How to Keep Peace in Your Family

Confiding to a trusted friend, a father expresses concern over his 9-year-old son. “He’s a `forgetter.’ He can’t seem to remember anything I tell him. Assign him a chore, and he `forgets’ to do it. Give him a message for someone; it never gets there. If I ask him to do two things, maybe one will get done. His `forgetfulness’ is causing a lot of conflict in our family.”

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Cultivating the Fine Art of Good Fathering

When Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency on August 9, 1974, he gave a farewell speech to his White House staff. During that speech, which came at a time of great personal crisis for the president, Nixon remembered his father. After describing his father’s series of career failures as a streetcar motorman, farmer, rancher, and grocer, Nixon declared: “But he was a great man.”

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Gifts for That V.I.P. (Very Important Parent)

If you are a parent, then you are probably already familiar with the impact of children on your personal life. Even in the most functional families, parents who juggle rearing energetic children with careers and other commitments often tell of feeling burned out. Maybe your personal experience with burnout began the week after you brought your newborn home from the hospital and she got her days and nights mixed up. Perhaps it started the day your employer informed you that because of company downsizing, your job was history, and the pediatrician informed you the same day that your child needed his tonsils out soon.

Whatever the monumental interruptions are that you face juggling kids, career, and other responsibilities, I want you to remember one necessity of life: be kind to yourself.

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Money Conflicts

Four of the most sensitive subjects in marriage are sexual intimacy, in-laws, parenting, and money. Ironically, it is the last one that is often the least talked about aspect of a relationship, but the one that causes many couples the greatest problems. In fact, a survey conducted by Citibank indicates that 57 percent of divorced couples said financial disputes were the primary reason they didn’t get along. Furthermore, a study of 2,000 men and women by Roper Starch Worldwide confirms that money, more than issues of sexuality, parenting, or in-laws, is the most common source of conflict for today’s married couples.

Such studies verify this observation made at the turn of the century by spiritual writer Oswald Chambers: “Money and marriage are the two things that make men and women devils or saints.” Here are 10 smart ways to avoid money conflicts and keep them from sabotaging your relationship.

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What to Tell Your Kids About AIDS

The acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) continues to pose a significant threat to humanity. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 11.7 million people have already died from AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic, and 30.6 million more are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the agent known to cause AIDS. In the United States as of June 1997, a total of 612,078 cases of AIDS had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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Eight Tips for Raising Healthy Kids

Eight Tips for Raising Healthy KidsEvery day Jose looks forward to coming home. At 3:00 p.m. school is out, and he and his friend Michael can play computer games for at least three hours before Mom gets home from work.

Every day Jose’s mom dreads coming home. With feelings of frustration and even a little guilt, she arrives to find her son has wasted yet another afternoon in front of his PlayStation.

Seem familiar? As parents struggle to balance busy work schedules, their children are often being shaped by a number of less-than-ideal influences. Children are constantly exposed to advertising, media, and peers; and the consequential sedentary lifestyle has resulted in children struggling with adult medical problems, including obesity,
diabetes, and heart disease.

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