Radio Show: The Clutter Diet

Listen to our recent radio show when we talked with Lorie Marrero of the Clutter Diet.  She gave us some great tips for reducing clutter and putting order back into our lives.  And now through the end of June, listeners can save $5 off anything in the Clutter Diet Store with the coupon code purpose.  Offer expires June 30, 2010 and does not apply to the membership programs.  You can listen to the replay of our show by using the player below, downloading the mp3, or via iTunes.

Summer Structure: Maintaining Structure Helps Ease Transitions

Laura Rolands of My Attention Coach
When Summer arrives, structure often gets thrown away with all of the unusable school supplies.  I recommend that you do something different this year.  Consider maintaining structure in your family lives this Summer to help ease the transition back to school in the Fall.

When working with clients who have ADHD, I encourage them to identify the ways additional structure can help them.  Routine and structure can help develop positive habits to overcome some common ADHD challenges like disorganization and poor time management.  Likewise, you can benefit from looking at the ways that structure can help your family this Summer.  Especially if any of your children have ADHD, the structure help creates meaning and calm in a sometimes hectic world.

One way to create or maintain structure in your lives is to keep family time consistent with what you do during the school year.  If you have a regular family game night each week, keep it up this summer.  Perhaps you could switch to outside games instead of the traditional board games you have been playing.  Even though schedules may get a little hectic in the Summer, be sure to have at least one family meal together.  When dinner is not an option due to evening activities, plan breakfast together!  Lunch can even be fun if that works with Mom and Dad’s work schedules.

It is important to maintain a consistent bedtime for children during the Summer.  While the time may be later than during the school year, consistency is key.  Don’t get talked into midnight one day and feel like you need to get everyone in bed by 8 the next day because everyone had such a bad day due to lack of sleep.  Consistency now will mean an easier transition back to school.

Mornings are another key area where you should think about maintaining or creating structure.  If you don’t have a morning routine, developing one now will really help you get school off to a great start in the Fall.  Have your kids practice using an alarm clock to get out of bed rather than sleeping the day away.

Decide what structure you will maintain this summer and start implementing it today!  Enjoy your family time together!

Laura Rolands is the founder of LSR Coaching and Consulting, LLC. She is a coach whose passion is to support, lead and inspire independence and success for people who have either been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD or who are facing other attention-related challenges. Her clients include individuals with attention-related challenges and/or their parents. If you have any questions or more suggestions to add, please visit her website at www.MyAttentionCoach.com .

What Does It Mean to Be a “Good Dad”?

Sandra Huber of The Soulful Parent

Things are very different today than they were 50 years ago, wouldn’t you say? We would all probably agree that when it comes to parenting things seem to have challenged exponentially.  I see the relationship my husband has with our daughter for example and I am always amazed how intimate, fun and challenging it is. He’s not the father his father was. And I wonder, how does that happen? How do you become an affectionate, loving, caring, involved parent, when you didn’t have that as an example when you were growing up?  From his point of view, it’s as simple as doing the things he would have wanted his own dad to have done. But I tend to think it’s more than that. It’s a commitment to show up in our daughter’s life fully; it’s a decision to express love in words and in deeds. It’s respecting when she says no and listening to her, encouraging her all the way, not in spite of the fact that she’s a girl, but because of it.

When most of our fathers were raising us, a “good father” was synonymous with “good provider.” He supported his family financially, mowed the lawn, washed the car, and maintained discipline in the home. No one seemed to care whether he ever spent much time with his children; in fact, he was discouraged from doing so, and told to leave the kids to his wife. When you think about it, it wasn’t too long ago, when the main responsibility of men was to brave the wild best of the jungle, hunt for food and provide their families with food and shelter. Women were with the kids, pregnant, nursing, and gathering. Men were in charge of protecting the family from the outside forces and dangers. They were brave, strong and daring. Women were nurturing and kept the species going (thank God!).

I have discovered among my friends, that there is truly a new “breed” of dads out there. They are interested in many aspects of their child’s growth. It’s important for them to allow their boys to learn to be gentle and kind, not always aggressive and competitive. I also see them encouraging and empowering their girls to go out and be assertive, to reach out for their goals. I have noticed that the boys my friends are raising and I know that they will not be afraid of or shamed out of expressing love and tenderness. I see the girls my friends are raising and can’t help but notice that they relish their strength with a sense of courage and adventure.

As I watch my daughter rough-house with this “bear of a man” that my husband is at 6’6″ and 265 lbs, I can see that he’s committed to being flexible with rules, honoring decisions more than compliance, listening more and showing his love for this strong-willed 8 year-old whether it’s accepted, rejected or somewhere in between.

And that is why I love this man.

Sandra is the “soul” and “coach” behind the Soulful Parent. She has worked in Early Intervention, Special Education and has supported many families in the road to successful parenting. She became a PCI Certified Parent Coach® because she’s deeply passionate about changing the world, one family at a time. Sandra believes that life becomes a more enjoyable journey when you lead from your strengths! She can be contacted Sandra {at} thesoulfulparent(.)com and www.thesoulfulparent.com for more information about seminars, presentations and individual coaching services.

5 Ways to Make Summer Memories Last

Mandi Ehman of Organizing Your Way

Summertime holds a million memory-making possibilities — from picnics and water balloon fights to beach vacations and camping trips — and offers an opportunity to break from the norm and just spend time together as a family. But it’s also easy to get so busy that we forget to just sit back and savor each of those moments and store them away where we’ll remember them for decades to come.

Here are five ideas for making your summer memories last beyond this summer — for you and your children:

1. Take pictures.
The most obvious way to capture your summer memories is with your camera. Take pictures of the special things you do as well as the everyday moments, and be sure to capture the places you go, the things you do and the people you spend time with as well. And most importantly? Hand the camera to someone else or use the timer to capture some pictures of yourself with your family as well.

2. Print the pictures out.
With the advent of digital technology, more of our pictures find a permanent home on our computer’s hard drive rather than in our home. While this allows us to capture a lot more moments than we would be able to with film, it’s important to take the time to print out some of your favorite pictures as well. Create a basket of loose pictures on your coffee table, send them as postcards to friends and family or add them to a standard photo album. To this day, I love to sit and flip through the photo albums from my childhood, even though I’ve seen the pictures a million times before!

3. Set aside time for journaling.
Share pictures and stories on your blog, start a summer scrapbook or record your thoughts in a classic journal, capturing the funny things your kids say, your new experiences together and the special moments you share as a family. Capturing those moments in words can add another layer to the pictures you may already be taking and also gives you a chance to sit and reflect on them so that they will hold a more permanent place in your memory.

4. Teach your kids to journal.
My 5-year-old daughter started journaling last year, even before she could write, as part of our first year of homeschooling, and it’s something I want to encourage her to do even more this summer and next year. Children as young as 4 or 5 can draw pictures of their favorite activities and memories, and you can add captions or record their stories until they’re able to do it on their own. Give each of your children a summer journal or create a family journal where you can all take turns sharing your thoughts and memories. Remember that it won’t be perfect, so don’t stress out about a crumpled page or a scribbled picture. In the end, it will be a treasury of memories that you’ll cherish!

5. Take video too.
Some summer memories were meant to be captured on video camera — zipping down a backyard slip-and-slide, splashing in the pool and singing songs around the campfire, just to name a few. If you have a video camera, make sure it’s in a place where you can quickly grab it (and where it will remind you to pick it up!) so that you can capture your children’s voices and energy as well as the still images.

Children grow up too fast, there are no guarantees in life and time is fleeting. We hear these cliches so often that they’re easy to brush aside, but they’re cliches because they’re true. Take time this summer to create and savor memories with your family!

What is your favorite way to capture summer memories?

Mandi Ehman is a work-at-home mom to four spunky little girls. She believes that organizing only lasts if you do it your way – to fit your needs, your preferences and your lifestyle – and she shares organizing and time management tips at Organizing Your Way.

Radio Show: Summer Boredom Busters & REAL Food

Listen to our recent radio show as we talked with Amy Kaldor-Bull of FamilyFun Magazine and Susan McCreadie and Angelle Batten of NourishMD.com.  You can listen online by using the player below, downloading the MP3, or via iTunes.

Summer Sanity Savers for Busy Moms

Susan Heid of The Confident Mom

Transitioning from School to summer is hard on kids, but I think it is even harder on us moms!  If we have been lucky enough to have all our kids in school during the day, we are somewhat use to some time “alone”.  This abrupt change when that last bell rings for the school year can put some moms into the funny farm.  Seriously!  But with some quick planning and some deep breathing – we can all make it through another summer.

I would love to share with you a few ideas that have come up in coaching calls that I have had with other busy moms lately as we tackle the issue of “summer” and the added stress it can have for moms.  Hopefully a few will be right on target and make your summer more of a dream than a struggle.

Trading kids

So this is a great way for you to still have some time “off” even when you are suppose to be “on duty” 24/7 now!  Do you have a friend or neighbor with similar age and number of children?  Why not coordinate a day per week where you take all the kids and she gets a break and then she takes the kids and you get a break!  You could work this as an all day event, but I much prefer the before or after lunch schedule. Say you pick up her kids at 1 PM, they’ve already had lunch and off you go to do some exploring with your kids along for the ride.  I know other moms have realized this secret….shhhhh…… “The more kids that you have in your arena does not mean it is more work!”  Come one, you know what I mean!  Choose a fun activity (beach, park, zoo, etc) and supervise everyone having a good time.  You may even be surprised that you can get a few chapters of your favorite book in while they are splashing about.  The reward is your afternoon FREE of kids – just imagine how wonderful that break will be and what you can do during that time.

Routines and Schedules

This is non-negotiable!  Even though it is summer and everyone wants to be lazy and “hang out” you still need some kind of structure to create a flow in your home.  We have a much more laid back summer routine for the morning, but never the less the kids know what needs to be accomplished by a certain time and what they’re responsible for.  It allows for everyone to actually do something rather than waste the day away.  Some days it is fine to lay around til noon in your jammies, we even schedule “Pajama Day” at our house, but if it becomes a habit you are just asking for trouble.  Set up some expectations and stick to them.

Plan Ahead

Sit down with your kids and come up with some ideas of fun things you ALL would like to do this summer.  We have done this many times and it works great.  It is amazing what they come up with.  Then we take out the calendar and actually plan a time to do the activity.  If you miss this critical step you will likely have a hard time fitting it in.  When you fail to plan you plan to fail.  You might choose a day of the week to “do” these ideas, maybe Wednesday’s.  Then everyone looks forward to the next week and the activity that is planned.

Time Outside

So this one is an easy one, getting your kids outside – but they key here is getting YOU outside!  Stop dusting the coffee table, checking email or folding laundry – get outside and enjoy the weather with the kids.  You can even create a “deal” with them.  If you are outside for ________ amount of time, they help you with a household duty that you would normally be doing during that time.  Then they learn how to help out and how it can benefit them too.  I think give and take is a great lesson to learn early.  If they give you 15 minutes of laundry folding, they get you outside for an hour having a water balloon fight or tie dying T-shirts.

Easy Meals

Come up with some easy lunch ideas that your kids can either help you prepare or do it all themselves.  I especially love when I have leftovers and the kids just re-heat those.  It makes it great for everyone.  We do like to experiment at our house though,  so usually we plan one day in the week to do a special lunch recipe, making it part of an activity.  This can be making pizza, homemade macaroni and cheese or another favorite you have.  Make sure you plan ahead to avoid fast-food, especially if you are going to be out and about.  The worst habit you can fall into during the summer is quickly running through the drive-thru because it is the “easiest”.  At times it is necessity, but a little planning can prevent the trip!

Check Your Community

There is often a lot of great FREE programs offered by the library, community centers and even businesses.  Make sure you Google your local area for “free kids events” and see what comes up.  Our local area has free kids concerts, low-cost movies, puppet shows, and discounted park admissions that can all be easily found and enjoyed.  I cannot tell you how many concerts we went to one summer when my kids were fairly young – in fact they still talk about it and we are 10 years away from that time!  You are creating memories here – take the time to create the good kind.

Pray

Keep doing what you need to do in order to keep fresh and connected.  This is truly the best sanity saver that I know!

I am just finishing up a great Summer Calendar of Activities for Moms.  Make sure you check my web-site or get on my newsletter to be notified when that comes out.  A printable calendar for June, July and August with nearly 100 activities, crafts, recipes – all with linkable instructions, all for only $3.99. I can’t wait – it is sure to make your summer a little easier and especially more FUN, I know it will be helping me out!

Susan Heid helps moms get the BIG picture on how their home is functioning and then helps them gain relief with a personalized plan of action to give life changing results. Susan’s training as a PCI Certified Parent Coach. a Certified Family Manager Coach and a ScreamFree Certified Leader gives her a unique combination to encourage and support busy moms in the art of Home and Family Management. Empowering Moms and Strengthening Families is her passion. Are you ready to make positive changes that will impact your family for generations? You can start by visiting The Confident Mom and requesting her FREE ebook, “Getting Kids to Cooperate and Become Team Players – 10 Essential Strategies and Solutions”.

Radio Show: Free Range Kids & Nature Deficit Disorder

Listen to our recent radio show as we talked with Lenore Skenazy of Free Range Kids and Cheryl Charles of the Children & Nature Network.  You can listen online by using the player below, downloading the mp3, or via iTunes.