A New Year's Omen - Dolphins and Children - Both Magical
I’m sitting at the dining table with a cool breeze blowing on to my face from the lake and ocean. It’s the new year, 2011, and I’m feeling like I always feel on 1 January: expectant, inexplicably and irrationally optimistic about anything that’s been troubling me and suddenly more grateful than usual for the good things in my life. New Year’s Eve does not hold much attraction for me unless it happens to be a great meal with friends but I do look forward to New Year with a magical belief that all things good can happen in the following year. No idea why. Read full article
How Much Is Enough? Money, Time, Happiness
Book: How Much is Enough by Arun Abey and Andrew Ford. The 2nd Edition of this popular title features an entirely new chapter on the relationship between Kids, Money and Happiness, based on requests from parents for help in this complex area. How can we help our kids achieve emotional resilience and wealth? And why, if we're so rich, aren't we so happy? Read full article
Raising Confident Happy Children
Book: Raising Confident Happy Children by Anthony Gunn. What do you do when your son refuses to go to bed because of the monster in the cupboard? Or when your daughter panics before a school play? Or when the death of the family pet prompts anxiety that you're about to drop off the mortal coil? How can we possibly equip our children with all that they need to grow up confident, resilient and brave? Anthony Gunn, psychologist, author and father of a primary schooler offers forty helpful approaches, explaining common fears and setbacks and how to combat them. Read full article
Learned Optimism
Book: Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. An authority on positive psychology and motivation writes about the positive effects of optimism on the quality of life and provides a program of specific exercises designed to break the pessimism habit and help with depression, while developing an optimistic outlook. Read full article
The Secret of Happy Children
Book: The Secret of Happy Children by Steve Biddluph. This book helps you with parent-child communication from babyhood to teens. It gives you confidence to be more yourself as a parent - stronger, more loving, more definite, more relaxed. Steve Biddulph, who has worked as a family therapist for over twenty years, reveals what is really happening inside kids' minds, and what to do about it. Read full article
Friday Happiness - Can You Keep a Secret?
Video: 2 Minutes with Yvette Vignando excitedly sharing a sneak preview of Mr 8's (soon to be Mr 9) birthday present. Only watch this video if you can keep a secret - because it's not his birthday yet and news travels fast online! Share some happiness and take 2 minutes to watch it. Read full article
Parents - Are You Being Short Changed by 'Me Time' Myth?
Time – especially time by myself – is my passport to reclaiming some energy, clarity and sanity. I suspect I’m a bit of an introvert by nature: I enjoy being with friends and family, but I recharge my batteries best in solitude...How’s this for a radical idea, though: maybe we are ripping ourselves off with the whole idea of ‘me time’. Maybe it’s a construct of our Western mindset... Read full article
Gratitude - and Grumpy Moods - Will You Join Me?
Gratitude is on my mind. Not because I am feeling particularly grateful for one thing but because sometimes an appreciative state of mind can snap me out of a bad mood. I've read numerous times that we can improve our mental health and perhaps even our physical health simply by making a habit of noting all the things we're grateful for. And I believe it can make a difference. Most nights I ask our Mr 8 what he liked about his day so that he can also go to sleep with thoughts of gratitude and happiness. Read full article
Childrens' Health Enhanced by More than Fruit and Vegetables
In an article published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, it was concluded that happiness prolongs the life of healthy people and may even protect against us falling ill. Scientists have known for some time that stress can have a negative effect on our immune systems. Probably I am slightly more paranoid that the average parent but I often think about my kids’ health throughout the day – have they brushed their teeth, did they have enough vegetables at dinner, why aren’t they eating lunch at school, did they do enough physical exercise this week? Read full article
Happiness is Contagious in a Family
I guess we all know that if we feel happy, some of this good mood rubs off on our children. You've also probably noticed how quickly your bad mood spreads through the family home on those inevitable 'off' days. Harvard Medical School researcher, Dr Nicholas Christakis, has researched the spread of indicated a link between how we're feeling and how happy (or not) our social networks are. Read full article
