Family-friendly meal times

Do your family meals turn into battlegrounds with children fighting adults for control of the plate?  Did you know that the single most frequent response when adults are asked what they remember as children involve family meals?  Think about your own family meal rituals.  What will your children remember in twenty-five years when they have your grandchildren sitting around their tables?  How will your legacy of happy family meals continue through the generations?  Here are a few suggestions for creating happier family meals:

1. Everyone does not have to eat the same thing as everyone else.  In other words, you don't need to force your children to eat peas if they don't like peas!
2. Encourage conversation by turning off the TV and iPods.
3. Have one family member help with the choice, preparation, and presentation of the dinner occasionally.
4. In a busy family, designate one day as family dinner day when everyone makes sure they are home at a specific time.
5. Develop unique family recipes, traditions, or grace before meals.

When you create happy meals for your family, research shows that children with asthma have fewer attacks, teens are less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and all family members have a lower tendency for eating disorders.  What are you having for dinner tonight?  Meat loaf or family togetherness?

The Traveling Trash Can

Remember the Feng Shui that is so important to the success of a classroom environment and the comfort of your home?  The same concept applies to your automobile.  During the summer months, it's very easy to leave the remnants of your trip to the lake, shore, or theme park at the end of the day when you're tired and the kids are cranky.  That's understandable!  But next morning, before the next day's events, remember to clean out those crumbs, orange peels, collected shells, and assorted other tidbits.  Not only will this improve the odor in your car but it should decrease your chances of mechanical failure because of the happy chi surrounding your car.  Clutter is a chi buster whether it is in your house, your classroom, your digital files, or your car!

Don't worry ... Be Happy!

When Bobby McFerrin wrote his song by that title, it instantly became my personal theme song.  For many years, I viewed worry as negative prayer.  If you worry enough about something, it's bound to happen.  Many years ago, an acquaintance worried that she would get cancer; five years later she was dead of liver cancer.  Just recently, I went against my own advice on a much less critical matter: I had on white capris for a Memorial Day party and was slicing strawberries shortly before I left, telling myself to not get any on my white pants. Yep, you guessed it - almost near the end of my slicing and dicing, a rogue slice landed on the white pants.  Where am I going with these personal musings?  To let you know that when you worry about your kids, the thing you worry about most may actually happen.  Your son is on the football team and you worry that he'll get injured, or your teenage daughter dates an older boy and you worry that she'll get pregnant ... is there anything good that can come from those worries?  NO!  If you are a praying person, you'll pray that your son and daughter stay safe.  Do you see the difference?  When you worry, you hope things won't happen.  When you pray, you hope for things that will happen.  Now, I'm not the type of person who actually asks God for gifts, so the nature of my prayers is slightly different from most folks.  But the bottom line is that when you worry, you actually draw in the problems of the universe like iron filings to a magnet.  When you visualize your son succeeding at the football game or your daughter enjoying good clean fun with the boyfriend, you also pull in the positive aspects of life like those iron fillings. So, when it comes to your children, let them play, discover their own mistakes, and fix their boo-boos when they happen. Pull the power of positive thinking into your life.

In other words, Don't Worry ... Be Happy!