Are You Going to Finish Strong?

This question may be one we want to ask ourselves, as parents, adults, leaders...In a world where we constantly want our children to be better than us we may loose site that we first need to challenge ourselves. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my parents was to keep striving to be better than I was...work harder...set higher goals. No one actually ever said this to me. Instead they showed me in their life. I recently got emailed a great video regarding this message...you may want to visit this page too so here is the address. Are you going to finish strong? http://www.maniacworld.com/are-you-going-to-finish-strong.html

Cell Phone Images

The Times had an article last week about teens casually sending semi-clothed or nude pictures of themselves through their cell phones. I have been approached by numerous parents lately who have shared their concerns about this new phenomenon. What I did not know until I read that article is that this is considered to be a criminal offense and can land a son or daughter in jail. And perhaps even worse, they can then be labeled as a sexual predator which follows them for years to come. Apparently, this practice has become popular among some of our underage tech savvy kids. And, true to form, they do not have a clue how this kind of exposing impulse can permanently change their lives. So, it is up to us as the coaching presence in their lives, to educate, monitor and even intervene before this kind of behavior takes place. Which means, we need to be a bit savvy ourselves about texting and the sending of cell phone images so we can try (notice, I used the word "try") to stay one step ahead of them. For their own good and ours...

Think More

At a luncheon Barbara and I were just at today a colleague of ours recommended, "Do more time thinking?" She felt we all could benefit from thinking something through 3 times, measuring twice and cutting once...a cool reference for craftsmen out there. It really struck me as an important piece of advise, not just for me but for the next generation. It seems like sometimes I am too rushed to really think something through, and then I act before I have a clear direction. I think Gen Y is suffering from this too. They feel pressured by our fast paced world to have a plan, have direction, know what there doing...in essence be grown up before they are. Thinking time can often be viewed as slow time, time you could be getting something done. But this is more a myth than truth. When you have enough time to think a thought over, when it finally gets put to action it is usually more accurate in execution. Be careful to take away too much thinking time from yourself and your child.

Mick Jagger & Texting

A recent article in the St. Pete Times, (11/23/08) cited some of the concerns a lot of parents have about the amount of time and energy their children are spending texting and online. The researchers stated that kids are actually learning a lot by spending countless hours online. "Online activities force kids to employ collaborative skills - as they share ideas and arguments with others who live worlds away." The truth is that most of us parents are just uncomfortable with the single focus our children seem to be exhibiting technologically. We feel justified in our concerns that their social skills could be lacking in some serious, life altering ways. Yet perhaps our parents felt the same way about the amount of time we spent glued to the telephone or hypnotized by the television. I can still remember my parents shock at the sight of Mick Jagger as he shrieked and strutted across out TV screen. Maybe we are just showing our age or are we?

"I Miss You"

Liking your parents. This just never happened when I went to college...OK, never may be too strong a word. But even if you did like your parents, you definitely wanted to be away from them through most of the growing up part. Boy were we anxious to be away from our parents. This is not so for most of the current college bound generation. They actually like their parents and are open about it, they also are very comfortable expressing their feeling about missing their parents...I guess all those psych books paid off. I was asked in an interview today what I thought about all this? Well, it's a complicated dynamic to explain and yes, I often think it's a healthy response to a history of extreme authoritarian style parenting. But just because your teen or young adult is saying 'I don't think I can do it without you' doesn't mean the correct parental response is to swoop in and rescue. Yes, we have a group of young adults who can now correctly identify their feeling and express them, but parents be cautious, to another adult(even a young one) the helpful response is not to fix it.

Christmas Presents

Hot Chocolate