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September 16, 2010

The Baby Sleep Project

I would like to share with everyone a project that was started by one of our students and his mom. It is called the Baby Sleep Project. The story is moving, the results amazing and the help that we can give will help others have the same miraculous results.

I will not tell you the story here, but encourage you to read it for yourself. I will tell you that it is about a baby born pre-mature, with half of a heart. The work done on him by the doctors was just unbelievable. The complimentary work continued by his parents though may have been the difference in his survival.

The Baby Sleep Project

The Baby Sleep Project is about helping other babies have the same recovery as this story. With the blessing of the doctors and belief by them that this work done was contributory to his regaining his strength and life, I encourage you to look at this project. We are trying to reach a goal prior to our young man’s 11th birthday.

February 9, 2009

Trustworthiness: not cheating or stealing

Being trustworthy is one of those qualities that we expect and want in our children. As a parent we want our children to do what is right, to tell the truth and to be fair by not cheating or stealing. Due to the busy schedule everyone has today though, we sometimes overlook the idea of deliberately teaching the virtues that we would like to see in our child.
If we wait to discuss with our children the character trait that leads to not cheating or stealing until there is an incident, we will find that the emotions are too high to make any inroads on that subject. It is the reason that we at Balanced Life Skills are committed to discussing these with our students when there are no obvious reason to do so.
Cheating and stealing is what we will be discussing this week and the affect it has on our ability to be trusted by others. As many times in the past, we will be emphasizing that the consequence of cheating or stealing is the loss of trust and we practice trustworthiness because it is the right thing to do.
This would be a great time for parents to tie into our discussions at home by asking your child what they would do if they saw one of their friends cheating in a game, or copying off of someone’s paper. Or what would they do if they saw someone taking something that did not belong to them? These type of short conversations where we listen deeply and express our family’s belief on this subject will have a great impact on their conduct later in their life.

October 21, 2008

Passion for your vision

Below is a post I made this morning in a new site I have been working on for the past month or so. Once a week I am trying to post some thoughts on leadership.

To become a leader we must have a reason to do so. Now there may be times when a person is thrust into a situation where leadership is necessary, but most of the time leaders come out of a vision or a passion from within themselves. We have all heard the saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We can add to that by saying that a person without a dream never had a dream come true, or never had a journey they felt compelled to take.
What is your vision, your journey? It may not be the same as someone else, but when others look in your eyes what do they see? Do they see the excitement for the new day coming? Do they see you as a person looking to the future for what could be? As they see the belief in your eyes, they will follow you. You are a leader.

Would you like to read more on this subject? Watch for this new site “Art of Leadership”

October 13, 2008

Responsibility to keep our promises

In our discussion about responsibility this week we will discuss keeping our promises. While it can be very easy to make promises, sometimes not so easy to keep those promises. But when we do we are showing that we are a R.A.D person. What does that stand for? Responsible, Accountable and Dependable.
We show that others can rely, count on and depend on us and that we can rely, count on and depend on ourselves. This idea of counting on ourselves is so important in our self esteem. Just as we would not trust a person that does not keep their word, we can grow to not trust ourselves for the same reason. I think about the example that Steven Covey uses when he talks about building a personal bank account by keeping our word to ourselves and others.
As we make promises to ourself and then keep them, we will grow in our belief in ourselves. If on the other hand we fail to do what we committed to do, our ‘personal bank account’ becomes depleted and we can become very discouraged even depressed. We can show our responsibility by keeping our promises.