5 Keys to Raising Good Kids

https://curiousmindmagazine.com/parents-who-raise-good-kids/

This article attributes these five ideas to Harvard psychologists. 
1. Spend quality time with your children.  This suggests spending some time each day with your children.  Questions you could ask are, What was the best part of your day? What was the hardest part of your day?  What is something nice somebody did for you today?  What is something nice you did today?  What is something you learned today?
2. Let your kids see a strong moral role model and mentor in you.  Admit mistakes and apologize.  Take time for yourself  so you have energy to be attentive.
3. Teach your child to care for others and  set high ethical expectations.  Caring for others' well being and avoiding selfishness are important qualities.  More important than being happy, is to be kind and happy.  Let your children work things out, considering the consequences their decision might have on others.
4. Encourage children  to practice appreciation and gratitude.  A child that shows appreciation is not a spoiled child.  Encourage an attitude of gratitude.  Children should say thank you to friends, teachers, family members on a regular basis.  Demonstrate by being grateful yourself.
5. Teach them to see the big picture.  It is normal for children to be concerned about their inner circle.  This zooming in is important.  however they also need to zoom out, and see others in their community.  This includes being in tune to the new child in school, or the child being teased.  Also talk about conditions in the world, and hardships of other children.

Mormon Father's Day Clips: Mormon Message - Love Her Mother

This video is based on a talk by Sister Elaine Dalton.  It presents several young women talking about what is meaningful to them.  It includes several languages, including sign.  It concludes, the best think for raising daughters, is to love their mother.  Sheri is the woman I love.

This leads to a series in Mormon Channel entitled Fatherhood>  Other videos in the series include:
Earthly Father, Heavenly Father
Let US Be Men
Fathers and Sons
A Father In Deed
Good Things to Come
Fatherhood-an Eternal Calling,  L. Tom Perry
Parenting-Touching the Hearts of Youth
Mormon Message: Love Her Mother
Todays family: Fathers
A Father's Influence
Elder Hallstrom on the Influence of His Father
Elder Clayton: Counsel on Raising Children
Elder Clayton: Raising Children in today's World
Elder Banks: Principles Used in raising a Family
Elder Larry R. Lawrence: Courageous Parenting
Families Can Be Together Forever

Minecraft Saga: Is it Good for Kids?

I came across a short article June 2015 issue the "Parenting on the Peninsula" periodical.  The idea of this article is that Minecraft is a good thing.  It seems almost everyone is playing these days; at least all of our younger people.  Tony is really into it, and has been for several years.  This article is written by someone who uses Minecraft in his school--one of the after-school schools called Tech Rocks.  They use Minecraft to teach creativity, problems solving, and technology.  The platform has two major platforms.  First is that of building your world.  Their are an unlimited number of lego like bricks available in the game, and people can build any kind of world they can imaging with them.    The other platform is similar to others games, staying alive in a hostile world.  This is where problem solving comes into play.  The final educational tool is to teach programming.  The Tech Rocks school use the platform to teach some basic platforming using Java according to the article.

Please click on the response function and give me your feedback and opinion to this article.

Mormon Movie Review: **^The Trophy Case (BYU 1979)

This is a movie I have seen many times, and watched a couple times over the last weeks, but not sure if I still understand it.  I saw a report talking about this movie.  It addresses the question, "To what extent should a parent direct the life of a teenage child?"  This movie shows a father and a son, who are at odds with each other.  We do not see the mother, but the movie implies she is too busy pursuing earthly things.  The movie starts with the son being arrested, and sent to juvenile court.  Father confronts him, but in the end chases him away.  He runs to his part time job (which his father disapproves of) watching horses.  He is given a place to stay and a job.  The movie presents his love of horses, and after some time, there is a chance for reconciliation, but it gets messed up.  The problem is Father just can't see things from his son's point of view.  He takes off on a horse, and father following on surface streets in a car.  They remain at odds. 
So I wonder, what is the point of the movie, if we don't see a successful resolution.

"I am a Child of God" Soothing Babies

Tony, who came to us as a baby, and is now almost four

Doing foster care the past four plus years, and during that time mostly fostering babies and toddlers, (32 foster children and 25 under three) I am an expert at what songs are most soothing for young ones.  The best song of all is "I am a Child of God."  My daughter Natalia actually discovered this with the two-year-old twins who were with us several years back.

We took them on a long trip to Arkansas.  As such the were confined to their car seats for extended periods of time.  They could not last the entire song, when they were tired, without being asleep at the end.  When they were not asleep i would at least calm them down.

I am a child of God,
And he has sent me here,
Has given me an earthly home
With parents kind and dear.
Lead me, guide me, walk beside me,
Help me find the way.
Teach me all that I must do
To live with him someday.

I am a child of God,
And so my needs are great;
Help me to understand his words
Before it grows to late.
Lead me, guide me, walk beside me,
Help me find the way.
Teach me all that I must do
To live with him someday.

I am a child of God.
Rich blessings are in store;
If I but learn to do his will
I'll live with him once more.
Lead me, guide me, walk beside me,
Help me find the way.
Teach me all that I must do
To live with him someday.

I am a child of God.
His promises are sure;
Celestial glory shall be mine
If I can but endure.
Lead me, guide me, walk beside me,
Help me find the way.
Teach me all that I must do
To live with him someday.

This version adds the fourth verse.  This verse is not in the hymn book as it was added after the book was published.  Sometimes the fourth verse is needed to get a  sleeping.  This song hasn't worked as well with all of our children to get them to sleep, but it always works to calm them down.

It works better than any other song, "Rock-a-bye Baby," "Hush Thee my Babe," (a song I wrote) "Lullaby and Good Night" and "Go to Sleep" all seem to pale in comparison.  "I am a Child of God" seems to stand alone.

I ask myself, "Why is this song so effective, is it the melody or the lyrics?"  The melody draws attention, but I think the spirit of the song emanating from the message, touches little souls who have only recently left Heavenly Father's presence.  The spirit of the message, coming from the singer, emanates the little spirits, who are sometimes so close to the veil having just recently left the Spirit World.

My Reacton to a Newspaper Article about Playing with Your Children.

The San Jose Mercury News had an article today entitled "Playing with your child: Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing."  The title of this article stuck me as being offensive, playing with our children can be bad.  Just a couple weeks ago in church we discussed how giving our children time is important, and saying "I give them quality time if not very much time" is just a cop-out.

The article is a syndicated article, and was actually written by Heidi Steven of the Chicago Tribune.  As I read the article, it wasn't near as offensive as I thought it would be, but the Headline still offends me.  Usually Headlines are added by the local paper.

I am not quoting the article directly, as I was informed by the paper that it is copyrighted.  However the points of the article are, play time should be scheduled, and there should be a limit to playtime based on the child's age and the conditions.   The article says the play time should be bounded, or in other words distractions should be done away with and the focus should be playing with the child.

The article also makes some good practical suggestions.  When a child is playing with a friend, parent play is not always wanted.  An adult is helpful with puzzles or with games and can keep the game or activity going. 

It is not always inherent on the parent to  come to the rescue when a child says, "I'm bored."  Sometimes the child learning how to cope teaches leadership and creativity.

The article makes a case against tickling, saying it is an adult controlled activity of laughter.  I was ticklish growing up and sometimes tickled too much.  However the tickling experiences were also bonding experiences, mostly with my older siblings.   There is a place for tickling, in moderation.

So my conclusion is playing with your child has its place.  Sometimes you may need to set limits, and  have time to focus exclusively on the.  I worry more about not giving enough time to our children rather than playing too much with them.  To a child, as said at church, they don't know what is "quality time" just what is time.