What Is Love

Everyone needs to know he is loved, most especially your teen. He wants to know. above else, that YOU love him. And not because of anything he does but simplty because he exists.

Your child is not a mind reader. You want to tell him, "I love you!" every single day--actually, many times every single day. No one can hear that phrase too may times so long as it is genuinely spoken. Your kid will know whether or not you mean it.

To let you know, each of us has our own definition of love. Maybe for your child, love is eating the breads you baked for him--his favorite kinds. And maybe it is spending time, 1:1 right after school so he can unload the stress and sahre the excitmeent of the day.

Ask your teenager what makes him feel and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you love him. Guessing may lead you to thinking you are doing everything you possibly can for an ungrateful child who accepts what you do but feels unloved, not cared about at all.

How sad it is that this world is filled with people who are cherished but simply because they are not shown love according to thier definition of love think they must be unlovable.

What is love to you? What actions does a person need to do for you to know you are loved? Tell your partner, your family and your friends. There is no such thing as, "If they really loved me they would know." People are not mind readers. We assume what makes us feel good also makes others feel good. Not so.

Instead of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you how about doing unto others as they would do onto to you. In other words, show them love they interpret as love.

Conscious Living Changes Everything

You are your child’s role model—whether you know it or not, whether you want to be or not. Your child does what you do rather than what you say⎯or the exact opposite just to be different from you. Your young person acts without an awareness of how or why he does as he does.

Do you think knowing how you live your life, since you influence your child's life, could be powerful information to have? You can by living consciously.

Most people go through life accepting what comes their way. They believe that life just happens. John Lennon spoke for many people with his lyric, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Mighty disempowering thought.

The thing is, life is what you create it to be. Your belief system can be changed if you want to change it. The way to change your beliefs is to change your daily living patterns, i.e., your life style.

Creating happiness does not involve a "how-to" system as much as it involves a "wake up and live" a conscious life style. Everything that exists in the world starts as thought. Every invention was first an idea in someone's imagination. Every action you take or fail to take was first something you thought about.

Thought creates the world. Thought creates your world. Thought creates your child’s world. What you think about events determines how you respond to events. How your child interprets events determines how he responds to them.

Imagine how differently you would experience each day with the knowledge you have control over how you respond to life events. Do you think your child would be empowered by knowing he is in control of a world where he thinks he is helpless?

What happens happens. Interestingly, in Japan there is one word that means both crisis and opportunity. The same event is a disaster to one person and an opportunity to another.

How you choose to act or not act is up to you. Period. Life was never meant to be difficult. People, with their thoughts, make it hard or easy.

How do you see life? Do you know that struggle is optional? What are you teaching your youngster about experiencing life?

Pay attention to your thoughts. Stop and ask yourself what you were thinking when you experienced a certain emotion or reacted a certain way. You will uncover your unconscious way of life. The next time you experience the same kind of event make a conscious choice to act differently. Teach your child to do the same.

Ah! That is how simple it is to be in control and live on purpose. Life does not simply happen to us. Life happens to us exactly as we choose to experience it. Share the gift of that knowledge with your child.


Live in the truth that life is an adventure to be savored in every moment!

Nuclear Families

Once upon a time families included grandparents and aunts and uncles—you know extended familes. The concept of the nuclear family of mom, dad and the kids is relatively new.

With this modernization of the family picture came loss—of companionship, know-how from people who had already raised kids, a listening ear and smiling face, someone to hug the young parent when the work just gets overwhelming. Heck, just being able to step out of the house for a few minutes knowing your child is not alone inside—all of that got lost when families shrank to parents and their children.

And so life became even more challenging. Parenting experts sprang up in the form of medical experts, like Dr. Spock—people who never had kids giving advice to mothers and fathers! Come on!! Does that make any sense at all? Can there really be a way to raise kids that is one size fits all? I don’t know. What do you think?

Celebrate Differences

I guarantee that all kids need hugs and love and being told how great they are and how much they are cherished just because they exist. Beyond those basics I would say, based on my own experience, do what fits for each child.
Each child is unique and responds to everything in life in a different manner than that of his sibling. Whether or not you know it, you treat your kids differently. Yes, you do. Don’t take my word for it. Ask them. By the way--it is okay to treat them differently becasue they different people.