learn to be courageous too.

Doing Dinner: Confessions Of A Radical Mother

Written by Maya Talisman Frost


I love slow living. It's peaceful, meaningful and downright radical in a go-go world.

According to a recent article in (appropriately enough)Time magazine, groups of harried parents acrossrepparttar USA are joining a wave of slow living advocates by doing something really revolutionary--having one sit-down dinner at home with their kids each week.

I don't know whether to applaud or cry. The idea that parents are willing to undertakerepparttar 111263 Herculean task of rearranging their schedules to fit in a single dinner at home is laudable. The fact that it requires superhuman effort is terribly sad.

How did we get here? The article states that back inrepparttar 111264 1980s, sociologists decided that providing structured activities for kids would prevent juvenile delinquency. In addition, education experts suggested that American children needed to study harder to compete academically inrepparttar 111265 global market.

Atrepparttar 111266 same time, American business leaders looked around and discovered they were losing their edge. They bumped up hours and production rates in an effort to keep ahead of burgeoning Asian countries. This new competitiveness spilled over intorepparttar 111267 home, where mothers fresh fromrepparttar 111268 work force tookrepparttar 111269 corporate ideal of high productivity torepparttar 111270 playgrounds.

Yikes.

I spent most ofrepparttar 111271 eighties living and working in Asia. I taught English in Japan for five years, so I'm all too familiar withrepparttar 111272 "education mama" syndrome. What's interesting is thatrepparttar 111273 American mamas have taken that same emphasis on competition and achievement and focused on sports or other activities. Although we don't have to sufferrepparttar 111274 unfortunate consequences of despondent students going throughrepparttar 111275 examination hell ofrepparttar 111276 Japanese system, we have burned out 15-year-olds having knee surgery for ten years' worth of soccer injuries, and families who can't remember their last no-TV, no-phone, real food meal at home.

I think that somewhere between a manic preoccupation with education and a rabid adherence to frenzied activity schedules is a happy medium.

It's called dinner.

People in Europe or Latin America are horrified to hear of families inrepparttar 111277 U.S. gulping dinner in their cars on a daily basis. It's appalling that there are actually campaigns to re-introducerepparttar 111278 concept of sitting down to eat. In cultures where families gather for meals every afternoon and again late inrepparttar 111279 evening, they view this obsession with achievement as baffling, alarming and pitiful.

And they're right.

The truth is that it's pretty hard to lose control of your family's activities if you make dinner a priority most nights. It's simply not possible to attend multiple practices each night if you're expected atrepparttar 111280 dinner table from 6:30-7:30.

When I tell people that I have four teenage daughters (ages 13, 14, 16 and 17), they look at me with a mixture of horror and pity. Life must be tough at your house, they say. You must live in your car, they tell me.

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