When driving in the car with your kids, ask them to count motorcycles, cyclists, pedestrians. Prize to the highest count! This will train them to be on the lookout for them.
10
Getting dumped from a bad relationship or fired from a job that’s killing you is kind of like pooping your pants: Horrifying...but also a little bit of relief. Keep your perspective and you’ll be fine. xoxo.
20
Talk about how choices become habits. Habits can become addictions. Describe how pathways are literally dug into the brain and it's very hard to change them once those paths are made.
13-16
Depression can look a lot like a bad attitude. Try reacting to his chronic edginess with “Sounds like you’re in pain. You can come to me about anything, any time.”
15
My love for you will never run out - neither will God’s love / patience run out. I will always instruct, discipline and give consequences for bad behavior- because it’s my job to teach you. But there’s nothing you could do to lose my love. Remind them daily.
5-20
Don’t confuse a broken dream for a broken future. Or a broken heart for a broken life.
13, 15, 17, 19, 21
Anything you deny or fight will fight you back harder. Don’t fight the fear, pain, disappointment, etc. Let it in and let it teach you what it wants to teach you. Then you can part as friends.
15, 21
My ballet teacher used to punish us by making us sit on the floor and hold our arms up. It hurts! But you learn how to sit with pain. You learn how to endure and how to use your mind to make your muscles really don’t want to do.
14, 20
I hope you never abandon yourself to be loved or accepted by someone else. They’re not getting the real you and you’re missing out on the experience of being loved and accepted just as you are.
16,21
There’s a lot of virtue to the “Let them” theory of parenting. It’s their life. Drop out of school? Not what I would want, but as long as I’ve had my say, the decision is theirs to make. The mess will be theirs too, but that’s just life. Stop trying to control everyone and everything. Give yourself and everyone else a break and as long as it’s nothing harmful, let them. Don’t try to bend them to your will, and keep your opinions to yourself.
12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
Research says working with your hands is good for your mind and spirit. Even if it’s just folding laundry or doing yard work. Let’s find a hobby u might like working with your hands.
12
Everyone gets crushes but if you’re having an imaginary relationship do so with an imaginary person. It’s disrespectful of someone’s dignity to obsess over them. Not to mention your own dignity!
12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21
Fact: when you drink to excess you are significantly more likely to cause harm to someone or be harmed yourself. Being drunk means surrendering your ability to keep yourself and others safe.
12, 15, 18
Practice not putting stuff off. If it takes 10 seconds or less do it now. Then move up to 30 seconds or less. Keep going up to ~3 minutes. Good example is putting away laundry or emptying dishwasher, etc.
15
Turn on the closed captions on tv. Reading them is almost unconscious. Even better, set the audio to a language other than English and turn on English captions.
4-9
Share a few of our most embarrassing moments. Teach them it’s okay to laugh at yourself and even when you’re mortified in the moment being embarrassed isn’t fatal. (And it happens to everyone.)
11