You should feel safe with friends. They shouldn’t try to get you hurt or in trouble. Anyone who makes you feel unsafe is not your friend.


8-15



Look for answers where truth, laughter, kindness, beauty, compassion and love are found. (Not in outward appearances or illusions of perfection. Not in cynicism, apathy or destructiveness.)


10, 13, 16, 19, 21



Take the family on periodic “spending fasts.” As an exercise, go a day, a weekend or a week without spending any money. Make due with what you have. Encourage participation. Tie in spending fasts with holidays, lent or in support of a cause.


7



Be open to the possibility that you might be wrong.


12, 14, 17, 21



They can shower themselves if you install a hand-held shower head and install a suction cup wall-mount shower head holder lower on the shower wall. It’s easy to do and very cheap. They love it!


4-6



Be protective, never be possessive. watch out for your friends’ well-being, their good names, that’s what friends do. But friends don’t try to manipulate someone’s feelings, thoughts or actions.Same goes for romantic relationships.


10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 21



Watch the western “1883”.


13



One of the best things you can do for yourself is to cultivate a hobby. Anything positive/creative you can throw yourself into.


11, 13, 17, 21



Never resist a generous impulse.


9, 12, 19



Pour energy into what’s right with you and see what happens.


20, 21



Make “good trouble” as Rep. John Lewis said. Justice is won, not given.


14, 19



Approach difficult conversations looking to learn something, not to prove something.


16, 21



Things are rarely black and white. Most situations (and all people) are complex. A nuanced approach is necessary to understand them. You can’t learn - or love, if you’re judging.


17



An exercise in assumption. Have them answer “Just because I _______” doesn’t mean _________”.


10



We’re all just so delicate. It’s just our nature. Treat others (and yourself) accordingly. Even/ especially the ones that seem to be tough as nails or sharp as wire. Try not to lose sight of that.


13, 16, 20



Visit the Grand Canyon together


18-21



Plan a few screen-free weekends every year. (Reticket until 16.)


7



Sit down together and write house rules on anger. We don’t hit or bite. Do we yell and slam doors? Name-call? Say “I don’t love you” ? Bad words? What’s appropriate anger and what’s unacceptable?


4-6



Blessing for the Brokenhearted: Poem by Jan Richardson ___________ "There is no remedy for love but to love more." – Henry David Thoreau ________________________ ________________________ Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love. __________Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound, when every day our waking opens it anew. ___________Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this— as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it, as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still, as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless.


20



Sleep paralysis runs in the family. If you ever feel like you’re awake but you can’t move - don’t panic. It will pass in a minute. It’s just a lag time in your sleep/wake cycle.


20



The kindest person in the room may not necessarily be the smartest. But the cruelest person is always the dumbest.


10, 15, 21



Spend time with people you admire, in person and biographies, documentaries, novels and movies.


14-17, 21



When backing up a trailer, put your hand at the bottom of the steering wheel and move the steering wheel in the direction you want the trailer to go.


19



Sometimes it just takes a while to catch on. I had to watch Game of thrones 3 or 4 times before I could keep track of all the characters and subplots. Record your lectures so you can replay them a few times.


13,15,19



Put down your phone and be in the moment. Teach this. Model this.


7



Ask: What are you responsible for?


15-18



Sign up for typing class. (Keyboarding)


13



Zero-cost method to reaching your goals (academic, career, fitness and health): Get up an hour earlier. You’ll be amazed how much you can get done and how “on top of it” you feel.


16, 18, 21



Anger is the bodyguard of sadness.


14



Family trip to a NASCAR race..


6