Today is National Love Our Children Day

According to www.holidays.net today is National Love Our Children Day. I just love holidays and this is a great idea.

Ten ideas to honor this holiday today and everyday:

1. Hug our kids and tell them we love them.
2. Read to them.
3. Have them read to us.
4. Ask them what their dreams are and then really listen.
5. Ask them what they would like to do today and then if feasible, make it happen.
6. Laugh with them.
7. Enjoy nature together. According to www.holidays.net this is also National Birding Day. Spring is a wonderful time to explore the outdoors together. Our kids love it when we get out together. We live close to the intracoastal here in Northern Florida where swampy trails are the thing. We have seen some wonderful wildlife including eagles and owls and many other tropical looking Florida birds. A wonderful site that I found to learn about bird watching with your kids is www.birdwatchin.com . This site has all things birding and it is very family oriented. There is even a newsletter you can sign up for called David's Wildbird Club. David is one of the site owner's parrots and is the host of this club. Note the site's address is "birdwatchin.com". There is a site called www.birdwatching.com which is good as well although I really like the kid friendliness of birdwatchin. Here in Florida we are blessed with so much wildlife and nature trails. A good starting place if you live in our state is www.floridabirdingtrail.com. This is a wonderful site produced by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. There is all kinds of information about our trail system and our local wildlife. It is not to be missed! If you do not live in Florida perhaps your home state has a similar kind of a resource.
8. Be patient with our kids. This is sometimes a challenging one for me. Kids make noise. They can be demanding of our time and energy. Sometimes every ounce of our adult nervous systems cry out "enough"! Today, in honor of this holiday, let's take deep breaths and be centered. We can model peace for our kids.
   
9. Mentor kids. I am blessed by being a mother and school teacher. I have ample opportunity every day of my life to make a difference in the life of children. If you do not have kids of your own perhaps you have a niece or nephew who means a lot to you. There are some wonderful organizations out there that support the mentoring of kids. I will just mention two for now. One non profit group is Big Brothers Big Sisters. The national site is www.bbbs.org. The site for our local Big Brothers Big Sisters here in North Eastern Florida is www.bbbsjax.org. My bachelor brother was a Big Brother for a number of years. An organization that I have personally been involved in is Girl Scouts. The national site is www.girlscouts.org and our local site is www.girlscouts-gateway.org. I was a girl scout leader for my daughter Aimee's troop for three years in Washington state. It was an enormously rewarding experience for me and is what inspired me to go back to school later in my life to become a teacher. If you have some time to give I highly recommend being a girl scout leader.
10. Practice forgiveness. We can show our children we love them by showing them what it means to forgive. If they get in trouble at home or at school they need to know that we love them no matter what. We may not always love the behavior, but we always love the child. The same goes for forgiving our spouses, ourselves, our bosses, our coworkers, our politicians, and anyone else we have grievances with. If our children see us practicing forgiveness, they will more likely follow suit. Peace and forgiveness are two very important life skills for a successful life that will be explored in much deeper detail in future posts.
    

I am going to stop here because I have a family and want to show my kids I love them by getting off of the computer and giving them my full attention.

Happy National Love Our Children Day!
Debra