February - March

              Graduate News & Events

Dear Graduate Parent,

    Practice, practice, practice ... that is how we master anything. Practicing anything that works automatically moves us towards mastery in doing what works.  When we practice, we cannot help but get better at whatever we practice.  We cannot help that it gets easier and easier.  We will get faster and faster at it.  And soon what we do that works becomes automatic ... we do it with grace and ease.

    Remember, we've been practicing what we normally do for a long, long time. We have lived within a paradigm of automatic right-wrong and good-bad reactions and thinking, all linked up with our strategies (can you list the 15 strategies all parents use?)  Let's face it - the day-to-day world we wake up in every day has its routines, and that includes routine thoughts, routine reactions, routine assessments, and routine conversations. Isn't most of what we think, feel, say, and do, very very familiar?  That is a clue.

   When what you want is important to you, your brain registers that. Any practice that leads to that will get extra reinforcement; that is, you won't need 10,000 hours of practice to be good at turning behavioral issues into satisfying learning opportunities. 

   All this is leading up to why I am emphasizing participating in my Parenting Mastery Circles.  You have an opportunity to bring a behavioral issue to each session and leave knowing how to transform it into an opportunity for your child to learn to be responsible for his or her own behavior ... and love and appreciate you the more for it.  I am not kidding.  As a graduate of one of my workshops, I will work with you until that happens.

(And the icing on the cake is that your child learns right along with you: how to communicate, how to make a request, how to deal with consequences - in a nutshell, how life works. Isn't that what you really want your parenting to result in?)

Enough of my lecturing ... the choice is yours.  And of course I am not exactly unbiased about this - I love to work with you on these things!

Parent Mastery Circles (PMCs)

  Click on Date and tell me which date, or both dates, in the message.

         Sunday, March 11,      3 - 4:30 PM      36 N Shippen Street, Lancaster

         Sunday, April 14,       3 - 4:30 PM    36 N Shippen Street, Lancaster

 Review Beyond Good Parenting FREE!

Also, as a graduate, I invite you to review/renew the concepts and practices we covered in your workshop with no reviewer fee.  I have made several changes, and also have added a Power Point / Presentation visual flow.  See the schedule under "NOW REGISTERING" - if the dates and times work, call me to sign up.

Tip of the Month

Not only do we tend to feel and think that something is wrong when we get upset with something in our family life, but also when we think about our planet and all the horrible stuff going on.  However that may be, there is a side  we don't hear much about  ...

This is from my favorite parenting educator sites.  Unfortunately, or fortunately (dpending on whether I ever get to Australia!), this guy lives on the other side of the planet.  Click this:

Is There a Better World Possible?

I hope to see you on Sunday, March 11. 

Yours, Marty