Behind these doors are warmth and shelter
Behind these doors are comfort and empathy
Behind these doors are amusement and joy
Behind these doors is home
Behind these doors is love
Category: Family Values (Page 4 of 4)
And Oscar goes to … Jayden!
Chartwell Kindergarten have Oscar. He joined Chartwell in July 2009 and each weekend Oscar gets to go home with an exceptional kid. While Oscar is at home, he gets to go on all kinds of adventures and the families print photos and place them in Oscar’s diary.
Yesterday Oscar got to drive some diggers at the Agoge Digger School at Boys Day Out. (Not the coolest thing he has done. He has been to Brisbane!)
I really like the idea of having an Oscar. I like the way to seems to be given without many rules, the teachers just decide. And not everyone gets a turn with Oscar, there are more kids than weekends. When Oscar does come home, the diary makes it more special and it encourages the family to get involved. This in turn makes the child feel even more special. Their aim is to strengthen the kindergarten and the families. It does that well.
A cool idea!
One that is portable into business and other organisations, although a large cuddly monkey might need some rethinking.
To have a home, a real home, a safe home, a loving home, is there any sweeter thing?
Home is a place, but not the building. Home is the people, the laughter, the sadness, the exciting and the mundane.
At home you are best known and best cared for.
And yet for many many people in New Zealand don’t have a home. They have a place they call home, a roof over their heads. But it is not a home, certainly not in the sweetest sense of the word.
I flew to Christchurch yesterday morning for meetings, was scheduled to get home at 8:30pm last night. By lunch time our meetings were done, and Tere graciously dropped me at the airport and I caught the last direct afternoon flight.
I was home for dinner, home to chat with my kids. I was tired as it has been a very busy last 7 days. But I was home.
There is no sweeter thing.
168 | 365 – This is a shot of the Q300 as we turn onto finals over the Waikato River to land home in Hamilton.
One of the hardest parts of being a parent is watching from a distance as your children develop friendships. We know that true friendship can craft our children, develop and enhance them. But we also know the wrong friends could have a long-term negative influence on them.
We would like to determine who our kids are friends with, but we know that they must learn those lessons themselves.
So we watch and coach. We listen as they describe hurts and share their joy as they discover true friends.
This is a picture of some of Kyla’s friends. We headed to Rotorua, for gondola and luge rides to celebrate her upcoming 10th birthday. Kyla and her friends were incredibly well behaved, had heaps of fun and enjoyed the day.
I am proud of Kyla. I am proud of the friends she is choosing. I am proud of how she connected with each of them yesterday.
So far so good. Long may it continue as we head towards her teenage years.
Yesterday was a picturesque day.
As I headed to Tauranga for work I had my kids in the car who were destined for a stay at my parents house.
We had some ice on the car before we left home but as we progressed east most fields and roadsides were covered with a brilliant crisp white frost. The sun had yet to rise sufficiently above the Kaimai ranges to burn off the white ice and return the scene to lush green grass.
I had a reasons not to stop. Work, my mum was waiting, and it was cold.
But I stopped anyway.
Let the kids out of the car to stomp on the thick white frozen grass. The loved it, had ice on their shoes as they returned to the car and were invigorated by the fresh air. (just what my mum needed!)
In my journal this morning I rated the trip to Tauranga A1.
A1 A = Builds Energy; 1 = Very Productive
This week I have dedicated a couple of pages of my journal to tracking my days with the specific purpose of reviewing energy and productivity. In broad stokes I am giving activities ABC ratings for energy and 123 ratings for productivity.
I was thinking about why I would rate letting the kids out as very productive. After all it cost my 10 minutes and when compared to some other meetings I have had this week that I rate 3, unproductive, it is kind weird.
I realised that, for me, productivity is about production.
About producing.
But is not about producing something.
It is about producing me!
When I stop to let the kids stomp on white grass I am producing a father who values fun and living and adventure and the impromptu.
I produces a better me,
therefore
I am productive!
A hundred years from now it will not matter
What your bank account was,
The sort of house you I lived in
Or the kind of car you drove
But the world may be different
Because you were important in the life of a child'– Anon
"We did it Kyla, we got a goal!" Talia hollers with excitement after she kicks the ball between the trampoline legs that have become the goal posts for our backyard soccer game.
Its kids verses Dad and there is a lesson in play for the girls. Its called Teamwork! Their tendency, their predisposition if you will, is to play as individuals, to both run around trying to get the ball off Dad and then each other, even though they are on the same team.
I explain to them that if Kyla comes to get the ball off me and Talia waits by the goal,they will get goals easier. Talia of course very offside but it is not a lesson in soccer rules. Now, because Dads are always really bad at soccer when playing with 5 and 7 year olds, Kyla easily manages to get the ball off me and kicks it to Talia. The distance of 3 metres is simply to enormous for me to cover in the 15 seconds it takes for Talia to line-up and score the goal which is met with shouts of pleasure from both girls. "Kyla and Talia 5 points, Daddy 1" they yell.
Anyway, I was thinking about grown up kids, like the kind I work with. Our tendency, our predisposition is to play as individuals. We often want to score the goal and have our turn and be in the limelight of success, rather than making sure that first and foremost the team wins!
Within our company team we have a number of smaller teams. Some of the teams function really well as… well teams. They pass their ball off to each other, which are off course the various aspects of their jobs. They don't really care who does what as long as the team gets the goal and the team wins! Some other teams function more as individuals, they own just their part, don't pass the ball and continually try to just get goals themselves and often fail to keep up.
I guess it is no surprise which teams achieve the best results, have the most victories and generally win the most. It is of course the groups of people that realise they need each other and scoring a goal for the team is more important than getting a goal as an individual. They help each other out and have few lines drawn about who does what. They do what it takes to make sure the team wins.
Incidentally the winning teams, have heaps more fun, get a buzz out of winning and 'holler with excitement' when they get their goals.
Which 'team' would you rather be on?
The camping ground that we are staying at as a strict no Alcohol policy. You CAN NOT bring alcohol onto the site.
So imagine my surpirse when the hand gel in the toilets is alcohol based. You would think you could get a different kind of hand gel.
I just needed to say that I love my kids so deeply. I don’t talk about them like that very often.
Kyla has the same love language was me. She loves to be held and cuddled. Last night I was lying on the couch, and she comes and lies on top of me. She does it all the time, things like that, will hold my hand when she is the passenger seat of my car, or have a cuddle with me everyday. Talia is not interested in that stuff but is so intelligent it blows my mind. It amazes me how different kids are…
Kyla and I were chatting away and I was telling her again that she is “going to achieve amazing things when she gets older”. This time she talked about being a police officer, and giving me speeding tickets (I think she has my sense of humour as well). I don’t care what my kids do, as long as they learn to ‘be’, because then they will be amazing people and achieve incredible things.
Anyway the point. I love them soooo much, and this brings heaps of questions… How do I continue to love them in action? How can I continue to input into their lives so that they achieve amazing things when they are older?