10 things to teach your kids about happiness

10 things to teach your kids about happiness

Friday, March 16, 2012

Happiness. That is the word of the day. Everywhere. Magazines, TV, internet, books, billboards, packaging. Everywhere is the promise. If you have this, if you follow this, if you buy that, then... you will be happy.

Luke is always asking me for something, a toy he wants to buy, a snack at the store, a video to watch, a place to go, and he shows very strong signs that if he just gets that, then he will be happy. Sometimes I start to believe that maybe that is true, if I just get that for him.... so I give in just to find a few minutes later that no, there is something else down the list to happiness that it is still missing! Silly Luke, always wanting more! But, wait a minute, what about me? 

I heard someone say that marketing teaches people to act like children. Are you hungry? Eat. Are you bored? Get entertainment fast! Are you feeling down? Go shopping! And then, a few minutes later, just like Luke, we are all wanting something else. 

In one of his books, Philip Yancey said that the happiest people he ever met were not the famous ones he interviewed as a journalist. The happiest ones he ever met were the ones helping sick people in a colony for leprosy in India. Have you ever seen the ad anywhere? Spend a happy week of your vacation helping lepers in India!?? Me neither.

Beth Moore once said "Oddly, the most freeing thing we can ever do is to abdicate the throne of our own miniature kingdoms." Like the ring, in the Lord of Rings, you want it so much that it starts to destroy you. And Beth also said "Whatever God is urging you to clear away cannot begin to be compared to what He ultimately wants to bring you."!

So while I still have a lot to learn about happiness, there are a few things that I can teach my boys about happiness:

1. the more you give, the more you become
2. the more you learn to wait, the more you will appreciate,
3. because the goal is what you became, not what you get
4. hard work is not a curse, it is a privilege
5. rules are there to protect you
6. humbleness is not a weakness
7. don't do to others what you don't want it done to you
8. the world does not revolve around you,
9. and yet God loves you
10. "God surpasses our dreams when we reach past our personal plans and agendas to grab the hand of Christ and walk the path he chose for us. He is obligated to keep us dissatisfied until we come to him and his plan for complete satisfaction." (Beth Moore, Breaking Free)

Have a happy weekend!!

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Roller Coaster Parenting

Roller Coaster Parenting

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Doesn't it feels sometimes that parenting is like riding a roller coaster? One minute my boys are having so much fun playing together and laughing out loud with joy, and the next minute a crisis boils up when one pulls a toy away from the other. Suddenly, there is crying, complaining and corporal fight. What am I supposed to do?

As much as the boys learn from each other, I learn from them. And in the past days I have been trying to remember that the most important lesson of all is to enjoy the ride. Is the roller coaster up? Enjoy the fun! Is the roller coaster down? Use the crisis as an opportunity to teach them something. Easier said than done, but much easier done if my emotions don't get in the way.

A few years ago I read a book that still talks to me called Screamfree Parenting. It basically tells you that the only emotions you are able to control are yours, and controlling them (versus screaming like a lunatic!), allows you to focus on the problem and to deal with it without "losing it". Besides, you can become an example to the children on how to deal with problems in a calm and reasoned way.

To look into the big picture also helps. To see that moment of crisis not as a bump on the way, but as a great opportunity to teach them about sharing, about respecting each other, about loving with their actions. Because at the end is not about me, if I am being annoyed by kids crying in the other room. It is about embracing parenting as a beautiful full time job.

I read somewhere that when Michelangelo was asked how did he carve David from one block of marble, he answered that he looked at that block of marble and saw David, and then he just carved away everything that was not David.

Isn't parenting a lot like that? Carving our children with love to show the person they are meant to be!

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Baby Addiction

Baby Addiction

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

I believe that every person has deep inside a void space. For some, a little corner inside the heart; for others, a huge hole. In one way or another we try to fill it using different mechanisms.

Some may stuff as much money as they can inside the hole, others try finding perfect romantic love (with crushing burden expectations), others may run after career, power, pleasure, intellectual knowledge. And then there is baby addiction.

I will focus on this last one as it is part of issues related to motherhood, subject of this blog, and also because I once was a researcher investigating a similar subject.

When I was in college I took part in a paid research to interview teenagers that were having their second baby while still teenagers. I remember looking inside their eyes and running through the questions in my form. I felt their pain as some told me they had been abused as children. While others had just had an early start in the baby path. They were all poor girls, receiving free health care, and the question I was trying to answer was Why?

After my interviews, I grouped all the information and found a common profile for the girls. But, more important, reading the information against the Theory of Human Motivation from Maslow it looked like these girls were on an endless climb in the motivation pyramid. Because they had never reached for themselves higher levels of the pyramid as self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others, respect by others, they did not know how to say no, or to establish limits in their relationship. Besides that, a new baby was always the hope of a new beginning, maybe more love from the boyfriend, maybe more attention, maybe reaching that level they never had. But the baby would grow and the need would still be there, so another baby was needed, or conceived for lack of that level.

via

Cases like the octo-mom, who wanted babies so much and yet could not care for them, added with a background of deep depression, just comes to show that what was happening with the teenagers can happen with adult women too.

I think that somehow most women have some level of baby addiction as it is inserted in our maternal instinct to love babies and to want to care for them. But when babies are used to fill personal voids, then a danger sets in. The danger of weighting that child with the burden of bringing the fulfillment never achieved otherwise. And nobody, not even the most perfect baby, can meet such unrealistic expectations. So as the baby grows up, a new hope is born, well, maybe next baby...

My personal beliefs tell me that the void is there to be filled by God. A spiritual empty part that requires the right piece of the puzzle. I have to remind myself of that everyday, that the answer is a deeply fulfilling love relationship with the only One that justifies my existence.

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Are you a lefty or righty???

Are you a lefty or righty???

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Loved the picture above, it started me thinking... Doesn't it seems that the World is unjust for lefties? People that use their left hands to write, to play sports, to play an instrument. They have to adapt in so many ways! Apparently the rules were made by the right handed folks and everybody else has to abide by them.

But when it comes to the brain, the lefties make the rules! Probably because the righties don't like to deal with rules to start with! The lefties organize, analyze and control. And if you look back in history, it is usually more profitable to be a leftie. Maybe the righties dream too much, love too much, feel too much!

Of course, we all have both sides of the brain inside our heads, otherwise there would be no balance. But there is always that one side, that always pops first, pulls stronger and sings louder. Have you noticed?

Not easy to do self analyse, but I think that I might be a righty by nature. Or am I a lefty? Did school teach me so much how to use my left side of the brain that now I am a lefty?  

What about you? Can you identify a stronger brain side? Left or right??

Picture via here

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9/11 Memorial of love

9/11 Memorial of love

Thursday, January 26, 2012

There he was, alone, standing next to me. A slim tall black young man, holding on his hands a flat piece of white paper and a pencil. As I discretely watched, he carefully rested the paper on top of a name engraved in the stone and slowly started scratching it with his pencil, the same way you teach kids to do with coins. Except that for him that was probably a very solemn moment, as he was transferring, in an artistically and rudimentary way, the name of a loved one from a cold stone to his memory holder. A simple sheet of paper that from now on, would carry the memory of loss, blended among its fibers.

We were at the 9/11 Memorial and his presence there at my side changed the way I experienced it. Suddenly, it wasn't like visiting a museum, it became personal, the names were real people and my kids were touching the grounds of a tragedy. They are too young to know and probably will never remember our visit. But they are not too young to start learning from an early age the meaning of love. Love like the one the young man next to me has to offer, love that he keeps alive after all these years.

But that was not all. As I looked into the second fountain I spotted a rainbow. Coming from the hole in the center. Maybe that rainbow was going to bring some warmth to the heart of the young man. That not all was darkness, a sprout of light was still shining for him.

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Adventures of a Dumpster Diving Mommy

Adventures of a Dumpster Diving Mommy

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Movie Dive that I have yet to finish watching on Netflix

Portlandia may have introduced many of us to Dumpster Diving in this episode. Dumpster Diving is "the practice of sifting through commercial or residential trash to find items that have been discarded by their owners, but that may be useful to the dumpster diver" (Wiki). At first, it may seems that you can only be part of such practice if you wear special rag clothes, wait until the sun goes down and drive around neighborhoods without leaving too much trace.

But I have benefited many times from the Not Scheduled Dumpster Diving. It is the same thrill as when Santa leaves you a gift on your doorsteps. Tonight it was one of my Santa's lucky days. As I walked around our block around 8 pm, I spotted on the curbside, next to the recycling group of plastic bins, a kid's play kitchen. Now, I have been dreaming about getting the boys a small play kitchen, that would fit inside their bedroom, not too feminine (like bright pink), where they could pretend to cook, instead of playing inside my real kitchen with my real pots! And there it was, a small sized, neutral color with some blue accents, plastic play kitchen starring at me.

At the time of my encounter, the garbage was already being put to good use by two men that were going through the cans and transferring them to plastic bags so that they could make some money later. I was across the street, in a very lighted and busy area, don't worry, no dark alleys dangers. And the question popped in my head, Should I feel ashamed of rescuing a perfect plastic kitchen from the garbage? Will I become less noble if I step in the garbage, or more noble as I will be freeing Nature from digesting a few extra artificial substances?

In a question of seconds, I swallowed my pride, crossed the street, rescued the kitchen and was welcomed by my son with a smile, as he was heading to bed. I had brought him a mid January, Tuesday night gift! What an unique treat! After I wiped the kitchen clean, in case it had gotten some kind of contamination on it, I placed toy pots and pans and fake foods inside its compartments. Tomorrow morning, when my sons wake up, they will benefit from living in a country where you can find a $80 Play Kitchen in the garbage.

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Bigger, faster, stronger

Bigger, faster, stronger

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

In a world of bigger, faster and stronger, I feel small. Not big, fast or strong enough. Yet, more, more, more; brings less, less, less. And because the scale can't be up on both sides, there is always the down side. Except that the scale only goes down when it has more things on it, quite interesting...

Philosophical thoughts aside, our downsizing journey has been an adventure on itself. You see, we have lived in many places, some big, some small. Never this small for the four of us. After getting married we played "house" and filled our lives with all the must haves. And then slowly we had to downsize, one room at a time, going from using a garage and a basement as storage, to now only half of a closet.

Do I miss all the stuff? What stuff?? :-)

To live small takes more. More creativity, more patience, more juggling. But it also brings relief. The less you own, the less you worry. For that, I am thankful.

And yet, my small is big compared to so many people in the world. Like this amazing cook that delivers her treats from a tiny kitchen. And this mom that made a stylish bedroom for her boys out of a closet! Have you heard of the tiny house trend?

In a world of bigger, faster and stronger, we still long for the small, slow and weak. Our babies.

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The future is not new: it is old

The future is not new: it is old

Sunday, November 6, 2011

There is a line of thought that keeps coming back to my head. It is a really hard concept to internalize. How do you explain that a modern world, where most people in this country spend a big chunk of their time in front of some kind of screen, is producing an Internet filled with blogs that are all about going back to the past?

One of the most popular apps for the I-Phone is to help make pictures look vintage! Think about it! Don't we always wait for the next most recent I-Phone? To look more vintage? Hard to rationalize!

Think about online magazines, for example, one of the most futuristic ways of reading, and yet most of them are bringing back the old, the natural, the simple life! Funny, isn't? I don't think it is a bad thing. But it is hard to understand. The future was suppose to look like the Jetsons. Not like families living in a farm, raising goats and chickens, eating whole foods and yet designing beautiful blogs.

So here are two examples. Two beautiful online magazines with so much nature and vintage that you almost think that you are reading a magazine from the consignment store.

Have you heard about Babiekins? It is like entering a child's fairy tale.



Have you heard about Kinfolk? Another magical world.

Picture via this website

So Sit, Read and Relax. Welcome to the new old world!

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