Guest post by Lori Radun

About two months ago, my younger son was diagnosed with a lifelong illness that has rocked our family.  As normal life continues around us, we are dealing with the emotions, and the extra stress that comes with receiving unexpected news.  Laundry is piling up, the house needs to be cleaned, and we’re running out of groceries.  The day to day responsibilities of taking care of a family never ends, and sometimes we can get so caught up in the daily grind that we fail to step back and take an honest look at the big picture.  What’s working in your family, and what isn’t?  Are you headed in the direction that you envision, or have you stopped to think about whether or not you have a vision?

As I look forward for my family, I know my vision is changing. There will be certain accommodations that will need to be in place to help my son.  We will need tighter systems, a stronger network of support, greater organization, and special attention placed on creating a peaceful and healthy family environment.  All families go through changes, and it is up to the leaders of the family to create time for planning and visioning.

What happens when you don’t plan and create a vision for your family?

• You don’t always know the direction you are heading.
• You might start heading in the wrong direction.
• You don’t fully utilize the potential in your family.
• It’s impossible to set family goals.
• Decisions become more difficult to make.
• Your family can get caught up in reacting to life, instead of proactively responding to life.
• You often lose control over situations that come up in your family.
• Stress can occur because you aren’t honoring your family values.
• You lose the opportunity to efficiently use your resources such as time, money and people.
• You have no measurement for family success.

Are you ready to take a break from the daily grind, and get clear about the direction you want your family to be heading? Come on a journey with us to create your family vision, set up your family to be aligned with this vision, and lead your family down the path you define as family success.

Our 2 for 1 special is effective until September 13th, until 9:00 p.m. EST. You can attend the Quick Family Makeover program alone for only $48.50, or participate with your husband or friend for only $97.00.   We have designed the Quick Family Makeover program to take only 10 minutes of your time per day for 3 weeks.  After covering the 21 different topics in the program, you will be ready to start a new school year with clarity, organization, and peace of mind.

Watch the Family Success Video

Register or Learn More About the Quick Family Makeover Program at www.thequickfamilymakeover.com

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Lori Radun is a life coach and champion supporter of moms and you can find her at www.momnificent.com.

Somewhere there is a mom shaking her head and lamenting to her child, “How many times have I told you to…..?”  

• Make sure you have your child’s full attention. If you’re in another part of the house, go to where your child is or have her come to you. Then, make eye contact.
• Put a period on the end of your sentence rather than a question mark.  If your child is strongwilled or “spirited” he may find the implied loophole in the question, “Would you set the table for me?” Instead of asking a question, make an assertive statement such as, “Now it’s time to set the table.”
• Make sure your voice is assertive. You can sound like you mean it without being too intense. This can be hard, though, when you are used to your child pushing the boundaries and not complying with requests.  However, an assertive tone of voice conveys to your child that you are calmly, capably in control of your emotions. This helps them to feel safe AND it ups the odds that they’ll comply because (in my humble opinion!) kids are looking to you to be confidently in  charge. Even though they don’t say, “Gee, mom..thanks for staying calm and in control of your emotions and being so clear with me. I really appreciate it because, developmentally, it helps me feel safe,” they still need you to be calmly assertive.
• Make sure you are asking something of your child that he/she can do. Don’t laugh, but as a new mom I once asked my two year old to put all her toys away! There were a TON of toys everywhere, not just one or two (she was a first child, you know, so had lots of toys), and I actually said to her, “Katie, can you put all your toys in your room for mommy?” She promptly put two away and was “finished,” which for a two year old meant she stopped putting toys away and tantrummed when I insisted she finish. Of course, I accidentally instigated this issue because I had unrealistic expectations of what a two year old could reasonably do.
• After you make the request, pause. It’s important to give your child time to comply. I’m not talking a full minute, but at least 10-15 seconds is good. This lets your request “sink in,” which for distractible kids could be helpful.
• Guide your child to comply. The younger the child, the more this works well. If you’ve told your four year old that it’s time to put toys away and after 10-15 seconds she isn’t yet doing it, go over to where she is and stay with her until she complies. I’m not talking about getting into a power struggle about it by arguing, cajoling or yelling. Rather, I’m talking about being a firm presence.  Restate your expectations and stay right with them. If your child is older and refuses to comply, stay calm (which can be challenging when you feel your authority has been threatened) and use consequences to do the teaching.
• Remember to provide positive feedback when your child DOES do what you say, especially the first time you ask. Kids get “energized” by our attention, so why not give it when all is going well? Specific, relevant feedback helps grow the very behavior you want to see more of (“Katie, I just asked you to clear the table and even though I could tell you didn’t want to, you still did it right away. Way to go for showing responsibility!”). Even though you may feel as though your child should just do what’s expected without any positive feedback, experiment with noticing him when he DOES comply.
• Remember that we ALL make mistakes. Some kids truly ARE harder to parent than others, and their behavior can be more challenging. Such challenging behavior doesn’t lend itself to our wanting to give them warm fuzzies for doing what they’re already supposed to do. But they are the ones who need it the most.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry?”

1. I let myself feel angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, sad, and afraid. I didn’t “coach” myself out of my feelings with platitudes and positive thinking. For example, when we were broken down on the side of the road I didn’t immediately say, “That’s ok! There’s always a silver lining!” (I’m picturing a musical here, with a smiling woman bursting into song as butterflies flit around her…). I hate it when others say to me, “It could be worse!” when something  just happened. Goodness, people! Let me feel my feelings for a minute, will you? I also hate it when I do that to myself. So..this time, I didn’t. Progress! Oh–and I’ve also learned that many times, people who try to jostle me into a better feeling place right away do so because THEY are uncomfortable with feelings. It’s about them and their comfort level.
2. I kept breathing through the feelings that came up. Maybe you remember to breathe during stressful times, but I often find myself holding my breath. And when I do that, I find that my feelings don’t pass through me and I remain stuck. By breathing and feeling my feelings I find that sooner than I think, I am ready to move forward. In the case of waiting on the side of the road for the taxi and the tow truck, it took about 15 minutes. During those 15 minutes I experienced thoughts such as, “Why me?” and “This sucks…what ELSE could go wrong?” and “It WOULD have to be 90 degrees…this is so not fair” and “I’m tired of crap happening. Is this some sort of sign that I’m on the wrong track?” So the thoughts were definitely there; it’s the breathing through them that allowed me to acknowledge them and then move into a different emotional space.
3. I got my “thinking brain” going by asking myself a few questions. Okay, so this is probably going to sound all “coach-y” but hey, I am a coach, and I do know a little about how to view things from different perspectives so I (and others) can get different results. The first question I asked myself was, “What’s great about this?” Sometimes when I’m still feeling a bit pissy I might think, “So, what DOESN’T suck about this?” In this case of being stuck on the side of the road, it was easy to come up with several things. First, I had cell phone reception which was amazing considering we were out in the boonies. Second, we were unhurt. Third, we were safely able to pull over to the side of the road and avoid being hit. Fourth, it only took the taxi and tow truck an hour and a half to get there instead of several more hours (or not at all if we hadn’t have had cell coverage). As I was generating my mental list of things to appreciate, I started to feel better. I still wasn’t digging the heat, or the notion that the cat, who had been stuck in her cat carrier for several hours, was probably getting severely dehydrated. However, because I had let myself feel ALL of my feelings I was more open to doing this mental exercise. I could tell it wasn’t time for me to be “Mary Sunshine” and ask my family what they were appreciating at that moment, on the side of the road. I did do it later on with them, once we were back at a hotel again.
4. I also focused on the humor in the situation. I imagined my life as a sitcom that I was watching from afar and it suddenly became kind of funny! It gave me the necessary distance from the stressors to see the whole situation in a new light.  As I mentioned in the previous post, I fell down with my dog and took six inches of skin off my arm. Even though it hurt badly, there was actually a point when I was flat on the ground (and so was the dog) and the thought occurred to me: “I really could laugh at this. How freakin’ hilarious is it that I am stuck on my back in the heat while I wonder how much my car is going to fix?” Ahem—let me come clean and share that I did NOT laugh. I was in too much pain. I was delighted that my brain would even consider trying to find the humor, however, since I am not immune to being a drama queen.
5. I reached out to others so I could feel more connected and less alone.  One of the ways I did this was to post pictures and updates on Facebook of our mishaps. Doing so kept me looking at the lighter side of life, since I didn’t want to come across as depressing or boring to my friends. I really had no idea how much this would help me feel the love and support of my friends during a time when I was feeling alone. Just reading comments such as, “Hang in there!” or “Thinking of you!” really helped me. I tried to steer clear of complete “poor me” updates that focused on only the negatives.

Going through so many trying times one after the other has strengthed many muscles that I’d forgotten I’d had: the humor muscle, the flexibility muscle, the appreciation muscle, etc. Using those muscles has also prompted me to think about how, in parenting, we often experience one stressor after another. From our child tantrumming about not getting to eat candy before dinner to our tween telling lies, parenting can feel like just one thing after another. My relocation is only one example of an adventure that got pretty stressful. In retrospect, I learned (and was reminded of) that being willing to be with what is at the moment is powerful. Only then was I able to move to the next step towards appreciation or humor.

And that’s no joke.

I blame it on the sun and a good cup of coffee. 

That defining moment on the balcony led to a series of events that we thought would go relatively smoothly. Some have, and some definitely haven’t.

1.  We put our house on the market in one of the worst financial times ever. The result? No one bought our house after many months of keeping it clean, spending money to prettify it, and living like guests in our own home.
2. We are renting a house here in CA rather than buying, since our house hasn’t yet sold. The result? We’ll be moving again in a year or two, once we buy. Ugh.
3. Rentals are competitive here in the Bay Area of California, not to mention expensive. The result? We lucked out and got a house in a great neighborhood, on a corner lot, that takes dogs, has air conditioning, and is near anything we could want. Score one for us! That said, it wasn’t in the town I wanted to be in.
4. While driving from WA to CA our car broke down and we were stuck on the side of the road in 90 degree weather with two kids, two dogs, a cat and some of our belongings (that’s us in the picture). People drove by and waved to us like we were on vacation. Really!  The result? We paid almost $200 for a taxi ride back to civilization (yep–the dogs and the cat rode in the taxi, too. Hubby rode in the tow truck) and more money to spend another night in a hotel.
5. As the taxi dropped us off at our pet friendly hotel (LOVE La Quinta Inns), a very large dog barked at my dogs, causing our alpha dog to become anxious and bite our other dog’s tail. The result? Blood all over the lobby floor and a “helpful” stranger admonishing my dogs with, “Your mommy should take better care of you!” (Their mommy had to hold herself back from biting HER!). I cleaned up dog blood off the gorgeous tile floor with my tail between my legs!
6. The next day, as I was taking one of the dogs outside for a potty break, we went up a little hill to the designated pet area. My black lab/german shepherd is 11 years old and her arithritic hips are in bad shape. She slipped down the hill and took me down with her. The result? I slid on my back three feet, scraping six inches off my arm and embedding it with dirt and rocks, not to mention blood everywhere.
7. Once the car was fixed and we finished our drive to CA, we soon learned on 103 degree day that the air conditioning wasn’t working. The result? Four hot, sweaty, cranky people and three overheated pets.
8. On the same day the air conditioner went out, a pipe burst in our master bathroom. The result? Water streamed out of our kitchen ceiling, through the lights and the microwave and onto the floor.

I can honestly say  that has been one stressful time. There were times when I felt sorry for myself and times when I was just so tired of life’s curve balls that all I could do was fall into bed. Sometimes I felt indignant that life wasn’t fair, not unlike a six year old who got a smaller piece of cake than her sister and was having a hissy fit about it.

I’m a big believer in learning and growing through challenges, and this has been no exception.  And I’ll share what got me through this tough time in my next blog post. For now, I just wanted you to know that, sometimes, before we can learn from stressful events, we just have to let ourselves feel sad and overwhelmed and whatever the jumble of feelings are without trying to “fix” them.

That’s where I am. It’s not where I’ll land forever, though.

Stay tuned for the positive spin, what I’ve learned, and how I’ve gotten through it.

Sometimes, the thought of a summer stretched before you with your kids home can make you wonder how on earth you’ll keep your kids busy. 

What probably made it easier for my parents is that there weren’t so many cool electronics vying for our attention back then. We couldn’t say, “Can’t I just play the Wii?” or just hang out for hours texting friends. Sure, there was television, and we watched plenty of it. But we also spent a lot of time outdoors, bulding forts, playing simple games like hopscotch and hide and go seek. Sometimes, our parents said, “Go outside and stay there until it’s dinner time. You need some fresh air.” And we did.   Of course, when your child is bored, he or she may also try to engage you in power struggles to keep things interesting. Don’t take the bait! It takes time for kids to learn to sit with their boredom and tap into self-directed activities.

So my proposition to you is to get a little old fashioned with your kids and help them take responsibility for creating their own great summer. Sure, it’s fun to have family adventures and activities planned, but those don’t happen everyday. Managing boredom teaches your child to dig deeply within, to think their own thoughts, to be resourceful.  You’d be surprised (and pleasantly, I might add) what your children do when you answer the “I’m bored” refrain with, “Mmmmmmmm…interesting…What are you going to do about that?”

Still wondering on how you can jumpstart your kids’ creativity and imagination once their bored? I found a site with ten really cool ideas on handling boredom  written expressly for kids. Here are the first three tips:

10 Your parents’ calendars fill up fast . Clue them into what you most want to do this summer. Trips, museums, zoos, and other outings may need planning and can be expensive. You stand a better chance if you tip them off ahead of time.

9 Boring or exciting? Make a prediction about your summer and be prepared with the proof. Start a scrapbook or a journal and record every nitty-gritty detail as evidence.

8 Start a Know-It-All Club with your friends. Become experts on bugs, gardening, rocks, Indians, cooking, or whatever! Check out books and videos from the library. Make T-shirts and a secret handshake. Plan a Know-It-All party and teach your parents a thing or two!

To see the rest of the tips, go to http://www.buddyproject.org/jfy/kids/articles/summer.asp. Take the pressure off yourself to entertain your kids. They’ll actually be better for it, and so will you! Happy Summer!

Well, how cool is it to wake up to an e-mail announcing that this blog has won a “Beautiful Blogger” award?

This award comes with some rules.

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.

A big Thank You to the peeps at www.LovingYourChild.com for the nomination!

2. Share 7 things about yourself that others may not know.

• I make awesome guacamole (it’s all in the lime juice, baby!).
• My favorite flavor is lemon–I prefer it to chocolate any day! Give me lemon meringue pie and watch me melt in delirium.
• I am a huge book lover. I usually have about 3-4 books going at once (and tend towards non-fiction). You should see my nightstand!
• I believe that every mom has within her the ability to be amazing in her own inimitable way, and I delight in helping to bring that ability out.
•  I took seven years of Spanish in school and used to be fluent when I lived in California. With a little immersion, I think the fluency would come back!
• I spent my 15th birthday in Mexico City and my 16th birthday in Veracruz, Mexico.
• After seeing the aftermath of a major plane crash I was afraid to fly for years and avoided it. One day I decided my world was too small (and Greyhound buses too smelly and slow) and joined the “Fear of Flying Clinic.” That was in 1991 and I’ve been flying ever since. It was a great metaphor for being willing to get over limiting beliefs to expand my life.

3. Pay it forward. Pass this award along to 15 bloggers whom you have recently discovered.

•  www.5minutesformom.com
• www.shonastudio.blogspot.com
• www.momsdailyretreat.com
• www.steadymom.com
• www.georgietees.blogspot.com
• www.martinimomma.typepad.com
• www.janenation.com
• www.mildlycreative.com
• www.pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com
• www.fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com
• www.thedailydigi.com
• www.motherthoughts.com
• www.pleasestoptherollercoaster.com/blog
• www.adventuresinparenting.org
• www.mama-om.blogspot.com

Be sure to check out the above bloggers–they all have different takes on life and will provide you with food for thought.

Warning: This post contains extreme sarcasm. Do not read if you would be shocked that someone who professes to being a professional parent coach and champion supporter of moms everywhere (not to mention a great maker of tender, flaky pie crust) would be so bold as to publish such a snarky post. Read at your own risk!

It’s summer time, and the livin’ is easy! Really!  With three long months stretched out before you, you, too, can have a guilt-filled summer with your kids! All you have to do is follow these easy steps. Ready?

1. Don’t plan on any time alone this summer. Whatever you do, don’t pay for babysitting, trade with friends or relatives or do whatecver you can to get regular downtime. We wouldn’t want you to have a break where you can think your own thoughts without having to hear sibling squabbles or make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. This is such an important step for having a summer full of mom guilt that it’s the number one tip–so pay attention! No matter what, do NOT get any time alone on a regular basis. Follow this recommendation and you’ll be snapping at the kids (and counting down the days till  school starts) in no time!
2. Don’t expect your kids to contribute to the household in any way, shape or form. That way, you can be stretched to the max, and they can grow up to feel entitled to have others do everything for them. Besides,  by NOT expecting your kids to help you, you’ll have less time for yourself (you know how temptations are; better to avoid them at all costs!).  An additional benefit is that when your kids are older and married, you can feel even MORE guilt that they expect others to pick up their dirty underwear and put their dirty dishes away. Their sp0uses can roll their eyes at you and curse you for not having raised people who are responsible.  Bonus!
3. Don’t have any structure or schedule at all. It’s summer! Throw any semblance of a schedule out the window! Let the kids sleep till whenever. But not you–you need to set the alarm to have a hot breakfast on the table before your darlings even flutter their eyelids open. And by “hot breakfast” I’m NOT talking about toasted poptarts ! If you need ideas for delicious, nutritious, homemade breakfasts, Martha Stewart has plenty. And no fair cheating. If you make french toast , you need to make sure you make if from bread you’ve made yourself. If you’re going to cheat, use store-bought eggs, rather than ones from your hens.
4. Don’t monitor screen use. At all.  They want to use the Wii all day? Let ‘em! Texting during dinner? Sure! Playing video games for hours on end? Why not?! TV and computers were made to be used all day, every day, all summer long. Just because you were stuck with an Etch-A-Sketch (oops–you’re probably not as old as I am and don’t even know what one of those is!),  don’t thwart your children’s desire to stay plugged in.  Really, I don’t have to tell you this, do I? The more your kids aren’t using their imaginations, playing outdoors, interacting with people in an actual 3-D reality, the less impulsive they’ll be and the better they’ll be able to regulate their behavior. That doesn’t sound like something that would contribute to mom guilt, now does it? Just don’t use their screen time as alone time for you, what EVER you do!
5. Don’t plan ahead to what kind of summer you and your family would like to have.  Definitely don’t sit down and ask each person what they’d like to do for fun this summer. If you slip and do this, you’ll be opening a can of worms, trust me. Your kids will probably say things like “go to Disneyland” and “buy me any toy I want.”  No, far better to just let each day unfold however it does. That way, the summer will end and you can all look back and say, “Glad THAT’S over.” Make your mottoe, “Just Get Through It.” Survival, baby. No thriving here.  No use having your kids make some good memories of playing outside, going swimming, participating in the summer reading challenge at the library or learning how to cook. Also, we wouldn’t want YOU to plan ahead to what would help YOU enjoy summer, now would we? Being proactive and feeling mom guilt don’t go together very well. Remember that.

So, are you ready to take the plunge into a guilt-filled summer? I realize that these five tips are pretty overwhelming and require a lot of energy from you, but anything worth doing is worth doing well! If you find yourself struggling to implement all of them, at the very least do tip #1: don’t plan on any alone time this summer. This is the single most important thing you can do to ensure that you are filled with guilt.

Happy (guilt-filled) summer!

Love it or hate it, most parents use some form of time-out with their kids.

If there were a school to teach one to be an “expert’ and “devotee” to time-out, I would’ve earned a Ph.D.  Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I went to graduate school to learn how to help “emotionally disturbed” and “behavior disordered” children. I’ve always been drawn to help people who don’t “fit the mold” (hey, that’d be me!), plus I’m a sucker for some drama. :)  But I digress…While in grad school I learned all about conduct disorder, ADHD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, etc. Not only did I learn about what they were and what caused them, but I learned how to deal with them. Once I graduated, I ran a self-contained therapeutic classroom for kids 6-12 that set fires, killed animals, threw furniture, and generally were ticked off at their life circumstances so were aggressive. The number one technique that I was taught to use with them was…yep–time out. There was even a time-out room (with no lock)  for kids who were really out-of-control aggressive.  Sure, I was taught to use positive reinforcement too, but overall, I managed behavior with time out.

So what was the big deal with using time out? Well, it pretty much led to one power struggle after another. First there was getting the child to the time out location. Often, my assistant and I had to get them there under great, uh, duress (picture a screaming, flailing child trying to hit and pinch their way there). Then there was the issue of keeping the child there. Yet another issue was that I had to keep using it over and over again; it wasn’t working to help “reduce” the offending behaviors. In grad school we were told that if you have to keep using it, it’s not working. It also didn’t teach the child what to do differently.

I also used the traditional time-out techniques with my daughter (my strong willed one, I might add), with similar results. Lots of drama. Lots of power struggles. Lots of tears. I just didn’t feel as though anything was changing for the better. Eventually, I met one of my biggest mentors, Howard Glasser, who taught me an amazing spin on time out when I was trained in his Nurtured Heart Approach (check out his book All Children Flourishing on Amazon). Rather than focusing on time out as a specific place that a child has to go for a predetermined amount of time, you instead focus on time out as a state of mind (sounds kind of woo-woo, doesn’t it?). What this means is that you honor the original intent of time out, which is a temporary withdrawing of your energy and attention, but you don’t drag anyone there and try to keep them there. Howard Glasser calls this “resetting” and it’s powerfully effective. Think of it this way. You know when your computer is having problems and isn’t working correctly you have to reboot it and start over? That’s what a reset it. It’s helping your child reboot her brain, calm herself, and start over. It can take 10 seconds or 10 minutes, and no one has to go anywhere to do it. The key is not giving energy to misbehavior with lectures, threats, talking, etc. No, you don’t let your child be unsafe or aggressive. And this only works if you are providing lots of good energy and attention when all is going well. But the results are  nothing short of fabulous. Your child learns to self regulate and to get your energy when they’re behaving appropriately. You learn to “unplug” and not give energy to misbehavior so your child can reboot. Your relationship continues to get stronger.

And you don’t have to put the timer on, “make” your child go to a time out place and “make” them stay there. It’s simple. But not easy. I won’t lie and say it is. But once you become fearless and let go of punishment and the worry that your child is “getting away with it,” you’ll be amazed at how EVERYONE in the family benefits from learning how to reset themselves.

Recently, I double-dog dared  my newsletter subscribers to do something that is hard for many people: to name 3 of their strengths.

Now, I’m not talking about denying all of the stressful stuff that happens as a parent by sitting around the campfire and singing “Kumbaya” (marshmallows, anyone?). Keeping it real means acknowledging what you’d like to change. However, I happen to think that what you focus on you get more of.  Positive change is so much easier to make when you do it from a positive place, like navigating with your strengths. For one thing, it requires less energy to parent using your strengths, and for another, you actually get energy from using them. So why don’t more moms focus on them? I think it’s counter-intuitive to how our brain is wired to look for danger and problems, PLUS it’s opposite to how our culture operates.

I’m proud to say that many, many moms took me up on my dare to e-mail me at least 3 strengths. I am honored that they a)took the time to honor themselves and b)took the time to share them with me. Without disclosing names, here’s a smattering of the awesomeness I received from these moms:

• I am a work in progress: I care enough about them to work on myself – to be committed to my own growth, and self-expression. I work on being happier as a person so I can mother them even better.
• I’m determined (strength and weakness!) and don’t give up easily.
• With my second and last child, I have been able to pick my battles a *little* better, appreciate him for who he is
     instead of trying to make him into someone he shouldn’t be.
• I know my priorities and stick to them most of the time.I love to communicate/teach/explain to help others succeed.I think I have become more open minded, I am able to look at the bigger picture in many situations.  That helps
   in many situations and can lower stress levels.  Instead of immediately saying NO to my sons requests I can
   step back and realize that saying YES might not hurt anything and would avoid an arguement *bonus*!
• I maintain traditions in their lives, especially connecting them to their extended family
• Intelligent, creative and compassionate
• I enjoy my children everyday and make sure that they are being seen and heard and having a good time too.
• I have never been lax at apologizing to them if I had made a mistake, misunderstood something, reacted to quickly without knowing the whole story, etc.  We are all human, we all make mistakes and it is important to own up to our mistakes so they can learn to do the same!
• I have given myself permission to not feel guilty if I need a time-out from being mom.
• Give lots of hugs.
• Energetic, loving, and authentic!
• I emphasize frequently that there is absolutely nothing my daughter  could say, do or think that would make me not love her. She knows she will always have a place to call home with me. My love is unconditional.

Maybe you’re not as weird as MY family (or maybe you won’t admit it! Ha!), but there’s something that we do in the Bierdeman house that helps us bond together and feel closer.

No, what we do is waaaaaaay more mundane and idiosyncratic. My husband and I started doing it before we had kids, and then we just continued right along after the kids were born.  Ready for my silly little secret? It’s that we have our own language in our house. My husband would kill me if I divulged too much, like the silly names we call one another. However, you really don’t need to know the exact names to understand the power behind using them. Heck, my husband could call me “mashed potatoes” and it could have great meaning for me (unless he did it around PMS time–all bets are off then!).

It all started because my husband and I love words. We love playing with them, being silly with them, and just engaging in word games. Often we’d just reverse the first letters of two words, such as “gilly sirl” for “silly girl.” Sometimes we’d just call each other by completely weird names. One day, out of the blue, I started calling him “Frank.” Of course, he answered. Then this craziness extended to our pets. Our cat “Gabby” became a whole host of other names that have nothing to do with the original name!  Once our children came, do you think  we were about to stop? No way! And so each of our babies had a multitude of nicknames. Now, as a family, we often make up names for people, famous or not. It doesn’t really matter. We just have fun with it.

This secret language has become a sort of code, or shorthand, for communicating our closeness and bond with one another (it’s like by using a secret pet name you’re using language as a bar code to the heart, where connection is made). Instead of  just saying, “I love you and I’m glad you’re here” (which we still say outright to one another), we use our own language to create that closeness. The other day, my youngest daughter had a bad day at school. So, once she was home,  I called her by one of her many silly names, “Lucy,” and gave her a hug. Inherent in that nickname, which is nothing like her given name, by the way, was the unspoken message, “You’re here with someone who knows you and loves you. All is well.”  As she snuggled into my arms, she whispered, “Yep. I’m Lucy.” Sweet.

In the context our busy lives, where one thing after another seems to happen and need to be dealt with, we need ways to stay connected that are easy. Really, using our secret family language has become like a ritual to us. Rituals are very grounding and serve to connect us to ourselves, to one another, and to our Source. The cool thing is, they don’t have to cost you anything but a few seconds, and yet, the dividends are huge.

What are YOUR unique, idiosyncratic rituals in your family that serve to help you stay connected? I’d love to hear!