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Welcome New Readers!

Due to some recent developments, like being politically active in regard to the Knox County school rezoning and our daughter showing our online publishings to a variety of people who otherwise probably would have never seen these writings, our visibility is up a bit.

Sarah doesn’t like her parents reading her blog so she snipes to her mother, "How’s it feel to have people reading what you write?" If the work was not meant to be read, it would not be publically published…As a friend of ours said, "You put it out there!"

If Instapundit and BusyMom are A-list bloggers, we are probably still somewhere down in the Ts. Some of our friends and family might ask, "Why do they do this?" My answer is published here. The long and short of it is that blogging is fun! It is also a playground for experimenting with thoughts and actions you may not explore in the real world much like an actor might explore a character on the stage. Online is an arena that may allow for exaggeration or outright fiction although Cathy and I tend to call it like we see it. That separation between real world and online world is important. When people from the online world meet for the first time, the experience is unnerving, fascinating, and enlightening for these online people have shared stories and know of each other intimately but are always surprised to find that often the person they "know" online is not the same as the person in real life. Online publishing shows but a glimpse of the person’s real life (unless you are Justin then you get it all) and in real life the person may have much more depth, be less revealing, and more politically correct.

Welcome! Read. Enjoy. Judge or not. Comment and participate or lurk in the shadows. And next we meet, smile and laugh with me!

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The Half Full or Half Empty Child

Are you raising a positive child or a negative child? As their parent, you will help determine their outlook on life and, in part, it is as simple as your word choices. "No" falls so easily from our lips. As a parent, we have to deny our children often but do we have to say no? Instead we could give them alternatives, or we could redirect in a positive way but right now I want to focus purely on word choice. Consider this sentence:

Don’t touch that!

How many times a day? We say "don’t touch that" for safety, control, and sanity. "Don’t," contraction for "do not," is negative purely because not is a negator. Consider this sentence:

Leave that alone!

Same connotation but "leave that alone" is a positive statement. It is a doing statement. By using a sentence without the word "not" you have given your child a positive statement. By using an action word, you are teaching your child to be proactive. "Leave" gives the child an action where as a sentence with "not" generally gives the child an action to avoid.

Using positive words instead of negative words can help your child be happier, confident, self-sufficient, and will create the foundation for their future interpretation of life events. As adults, think about how dejected and beat down we feel from constant rejection and negativity. Our children need to hear positive words!

That last sentence could have been phrased, "Our children should not hear negative words." I challenge you to watch for opportunities to turn your speech positive. An easy way to begin is to drop the word "not" from your vocabulary.