Saturday, November 25, 2006

Sharing friends with your children

Although my parents didn't conciously think that their adult friends would have any significant influences in my upbringing, thinking back on my childhood I distinctively remember a friend of my parents who enjoyed playing card games through the night--his reasoning: life is too short, if I spend time in sleeping, I will shorten my life, I'd better play as hard as possible to extend my life. I was quite young and thought the idea was very revolutionary. It made me think about life and death. I am sure that my parents had no idea their friend had influenced me in any way. This brings me to the topic I want to talk about. How many parents really realize the impact their friends have on their children? We have always tried to introduce our friends to our children as equals. Our friends, in turn, talk to them as they would talk with us. They don't patronize them just because they are smaller in physical stature. Both my husband and I are both homebound, we don't know many people and the few friends we have are all pretty unique and special in their own way. One of our friends is very active in participating in protecting the environment movement and he uses vegi oil to run his used bus, my kids were fascinated by his endeaver and learned a great environmental lesson from him. We also know a fair number of people who are from other countries, introducing them to our children opened up their eyes to diffirent culture. Letting your children know your friends is a great way to help your children to know about you. You may be surprised how much your children actually want to know about you-- we often neglect the task of helping our children to know about us.

Friday, November 24, 2006

When the kids don't want bigger and better house

I have been thinking about whether I should buy a new, bigger house, or not. I discussed the possibility with Adrianna and Adora. I initially imagined that they would jump up and down and applaud the decision to have a bigger and better house. To my surprise, or perhaps to some extent not to my surprise, they did not want to have a bigger and better house--in fact, they wanted a cozy, small house. The house we are living in currently is extremely spacious. I am very proud of my children for their conscientious effort to conserve and live a simpler life.When my children are so proactive in conserving natural resources by wanting less luxurious living environment even when it's provided to them, what should we do as parents?

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Happy being a "lazy" parent

I am extremely happy with our visit to Europe this fall, we visited London, Paris and Florence. I thought that I would be motivated to write something down about our trip, but between being too tired and being lazy, I hardly wrote anything down. Fortunately, I have two beautiful daughters who have a better recollection of the trip and write better than myself. I have been enjoying reading their reports of our europe trip with great interest and joy. It's interesting to see their prospective of the same trip. Their detailed and humorous recount of the trip stir up lots of fun memory of our shared experience. It's not a bad thing to be a "lazy" parent.