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Mind the Gap
“Acceptance is not submission. It is acknowledgement of the facts of a situation, and then deciding what you’re going to do with it. ” (Kathleen Casey Theisen) There is the way things are, and there is the way things ought to be. We understand this when we look at the state of our world, the […]
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Give in or Stand Up?
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” (Sir Winston Churchill) You don’t have to be Neville Chamberlain (the failed British Prime Minister who tried to appease Hitler) for this Churchill quote to apply to you. Nor do I. All we have to do make the mistake of thinking that […]
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Breathe
“If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair. ” (Samuel Johnson) Right before you taxi down the runway, flight attendants share a simple message with you. In the case of a sudden loss of cabin […]
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We Can Hide, or We Can Heal
“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability…. To be alive is to be vulnerable.”(Madeleine L’Engle) Somewhere, somehow, we men were taught that vulnerability automatically means weakness. Perhaps we got it from war movies, where opponents […]
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Fork it Over
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” (Yogi Berra) Parenting requires constant decision making. For some reason, this kind of decisiveness often feels like a burden to people who are wishing to change. They worry that they will make a wrong choice and end up even worse than before. Here’s the […]
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Father Forgets
“I expected too much of youth. I measured you by the yardstick of my years.” (W. Livingston Larned) This is a quote from one of the most famous essays of all time. I found it in Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. The essay is in the form of a letter […]
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Costly Kids
“I could now afford all the things I never had as a kid, if I didn’t have kids.” (Robert Orben) Yep, kids are ridiculously expensive creatures. After you figure in food, diapers, clothing, doctor’s visits, braces, haircuts, birthday parties, and several trips to Disneyworld, the average American family spends close to the GNP of Guatemala […]
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Responsible to our Kids
“Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.” (Samuel Butler) Everybody is a great parent until they have kids. We all have great ideals about how we will relate with our kids; how we will give them both freedom and responsibility. How we will let them make mistakes so that they […]
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Plant a Tree
“One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade.” (Chinese proverb) On those days (and we all have them) when you don’t know if you have the energy to be ScreamFree – remember this quote. There is an even higher calling than being the best parent possible for your own child. By stretching yourself to […]
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Color My World
“Life is like an ever shifting kaleidoscope – a slight change and all patterns alter.” (Sharon Salzberg) Ask a number of parents how they feel at the end of a particularly hard day with a child and one word will crop up more than any other: overwhelmed. It is easy to get lost in the […]