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Life Skills: Self Control – The Definition

Teaching Children Life SkillsEach month we discuss a life skill with all of our students.  This month the word is Self Control and will be defined in the following ways for our students.  

 

Young students:  “I stop and think before I act!”

Older students: Taking the time to think through choices rather than acting on impulse.

Each age group has a worksheet that parents can use to continue the discussion at home with their children, and one for adults to allow them to think more deeply about the life skill and how it applies to them.  Would you like to receive the worksheet?  Just send us an email and tell us the age of your child you would like to share this with.  We will email it and you can follow our discussions here on our website.

If you would like to become a member of Balanced Life Skills, come a TRY A CLASS FREE.  We are not your typical martial arts school.  Balanced Life Skills works with school aged children to increase their focus, confidence and life skills.  We teach the arts of physical fitness, self defense, creativity while also encouraging community engagement and service.

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Parenting: Bully Prevention For Your Child

What should you do if your child is being bullied in school? Will you even know? If the the child is not talking about it, are there other signs that may help you know that they need help and some skills to deal with those kind of behaviors?

parenting-classesThe Bullying Prevention Class for Parents will be held on February 5, 2013 at 9:15 AM at Balanced Life Skills. The class led by bully prevention expert, Joe Van Deuren, will answer these questions along with why children do not tell and how to help your child even if they are not the target of bully at this time.

All parents in the community are invited no matter how old your child is and please feel free to invite your friends and neighbors. In our last class one of the participants said, “Every parent should take this class, I learned so much.”

Watch for our Focus on Friendship class for students too. The next one is on February 8th at 5 PM for Kindergarten and First Graders, both boys and girls. Call for more details.

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Learning to Listen with Empathy

Teaching Children Life SkillsOne way that empathy is built in a person is by more awareness of oneself. The better you understand yourself and your emotions, the better you will be able to appreciate and relate to the feelings of others. An important step in developing empathy is learning to listen with empathy. Listening is not just hearing. Rather listening with empathy requires that the way we filter the message may need to be ‘turned off’ while we work on understanding how others feel.

There are five ways that we filter messages that influence what we hear.

  1. The right / wrong filter. If while we are listening to the other person while at the same time thinking about how we can justify our position Continue reading “Learning to Listen with Empathy”