guidelines – Personal Growth Cafe

June 24, 2012July 4, 2012

Enjoy Lifelong Learning on a Shoestring Budget

Lifelong learning enables you to enrich your mind and expand your career opportunities even if you completed your formal education a long time ago. If you’re on a limited budget, there are still many ways, both in your community and online, to build your knowledge and skills.

Educational Opportunities in Your Community

1. Visit your local library. Borrowing books is a good enough reason to make a trip to your local library, but they now offer much more. Search the downloadable media for audio books and test-preparation guides for graduate school exams and civil service tests. Browse the event calendar for free lectures and courses.

2. Give yourself a museum membership. Museum memberships are a great bargain compared to the ticket prices for sporting events or movies. Being a member will usually give you access to special events and classes for the whole family.

3. Take advantage of education benefits at work. Check your employee manual for tuition discounts and other benefits your employer may offer. Ask if you can organize a lunchtime speaker series. Many local professionals will welcome the opportunity to share their expertise on financial management or vegetarian cooking.

4. Do an internship. In a tough job market, internships are one way to get the training you need to succeed. Target organizations where you can make a contribution while learning new skills.

5. Volunteer your services. Volunteer work goes far beyond stuffing envelopes. Sign up to assist with a project outside your usual line of work. Most communities have nonprofit clearinghouses with a wide variety of choices or contact a favorite charity you already support.

6. Let your kids instruct you. Ask your kids to teach you what they’re learning in school. It’s a great way to help them master their coursework while you pick up a new language or review geometry.

7. Teach a class. Try teaching a class on a subject where you have some expertise at your local church or community center. Preparing for classes and interacting with students is an effective way to deepen your own knowledge.

8. Retire to a university town. University towns are becoming increasingly attractive to those who are retiring with smaller savings than they expected. You get access to all kinds of educational resources with a lower cost of living than many major cities.

9. Search for financial aid. If your goals require that you go back to school, there are options for defraying the costs. Talk with the financial aid office at the university you select about scholarships, loans, grants, and veteran benefits that may be available to you.

Educational Opportunities In The Digital World

1. Take free university courses. Hundreds of respected universities and colleges offer free online courses. You can download audio and video courses from Oxford or Ivy League schools on every subject imaginable, from poetry to physics.

2. Switch to smarter YouTube channels. Tear yourself away from the videos of kittens petting puppies to visit organizations like the Aspen Institute that airs nonpartisan seminars on critical world issues or the Nobel Prize where past and current Nobel Laureates talk about cultural and scientific advances.

3. Turn on the subtitles. Foreign movies are a fun way to help you learn a new language or brush up if you’re getting rusty. Use the subtitles while you watch to learn correct pronunciation and expand your vocabulary. Some television stations also air subtitled foreign news programs where you can learn about world events while you improve your language skills.

Enjoy the thrills of new discoveries and the satisfaction of improving your mind. Many educational opportunities cost little or nothing, so all you need is a commitment to lifelong learning.

June 24, 2012July 4, 2012

Building Your Child’s Character

One of the most important jobs you do as a parent is build the characters of your children. Building your child’s character ensures your child grows up to be a hard worker, caring individual, and honest person.

Implementing these ideas can help you successfully develop good character in your child:

1. Provide specific verbal encouragement. When you give comments specific to a character aspect you wish to develop in your child, you’re providing your child with some subtle directions about how to behave.

• For example, if you want your child to value friendships and being a good friend, you could offer feedback such as, “You’re a very good friend to Sam because you let him go first when he comes over to play.”

• To reinforce your child’s efforts to be polite and understanding, let your child know you notice his polite and understanding ways through comments such as, “Wow, that was really nice of you to keep your cool when your sister took your candy.”

• When you want to instill honesty in your child, you could say something like “I like the way you were honest about not brushing your teeth. Let’s go brush them now.”

2. Volunteer together. Even young children can be taken to the homeless shelter to hand out sandwiches. Instill the value of helping others by introducing your child to volunteer activities. When you help others in the presence of your child, he sees that volunteering to help others is important.

3. Give separate consequences for being untruthful. Parents often struggle to figure out how to encourage truthful behavior. One way to extinguish lying behaviors is to issue a separate consequence for the act of lying itself.

• Technically, there will be times when you’re providing 2 consequences: a consequence for the untruth told as well as for the unacceptable behavior. For example, if your child told you he got his homework done and an hour later you discover he didn’t, you’d give 2 consequences.

• One consequence would be for telling a lie and the other for not getting his homework done. This suggested parenting technique discourages lying and encourages truth-telling.

• You can explain that “If you would have told the truth about not getting your homework done, you would have been grounded for 2 days. Now, since you lied about it, that’s another 2 days of grounding.”
4. Briefly discuss important traits. As a parent, you can teach patience by talking about how we all must occasionally wait in lines. Give examples like how you wait your turn at the grocery store or the doctor’s office. Explain it’s the normal way of things whenever there are a lot of people involved.

5. Model character traits that matter to you. Of course, the best way to build character is to demonstrate positive traits in the company of others. If you want your children to have good character, keep in mind you’re their best model. In everything you do, vow to “be the lesson” that’s best learned through observation.

6. Assign tasks regularly to each child. Set up tasks for your kids to complete on their own so they learn self-reliance. Then compliment them on how well they did. Reinforce their efforts with a look, a pat on the back, or a quick hug. Couple these things with your positive verbal feedback, “I’m so proud of you for sweeping the kitchen. That really helped me out.”

As you practice these methods, recognize you’re instilling a sense of morality in your kids, so they know how to determine what the right choice is.

You have the awesome power to build your child’s character. Take advantage of this power by using it wisely and your kids will enjoy these values and skills for their entire lives.

June 24, 2012July 4, 2012

A Parent’s Guide to Gardening With Kids

Gardening with your children is a fun and productive way to spend time together, reconnect with nature and get some exercise. Here are some techniques that will help everyone enjoy the experience.

Benefits of Gardening With Kids

1. Improve your family’s eating habits. Your kids will be more excited about eating fruits and vegetables that they’ve grown themselves. The anticipation of harvesting will make them want to try new foods.

2. Become more environmentally conscious. TV and the internet keep kids indoors much of the time. Working in the dirt with plants and insects is a valuable reminder about our dependence upon the natural world.

3. Reinforce a sense of gratitude. It’s easy to forget all the effort that goes into producing the food we eat if we just order it online or pick it up at the store. Even a small venture into agriculture can increase our appreciation for the hard work involved.

4. Get more physically active. Sedentary lifestyles put kids at risk for becoming overweight. Planting and weeding are great ways to integrate more activity into daily routines.

Gardening With Younger Children

1. Let kids assume ownership. Small children will need guidance and instruction but let them take a leadership role. They can help select the plants they want to grow and the tasks they like the best.

• Provide lots of praise and positive feedback as they gradually assume more responsibility over time.

2. Keep it simple. Break tasks down into individual steps that your child can understand. Encourage them to select plants that will be easy to grow. Most beans thrive with little care. Plus, they’re nutritional powerhouses and the big seeds make them a cinch for kids to handle.

3. Provide instant gratification. Fast results will keep kids motivated. Radishes are usually ready to pick in less than three weeks. Mix in some smaller lettuce plants with the larger ones and you’ll have tender salad greens in about the same time.

4. Make it educational. Use your garden to teach everything from science to poetry. You can talk about how weather affects plants and recite poems about flowers.

5. Play it safe. Children are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, so in urban areas you may need to get your soil tested. Make it a rule that they need to ask an adult for approval before they eat any plant. Avoid dangerous chemicals and be careful with sharp tools.

6. Have fun. Encourage your kids to invite friends over to help. Unusual varieties of plants can be amusing, so shop around for fun seeds to get a crop of foot long carrots, miniature pumpkins, or purple tomatoes.

Gardening with Tweens and Teens

1. Let older kids guide younger ones. Middle school and high school students can be great role models and instructors for small children. The interaction is inspiring and gratifying for both sides.

2. Challenge veteran gardeners to set new goals. Horticulture will become a way of life for many kids who have the benefit of early exposure. Keep it stimulating by supporting them in developing new skills.

3. Go gently with new gardeners. If your teen is new to gardening, they may feel tentative about doing anything that would make them seem different from their peers. Until there’s a reality show or video game to make growing plants officially cool, tread carefully.

• You might want to start with herb gardens. They’re easy and practical and can even be kept indoors.

Gardening with your kids will strengthen your relationship and may even help you cut down on grocery bills. Help your kids get an early start on appreciating nature’s bounty and draw your family closer together with these timeless traditions.