10 Tips for Parents from John Marsden

10 Tips for Parents by Australian Author John Marsden

1. Give children space. Back off. Let them roam. Let them be bored. Don't over-plan their lives. Cut way back on the after-school activities programs.

2. Keep away from all those ghastly, soulless, sterile playgrounds. Keep away from shopping malls. Look for real places. Wild places.

3. Be an adult. Say no to your children at least once a day. If the role of Adult in your family is vacant, then one of your children will fill it. And it won't be pretty.

4. Don't take up all the space. If you are dominating, loud, forceful, your children are highly likely to become passive, lacking spirit and personality … and/or sullen.

5. Believe about 40 per cent of the dramatic stories your children tell you of the injustices, corruption and satanic practices happening at school.

6. Teach them empathy. For example, after their jubilant victory celebrations when they win a sporting match, remind them that their jubilation was only possible because someone else – the losers – have been made to feel awful.

7. Help them develop language skills. Don't finish their sentences for them. Don't correct them when they mispronounce a word – they'll work it out sooner or later. Ask them open-ended questions, that need a detailed answer, not Yes/No questions.

8. Make sure they have regular jobs/duties at home and that those jobs are done to a consistently high standard.

9. Don't whinge endlessly about the miseries of your adult life. A lot of children now are fearful about growing up because their parents paint such a grim picture of the awfulness ahead.

10. Teach them to be very wary of people who Absolutely Know the Absolute Truth about Absolutely Everything! The colour of truth is always grey. Extreme positions are for the ignorant. Every creature, every person and every situation is complex. The universe is a wonderful mystery.

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Number 10 is a home hitter for me. While I am no longer an active parent raising the next generation, we all interact daily with humans of all ages and these are great tools to keep in our tool box of what it means to be kind humans to each other. 

Macmillan's Pocket Classics ~ A history lesson on the life of Robert O. Boyd

 

This time of year, it is common to be on the hunt for engaging books to read, and the Macmillan's Pocket Classics are always top of the search list. This November I found Poe's Prose Tales on eBay from a seller in Sheldon Connecticut. The inscription on the inside cover of one of the previous, possibly the original owner is Robert O. Boyd. There is also the word Enterprise, most likely a town as it is capitalized, as well as what appears to be Oregon (although it is squished along the edge, the g is distinctive from the the y and p in the other writing).

Engage research mode on the interwebs... we found the most likely match for Robert.

​Robert Osborn Boyd was born on 29 July 1903, in Kennewick, Benton, Washington, United States, his father, Daniel Boyd Sr, was 27 and his mother, Mary Ethelwyne Axtell, was 28. He lived in United States in 1949 and Portland, Multnomah, Oregon, United States in 1950. He died on 10 September 1979, in Alexandria, Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, at the age of 76, and was buried in Enterprise, Wallowa, Oregon, United States.

We were a bit miffed at first why this book was in Connecticut if the previous owner wrote they lived in Oregon. Old books of this age usually don't travel quite so far east from a westerly home, especially in early to mid 20th century. People moving west was a normal course of trajectory in that age and time. This book seemed a long way away from home but the information we found tells us that when Robert passed away in Virginia this book stayed behind on the east coast and his body came back to Oregon.

Always interesting to research where the books in our collection have traveled. 

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First Snow

 

Did I tell you about the first snow of this winters season? It was soggy sloppy and peaceful. It was crispy fresh. Altering the landscape and our to-do list. Time to move back indoors with the project list.

Happy change of the season to you and yours. 

Much Needed Rain

Finally, a much needed day of rain. The roof gargoyles are streaming at full speed and the leaves on the trees sound as if they are offering the clouds a standing ovation. Their rhythmic clapping reverberates through the forest spreading their joy and relief.

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Forget-me-not Summer Joys

The joy of summer is in bloom and my heart is full.

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When...

When summer drops joy into your day.

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Another

They think there will always be another. Another friend, another lover, another moment. Another town. Another job. Another day. Another dawn at the threshold to greet fate. Welcome, come in inevitable. You've been waiting. Patient soul.

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Dancing Shadows

When evening shadows frolic with delight!

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Our Soul

We have no control over where our soul gets planted on earth. Our soul does not have the privilege of choice. It can't plead its way into abundance. It can't buy its way out of poverty. Our soul, our person is simply where we wake to find ourselves.

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Self Evident Truth

If ever you question your belief in one person or another, dig deep in your heart as there lies the truth.

Our world is in possession of humans who will deceive you with their twisted version of truth. They will attempt to rewrite your past into something they can manipulate to bolster their own self image.

Leeches will bleed you dry for their own edification. Lose not yourself in the letting. Hearts truth, place your trust, it's your only defense.

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Regret

Regret falls from the sky like bitter licorice drops. Saturating the ground with sticky residue. It clings to your shoes, and tracks through your house. Unable to remove its remnants, regret collects the remaining discarded grey dusty ash left behind by laments rash misdeeds.

~MDJG~  

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Current Habits Challenge

Below written by Chuck Swoboda August 2020 - worth sharing

Southwest Airlines Doesn’t Settle For Best Practice – And You Shouldn’t Either

"Best practices are often sold as the answer to all your problems — if you follow these steps, you will likely have success. Even better, you won’t get in trouble if the results aren’t what you wanted. However, the truth is that best practices limit your ability to impact significant change. The same boundary conditions that prevent failure, also limit success and get in the way of uncovering the best ideas.

Challenge your current habits!

Habits are a powerful and useful tool to get things done effectively and efficiently. But once formed, they often go unquestioned and unchallenged. When left unchecked, they become an excuse for accepting best practices and ignoring the inevitable truth that there is always a better way."

Mark Twain once said: “A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.”

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We have been persuaded!

Over the past 100 years we have been persuaded to become the ultimate consumer, perhaps against our will, and most definitely without our conscious knowledge. 

Below is from "A Brief History of Consumer Culture" published on The MIT Press Reader. Which is an article adapted from Kerryn Higgs book “Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet”

Sobering words to ponder:

Frederick Allen wrote in1931, “Business had learned as never before the importance of the ultimate consumer. Unless [the consumer] could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, [], cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets.”

"President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes welcomed the demonstration “on a grand scale [of] the expansibility of human wants and desires,” hailed an “almost insatiable appetite for goods and services,” and envisaged “a boundless field before us … new wants that make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.” In this paradigm, people are encouraged to board an escalator of desires (a stairway to heaven, perhaps) and progressively ascend to what were once the luxuries of the affluent."

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Placement

If the soul has a say in where it was to be placed on earth, the conscience keeps no remembrance. If it was merely a request, how does it know that it was granted or denied?

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Sell them their dreams!

"Sell them their dreams. Sell them what they longed for and hoped for and almost despaired of having. Sell them dreams—dreams of country clubs and proms and visions of what might happen if only. After all, people don’t buy things to have things. They buy things to work for them. They buy hope—hope of what your merchandise will do for them. Sell them this hope and you won’t have to worry about selling them goods."

Advice to participants in a 1923 convention of marketers - William R. Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture

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Consumption

If they can't sell you your desires, they will sell you your fears.

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On Being Right

An overwhelming desire to be right, could lead to an irrevocable wound in a treasured relationship.

Granted this is a complicated statement, and there are multi-layered factors that need to be considered before any semblance of an answer can find a foundation. Starting with the type of relationship: is it a parent and a child, extended family members, life-long friends or a partner relationship; each hold background causal factors, that lead to the desire to be right. Each person’s life experiences, as well as, the relationship being healthy and balanced or shrouded by an underlying complication, needs to be measured as a foundational block to this statement’s validity.

So today it is worth asking, in this moment in time is being right worth the wound?

Secondary question one might ask: is it a desire to be right or is it a desire to prove another person wrong?

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Hershey's Bar Day

It won't fill your belly but it'll make you forget you're hungry. If only for a while. 

May our hearts be momentarily filled up in the memory of your greatness!

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Gusty Days

Gusty summer days elapse with a favorable friendly wind across our cheeks. Autumn days our backs bend against a brisk discomforting chill. Winter days, the birds perch among the unmoving ice burdened branches, and our ears strain heeding the slightest motion of life. Nerves unsettle in the frosty quiet stagnant stillness. We anxiously await the tender days of spring.

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Landing the Truth

 We are not responsible for anyone else's happiness, and a safe landing is not always a greaser.

Wisdom from my aviator husband.

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