How Can Kids Understand The Trials Of Life?

We as parents should not expect thanks for doing the basics. What are those basics? Well, putting a roof over your child’s head, feeding them, making sure they’re warm and able to live a normal life of school, education, and fun. The real test of parenting comes when we teach them life skills. These skills will serve them well, long after we are dead and gone. They will love and cherish you forever if you can teach them about the way of the world. Let’s be honest, we shouldn’t expect thanks for feeding and clothing our children. We brought them into this world and the least we can do is to take care of the life we chose to make. Now, as they grow older and their brains start to develop more, we have to teach them the trials and tribulations of the world. Life is going to challenge them in so many ways and a child that hasn’t been prepared will be doomed to fail. So, let’s put on our thinking caps and figure out how we’re going to do this.

 

 

It’s not them, it’s you

Children don’t often get into anything serious when it comes to relationships, but they will begin to interact with the opposite sex more romantically at some point. When they’re toddlers, they’re too young to be taught about the birds and the bees and where life comes from. However, it’s incredibly sad to watch them get their heart broken for the first time. Your son or daughter might ‘like-like’ another kid at school, but they don’t like them back. We need to sit them down and tell them that it’s not the other person’s fault or their own that they have been rejected. They haven’t lost their value or become worth less in the eyes of the other kid. Talk to them about how when it comes to relationships and sexual attraction, we’re all very different. Just because you’re not someone’s type, doesn’t mean you are a bad person or need to improve on something. Don’t leave their feelings to fester and swirl around, as even at a young age, children can feel the bitterness of being rejected by someone they’re attracted to.

 

 

Going nowhere fast

Life has a way of becoming stagnant and no longer fulfilling. We get stuck in this routine and we just accept it as normal. Sometimes we are hit with an epiphany and we realize that there is more to our life if we so choose there to be. The trouble is, how can we explain such a complex thought process to our children so that they can notice when they feel like they are going nowhere fast? The hit show Waitress is a show that expresses this question in all of us. It’s safe for children to watch as there’s nothing obscene or too distressing in the show. We follow Jenna, a woman that seems to be trapped by her own inability to really chase after what she wants in life. Her husband has grown apart from her and she is sick of staying in a small town that doesn’t have many opportunities to better her life. The story told, shows how she gathered enough courage to break free from the bonds she had slipped into and find happiness by doing what she really felt she was meant to do. Through this live performance, our children can learn the value of remaining a sovereign individual. Always making sure that they aren’t living their life for someone else but just for themselves.

 

 

Test of will

Failure is something that children need to acknowledge but refrain from getting used to. Again, a tightrope for parents to walk across over. How can we teach children that failure is something they will encounter in life, but that learning from mistakes so that they improve and lessen the chance of failing in the future may happen? Firstly, we have to explore with them the nature of not giving up. This is simple as they do this every day with their homework. They have to work out answers to the questions in their math and science books so they already know what it’s like to try and figure out the correct answer. Therefore, if we sit down with them from start to finish and help them with their homework, we can help them to realize when they are failing to get the right answer, and how looking at a problem from different angles, helps us to learn where we went wrong in the beginning. It’s test of willpower to break through a wall that is crying out for them to give up, but you can hoist them over it.

The trials and tribulations of life have an impact on our lives in different ways. Children need to learn early on in life that stories of courage and self-improvement can help them in their own lives.

This post is a collaborative effort by St. Louis Dad.

The Biggest Drains On Your Time As A Dadpreneur (And The Formula To Make It Work For Everyone)

One of the biggest challenges when you’re a dad and trying to start a business is the struggle of making the next leap up every rung of the ladder. While you might consider your work-life balance to be firmly in the position of the former, every considerable change in your business means you’ll have to put extra time in just to make sure these teething problems go without additional fuss. But what are the biggest drains on your resources every time you climb up the ladder?

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Technology Changes

Technology changes, in all its forms, require so many different hats for you to wear. The changes in the market dictates that we need to say head of the curve for us not to fall behind, whether this is changing our software for the most up-to-date version, implementing software patches, or finding different ways of creating new platforms. App development is one such approach that is vital to keeping contact with the customer, and for all the iOS and android app development companies out there that can do your bidding, you will find that the constant back and forth with each aspect, from the design team, to the marketers, will be a significant drain on your resources. So, when it comes to making these technology changes effective enough, but not to a detrimental effect on your family life, outsourcing is always one of the best options. But if you are running a start-up company, this isn’t an option; compartmentalizing your time, and working within office hours is only going to be the most suitable option. Creating that boundary between work and home life is important, but when you have so many different aspects to sign off, from the design, to the layout, to the content, every part of it demands your complete attention. So, making sure that it all happens within the working hours will benefit you, but also, in communicating the culture of a balanced work and home life, this will serve you in good stead for the business.

Moving Into An Office

As every business gains significant traction, the considerations of having a bigger space in which to do business is a necessary undertaking. If you have started your business modestly and work from home, and had employees do the same, moving from remote working to an office is a method to solidify your grand plan. However, moving into an office causes a lot of shake ups in the business as a whole, especially if you have many remote workers. The overall concerns relate to productivity, and if your staff can maintain this productivity, but also, you might have so many people jump ship because of the fact that you are now in an office environment. The change from remote working to a physical space where you have to clock in and clock out and do the nine to five really isn’t for many people now. This is why the modern worker demands a lot of flexibility, and part of this includes flexible working arrangements. Of course, you can’t please everyone in moving from remote working to an office, this was probably part of the plan all along, as long as you communicated it with your workers. This goes back to the idea of the bigger picture. But when making the move, it can be a big undertaking, and can result in a few hours away from home. The best approach in this is to communicate the fact that it’s something that will be a small sacrifice now, but will have a much better outcome for everyone concerned, including your family.

Making Your Leadership Better

This is not a quick fix. It is something that can take a long time to get right. And whether you need to learn by doing, or by delving into appropriate research, it’s important for you to put in the 10,000 hours needed. Making your skills as a leader a vast improvement, can be a testing time, not just for you, but for those close to you. While you can check the balance family in favor of your family, you do need to ask yourself if you are doing everything you can for the benefit of your company? This is where some sense of compartmentalizing comes in handy, but by being rigid and sticking to the allocated time with each area of your life, from business, to family time, to self-development, as well as rest, it is really the only solution to ensure that you are putting as much time as you physically can. Another approach would be having a personal assistant, so they can keep your life on track for you, but for those entrepreneurs who are not financially able to do this, being extremely organized is going to be the way to help. This can be an emotional undertaking, because of the drains on your resources as a person, but there are sacrifices you have to make in this respect, but your body and frame of mind are not sacrifices! Instead, by making room in your life for the big 4: work, life, rest, and self-improvement, you should have everything you need within these four categories.

As an entrepreneur, but also as a father, time is one of those resources that you can never get enough of. It’s vital for you to understand how you can make the most of your time, but also understand what the biggest drains are on your resources, in business, but also in life. While so many people push the work-life balance, it’s not just about those two, by adding in self-improvement and the time to rest, only then will you be fully functioning in every area of your life. And, of course, it’s not the simplest of equations to work out. But, once you understand where you can make allowances in life, and figure out ways to cut corners without it impacting negatively on certain areas of your life or work, your overall quality of life will improve significantly as a result. We could all do with more time, but do you want to make more time to the detriment of your health, or do you want to make it beneficial to every area of your life, from your employees, to your children, to your overall frame of mind? Climbing the ladder each time shouldn’t be a drain, it should be a celebration. Make it so.

This post is a collaborative effort by St. Louis Dad.

Making More Time For Your Family

In today’s world, where we are bombarded with distractions vying for your attention, it can be difficult to make quality time with your family a priority.  Indeed, even with things like movie nights where the focus should be purely on eating popcorn and watching a film have turned into a multitasking distraction fest.  Like Pavlov’s Dogs, we all seem to be living in reaction to the dings and vibrations of social media alerts and emails coming through every waking hour.

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In such a hectic and fast paced world, it’s important to balance your time whilst also making enough money to survive and nurture your career.  Time is an often overlooked and under-appreciated gift.  We are each blessed with 24 hours every single day, yet many of these hours are spent doing things that aren’t as important or meaningful to our lives as they could be – which is where making more time for your family comes in.

Check out these three time management tips to help you squeeze the most from you working day and free up your time.

1. WORK REMOTELY

If you are able to work remotely, from home, this will enable you to work more flexible hours meaning your work can fit around your family life.  Similarly, if you were to study say a professional microsoft outlook class there’s no need to attend a physical course, as today there’s a plethora of online courses available; anything from vocational short courses to advanced degrees.  The flexibility and time saving nature of these courses can help free up a lot of your time.

2.. ORGANISE YOUR TIME

We all seem to spend far too much time living in reaction to work – trying to fit our lives around work, yet it doesn’t have to be that way; the key to overcoming this is investing in a good planning system.  This way, you are living your life in response rather than reaction – which is a much calmer and productive state to be in.

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3.  THE PARETO PRINCIPLE

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule suggests 20% of our activities account for 80% of the outcome.  In simple terms, you want to focus on what tasks are going to have the greatest impact and get these done first.  Often, we can get lost in the small tasks that create a lot of “busyness” in our lives and detract from the time we need to manage our “business” – be that in a commercial or personal context.

BONUS TIP:  WORK WHEN YOU WORK AND REST WHEN YOU REST

Brian Tracy, a pre-eminent time management expert advocates the idea that you work when you work and rest when your rest; meaning, if you are sitting down to work – ensure you have a singular laser like focus on the task at hand in a distraction free environment.

Today, particularly when working from home, people multitask by working with their laptop on their lap whilst having the TV on in the background, or even dropping in and out of a conversation with their spouse.  By fully working when you work, you can reduce the amount of time you are needing to work – and you’ll get the added benefit of being able to fully rest when you rest.