Note: This was written for Mike Dolpies and RaisingGreatWinners.com

My daughters often tease me about my Saving The World, One Soul At A Time.

I can’t say that I’m aiming for the WHOLE world, but one person at a time is a great beginning.

Let me give you a little background: There’s a part of our brains called the Reticular Cortex (sure hope I have the correct) and it sees what we tell it to focus on.

As an example, when you purchased a new car, did you notice all of a sudden that there were LOTS of them on the road that you had never noticed?

Or maybe when you were writing a paper for school, out of the blue a very important point came to your mind and an example was on the front page of the newspaper you were reading.

Did those things just “happen” to be there OR, because you were now energetically-focused on something, did you just happen to NOTICE them?

Clear, you just happened to notice them.

On my website, RaisingGreatFamilies.com, I decided that I didn’t want “negative” material. No negative quotes from world heroes, no matter how profound. No negative jokes by stars of the golden era of TV even though they still make me laugh. No books about the 7 Worst Things Your Kids Will Do Before The Age Of Five.

Just positive energy emanating from the site.

Why?

So that the reticular cortex of EVERYONE’S brain could focus on the GOOD in our world, allowing people to see MORE good.

See how that works? We focus on the good and we SEE the good.

The same is true with how we see our children.

How often has your child brought home a report card and most of the grades are really good but one is not. What do YOU focus on… all the great achievement or the one area where he or she fells short?

Believe me, I’m not saying to forget the shortcomings. I’m a positive guy, not naïve.

But how much better will our children do if we accentuate the positive (as the old song goes) instead of droning on about the negative.

Here’s a good story to amplify this. I heard this a few weeks ago and though I won’t get all the details correct (the way it was originally told), I’ve made it “my own” story now, as I process it through the filters I use to see the world.

There was a young couple who bought their first house. Their dream was to turn it into a loving home with several children.

The young husband did everything he could around the house to turn it into a beautiful environment for him and his wife, but he just couldn’t get the muddy patch from the front yard to turn into a nice lawn.

His wife suggested that her husband call her father who had had beautiful lawns for as long as she could remember.

When the father-in-law came over, he instantly saw how to fix the lawn problem.

“Keep planting grass. Stop pulling weeds.”

For you see, the husband was focusing most of his time on getting rid of the weeds and not enough on culturing new grass to grow.

“Keep planting grass. Stop pulling weeds.” And the lawn turned into a showplace that the young family used for years as their playground.

Good advice for all of us.

Keep positive. Banish negative. Keep working with the good and downplay the bad. Keep planting grass, and enjoy your life.

Why Does Charlie Seymour Jr support ParentalWisdom.com?

Seeing me in the roster of Advisors to ParentalWisdom.com, people have written to ask me why I support this group and what can it do for them?

Ahhhh, the old, famous WIIFM – What's In It For Me.

Read what's below and I think you will INSTANTLY see what's in it for YOU.

And what's in it for ME? I enjoy working with good people like Tina Nocera, helping the most helpless among us like children, and seeing great results as life skills are learned. THAT'S why I support ParentalWisdom.com and hope you will too!

Best,

Charlie Seymour Jr
A Work At Home Dad, succeeding in this economy
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Please be sure to leave a comment. Thanks!Ultimate Work At Home Dads – Click Here When You Finish Reading This Post, Thanks!

When the family is in order, all the social relationships of mankind shall be in order.
– I Ching

I've watched shows like Dr. Phil where a seven-year-old is hitting and cursing at his parents and find myself wondering…how did it get that bad? It couldn't have started out that way? Do we hope for parenting advice that at best is based on flimsy research?

Like a pull in a scarf, any problem left unresolved can unravel. As parents we face little problems on a daily basis. We have to pay attention and resolve the little problems before they get worse and overwhelm us.

That is where Parental Wisdom® comes in. In the past, parents lived in a sort of village, seeking advice from family and friends. Today's families live further apart and deal with more complex societal issues. Parents turn to experts, but the idea of a one-size-fit all solution to parenting problems just doesn't work if we really believe we are unique.

The traditional method of turning to family and friend for parenting advice presents a different set of problems:
Has that person had experience with that particular situation? After all, our moms didn't raise us in the same media and marketing intense world.

If someone offers you advice and you don't agree, now what?

Do you have to 'report' back to them?

And most importantly, as your child's advocate, what if your child does something you simply don't want to share? Then where do you turn?

To understand Parental Wisdom imagine a place where you could ask all your parenting questions, and where you, the real expert in knowing your child best, are given multiple opinions from trusted, credible sources so you can choose which advice works best for your unique child and situation.

Imagine that you can be anonymous and this unique service is free.

You have a good imagination.

Parental Wisdom is so unique, it's patented.

Once a parent, always a parent.

Questions start before the first baby arrives and continue well past grandchildren.

Here is an idea of some of the questions our nearly 100 expert advisors respond to:

• My 18- year old son who is a high school graduate shows no responsibility….
• I know baby's cry a lot, but our newborn (6 day old) baby has cried through the night and all morning…
• I have two boys that share a bedroom, closet, bunk beds, and toys. They are ages 7 and 8. When its time to clean their room, they begin arguing that they've cleaned up their mess but the rest is their brother's mess…
• My nine-year-old is having problems with our next door neighbor's daughter. There is a lot of nasty name calling and sometimes it gets physical…
• I have been divorced for almost 2 years and have joint/legal custody of my 4 ½ year-old daughter, while I am the primary parent of residence, our divorce decree states that we are to make medical, religion and school decisions together, however…
• My 13- year old daughter has a boyfriend that I don't like. I want to forbid her to see him but I'm afraid she will date him at school behind my back….
• My 15-yr old daughter was caught cheating with her cell phone on a physics test…
• At what age would you allow a child to have a Facebook?
• I have an 8 yr. old son who was badly bullied in kindergarten and till this day, he still feels uncomfortable in school even though it is a different and much better school…

Where do you turn to find answers?

Here is a short video on Parental Wisdom – Click Here To Watch and then forward to your friends.

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Parental Wisdom Inc., 600 Parsippany Road, Suite 202 Parsippany, NJ 07054 USA

Why Johnny is obese. Let's follow a day in the life of a nine-year-old boy:

Johnny wakes up and asks for a sugary cereal for breakfast because the TV commercial was so appealing. It was an easy selection for his mom, as the cereal box was poised directly at eye level of his three-year old brother sitting in the shopping cart. And there's a chance to win a really cool prize.

After breakfast, his mom drives him to school even though they live 5 short blocks away. It's just easier and faster.

While at school, Johnny no longer gets to play at recess. The school had to cut back since they needed more time for math.

During lunch Johnny eats pizza, fries, and a sugary juice, even though this contradicts the lessons he learned about the new food pyramid.

After school his mom picks him again by car, even though it is a beautiful spring day. Johnny doesn't want to walk home because he is afraid of the kids that often tease him about his weight.

In the car ride home, Johnny's three-year-old brother points to the fast-food signs signaling to his mom that he wants a snack. Even though the toddler can't yet read, he can easily distinguish the logos for Burger King and McDonald's. The toy prize given away with the kids' meal coincides with that great new movie they saw last weekend.

Johnny changes into his little league uniform but at the game, he spends most of his time standing in the outfield or sitting on the bench. The brief warm-up was the closet he comes to physical activity that afternoon.

When the game is over, the team mom provides microwave pizza and soda, which after all, is the fun in coming to the game.

Johnny has stopped asking if he can go outside and play because he knows the answer – No, it isn't safe. Anyway, no one plays outside anymore. Even if they did, they are so accustomed to organized sports they wouldn't know how to start a pick up game of baseball.

He eats his prepared dinner alone on a tray in front of the TV. His mom is putting the baby to bed and dad had to work late, again – it's ok, he is used to that. In fact the only time the family seems to sit down and have dinner together is when they have company over.

Later that evening he plays an online computer game which rewards him points for all the cookies he could dunk. When his mother finally lures him away from the computer he has a desire for milk and cookies, before bed.

If you can relate to any of these issues, listen to our experts discuss solutions in our Park Bench audio broadcast.

You can also see read about our experts, and learn about some wonderful resources by Discovering Free Reports and printing Park Bench – Are We Feeding Our Children to Death?

As always, we would love to hear your stories. Please send them to stories@parentalwisdom.com

What Do Hand Gestures Do For Baby's Learning?

The Week of March 6, 2009 reports that when parents talk with their infants, hand gestures lead to smarter babies. No, really!

"Just as babies crawl before they learn to walk, they use gestures as a steppingstone toward speech.

"Now, a study at the University of Chicago has determined that babies who use more gestures end up with bigger vocabularies once they begin to talk.

"Scientists have long known that kids with more educated and affluent parents enter school with better verbal skills, largely because their parents talk to them more and use more complex sentences.

"But what they didn't realize is that this parent-child interaction matters just as much before the child begins to use words.

"Psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow and Meredith Rowe observed children in their homes as they grew from gurgling infants to talking toddlers. They found that kids with more educated parents used nearly twice as many gestures to communicate as kids in the poorer homes.

"The precess works like this: A baby points to his sippy cup, and a parent points, too, saying, 'juice.' When the kids points to his bed, the parent says 'bed,' and so on.

"'That's a teachable moment,' Goldin-Meadow tell Time. 'Mothers are teaching the kids the word for an object.'"

Men Have Been Pointing Instead Of Speaking For Years

OK… so this is NOT the same thing as a man pointing to his next beer and grunting.

Once you have the baby's attention and it wants something, it is open for a lesson to be taught… so speaking the word as you point as well imparts a lesson and it's easy to do.

So all those times your mother said, "It's not polite to point," she may have been holding back your education.

Ahhhh, you KNEW it was your mother's fault, didn't you. (Hey, just kidding, Mom!)

Best,

Charlie Seymour Jr
A Work At Home Dad, succeeding in this economy

Special Note To My Social Mania Friends: Can you leave a comment here AND go to my new site (literally just put it up Feb 17, 2009 – NOTHING is there but WordPress and Google Friend Connect) and join my Google Friend Connect THERE too? Ultimate Work At Home Dads – Click Here When You Finish Reading This Post, Thanks!

I was immediately impressed by David’s willingness to engage and confidence about singing for me—a virtual stranger. It got me thinking about the effect family involvement in the arts can have on a young person’s sense of self and openness to new experiences. Of course, David is no stranger to performing. I know that he has sung in choruses, and right now he and his dad are in a community theater musical together. So it’s not surprising that he is so self-assured.

We’ve all heard about the growing body of evidence that suggests exposure to, and participation in, the arts helps young people learn by engaging different types of thinking and areas of the brain—how strong arts programs in the schools can boost academic performance, how playing a musical instrument nurtures self-discipline, how painting and drawing can give expression to an impulse not accommodated by words. After decades of neglecting the arts, our schools are finally getting better at including them in their curricula again, and many professional arts organizations in the U.S. practically subsist on their educational outreach programs to young people.

But there’s something even more fundamental that happens when families participate in the arts. And the best part is that you can do it everywhere—at school, at home, and in public venues. Family participation in the arts can be as easy as a trip to a local museum or community theater, reading a book together, or even just switching the channel over to PBS every now and then. So let’s not overlook the transformative power of the arts in home and family life, too. Whether it’s through active involvement in a performance like David and his dad are doing or just going to see one, the arts are something families can experience together.

Ryan Bunch is a writer, composer-lyricist, teacher and vocal instructor specializing in musical theater and theater for youth. He provides musical direction, songwriting, script development and educational writing services for schools, theaters, performing arts organizations and other entities that engage with young people and the arts.

As the summer progressed (quickly), I realized that my very busy five year old needed something to keep her occupied. Going to the pool twice a week and regular play days just weren't enough for her.

A mom from school had mentioned the U.K. Elite soccer camps to me months ago. I had looked into it at the time, but didn't do anything with it. So when I started researching camps for Emma, they were one of the first I went to, and as luck would have it, there was a session scheduled for the end of July. And luckier still, there were openings when I called even though it was less than a month away, so I signed her up. (I also signed her up for a science camp- because Emma loves all things science/nature- but it got canceled. Such a bummer!)

I could go on and on about how wonderful the program was (I tend to get wordy!). The entire experience was fantastic. The coach was amazing, and had such patience with this very active group of 3-5 year olds. And I was very pleased with the focus on the actual skills of the sport, rather than a group of kids just running around with a soccer ball or a lot of competition.

On the last day, he lined them up, called each of them up to the front to shake their hands, give them their patch, and tell them what a great job they did. It was awesome to see how proud my little girl was. She loves soccer, and she concentrated so hard all week to do just what the coach was showing the group.

I'm amazed at how content she is now that she had that one week of organization and schedule. While I thought I was doing her a favor just letting her lounge and play as she pleased, Emma was missing the structure of school. Go figure! I suppose I should enjoy that before she starts complaining about school and begging me to stay home every day! These kids never stop surprising me!!!