Nurturing Our Kids’ Health and Spiritual Growth

It is important to guide children in their healthy growth by helping them select a balanced diet of fruit, vegetables, grains, dairy products, and protein foods each day. Parents can model healthy meal preparations that can have a significant impact on children’s health, academic performance, and sense of well-being throughout life. Parents must take the time to ensure that their children have time for outside daily play for healthy growth and development. Children can play at parks and participate in afterschool sports, recreational activities, and performing arts activities.

Teaching Kids About Nutrition

From an early age, parents try and provide their children with a balanced diet. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, children should eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, grains, and protein plus a side order of dairy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and for snacks. By using a plate for portion control, fruits and vegetables should take up half the plate while grains and protein each take up one fourth of the plate. Parents can encourage their children to plan and prepare nutritional meals by having them help when preparing a nutritional meal. They can:

Organize the kitchen before cooking by wiping down counters, setting up a recycle bin, and placing recipe ingredients and utensils on the counter for a recipe.
Assemble recipes and adjust the quantities of ingredients for a larger or smaller family.
Pick vegetables and fruits from the family vegetable garden or a neighborhood community garden.
Wash fruits and vegetables and slice them in salads and for cooking as a side dish.
Help prepare meat for grilling, baking, or mixing into a recipe.
Clean up the kitchen as the meal is prepared.
Set the table while the meal is cooking.
Clean up after dinner by washing the dishes, taking out the garbage, and recycling.

Training Kids as Meal Planners

As students enter middle school, they can shop and plan for nutritional meals while using a budget. High school students can prepare nutritional meals for the family one night a week.

Added heathy living includes sharing quality time with your children each day. Activities may include outside play, a family dinner, homework time, family recreational time, time for reading, and talking to individual children each night before they go to bed. Most children cherish these times to share their personal growth successes and fears. Some families share these successes and challenges during the family dinner each night as a daily check-in activity. Families can celebrate successes and help each other problem-solve challenging situations.

Nurturing Family Recreation and Physical Fitness Activities

Family recreation and physical activities can include park days, family hiking days, and cultural experiences. Families can plan mini getaways that include camping, hiking, bicycling, and nature explorations. Middle school and high school kids can plan the family’s annual vacation by:

Researching various destinations while considering the costs for lodging, meals, and activities within a specified budget and timeline
Reviewing travel options and selecting an option when considering the budget, driving requirements, and road maps to the destination
Creating a schedule of daily activities that meets the needs of family members

Providing Moral and Spiritual Guidance

As children venture into the world of school, playdates, and community activities, they will meet children and families with different moral and ethical values. It is important that parents clarify their family values and help their children problem-solve when introduced to moral and ethical challenges. A family can identify their values by:

Convening a family meeting to discuss expectations for daily life with each family member
Having each family member share what they think are the important values for their family
Making a list of what each family member has shared and voting on four values
Creating a family symbol that artistically represents the four values that received the most votes
Framing and displaying the family values symbol in a prominent location at home

Reinforcing Family Values

Families can review their list of values weekly at family meetings and when trying to decide on activities that the family will participate in that may reinforce these values. Families can consider adding or changing values over time. For example, families wanting to raise culturally sensitive children will encourage their children to invite friends from various cultures to their home for dinner. These families may participate in a cultural exchange program while their children attend high school and host a student from another country in their home for part of the school year. Spending quality time with grandparents and seniors can provide children with expanded exposure to different lifestyles, values, and activities.

Applying Family Values to Safety Concerns

As family members share their values, they can also discuss safety concerns regarding personal care, conflict resolution, sex, drug abuse, and alcohol use and abuse. Children can learn how to respond to situations that may not be safe. The chapter describes various case studies with worksheets on how family members might respond when exposed to challenging situations. For example, some families have a policy of having their children phone home for a ride if they feel uncomfortable at a party or a friend’s home. They can have an agreement that no questions will be asked when a child phones home for a ride to leave a party early.

Modeling Spiritual Growth through Community Services

Families can model spiritual growth and their love and care for others in need through church related activities, community service days, and school service-learning days. Community service and service-learning activities help children learn about different needs of families in their communities. Activities can include:

Making cards and blankets for seniors
Creating dog toys
Collecting books, clothes, and toys for families in need
Adopting a family or senior during the winter holidays
Creating community garden decorations

May you treasure your shared healthy and spiritual growth activities with your family.

Mary Ann

How to Parent Today’s Kids for Success

Parents become anxious when considering the negative effects of becoming a tiger mama or a helicopter parent with their children during these Covid pandemic times. Although they strive to protect their children from harm, parents also want to ensure that their children are successful in today’s world. For example, dozens of parents purchased their children’s acceptances into competitive colleges by sending funds to a fraudulent checking account managed by a corrupt college counselor. The counselor used these funds to bribe college sports coaches to accept unqualified students on a college team and paid corrupt test proctors to change students’ standardized testing results. Some prospective college students may have signed their college admissions packets without understanding the implications of their parents’ actions. Others believed that their parents were being morally responsible when helping them falsify their college application documentation.

Parents’ Stressful Responses

As our children return to schools, parents are struggling with how to model effective parenting skills while juggling demanding careers, multiple jobs, and ensuring that their children are safe during the Covid pandemic, when traveling or living in crime ridden communities, and while surfing the internet. Many parents solve these challenges by:

Helicoptering their children with too many demands for their time to exhaustion
Allowing too much freedom as their children become lured into gang-related activities, online gaming, or becoming addicted to internet activities.
Forcing their children to grow up too quickly with extensive sibling care and household responsibilities while parents work more than one job to feed their family

Solutions for Managing Daily Stresses

In the next few weeks, our blogs will share:

Proven strategies for learning responsible behaviors that nurture independence, problem-solving, and resiliency skills
Best practices for healthy living, and moral and spiritual guidance
Effective partnership strategies with schools, career explorations, and planning for college and careers
Daily time management suggestions for families and when encountering life’s more difficult challenges (i.e. illness, crime, divorce, or natural disasters)

We will include skill building guidance, case studies, worksheet samples, and added resources when applicable. The various activities and examples included in each blog are collected from over 30 years of field experiences with families in schools and communities. Parents have reported that these skills provide “valuable information with many smart tips . . .” and “are a great resource . . . to maintain a positive outlook while navigating all sorts of situations with two young children.”

Teaching Children Responsible Behaviors

From the time children are preschoolers, it is important to set appropriate boundaries in how they relate to family members and how the family functions daily. Each child should start helping with household chores and sibling support by the time they start elementary school. They must learn to organize their day for personal hygiene, chores, and maintaining personal belongings. Children need loving guidance, modeling, and feedback as they grow to become self-sufficient responsible family members.

Authoritative Parenting Characteristics

There are many types of parents in the world. Some parents are very authoritative and try and manage every aspect of their children’s lives. These tiger mamas or helicopter parents tend to exhibit some of the following personality characteristics:

Are demanding about a need and will not discuss options or negotiate choices
Believe that their approach to life and daily challenges are optimal
Expect that their children will follow their rules
Can be excessively punitive or shaming when a child has misbehaved
May discipline by physically hurting the child, placing on probation for extended periods of time, or limiting access to a privilege for an extended period of time
Can be intolerable when their children express emotions, demonstrate weakness, or are fearful of change

Permissive Parenting Traits

A permissive parent does not set boundaries or consequences for their children’s misbehavior. Many permissive parents are over-whelmed with daily life or do not want to squander their children’s curiosity and passion for life. These parents tend to:

Have children care for themselves and do not provide added support for food preparation, bedtimes, homework completion, or basic hygiene.
Ignore or are excessively tolerant when their children are rambunctious and disregard the safety and care of personal possessions
Allow their children to work through conflicts and daily challenges on their own without any support or guidance
Are too busy or preoccupied with their own lives to provide quality time and guidance to their children
Allow their children to manage their own lives without consequences for misbehavior, not attending school, not caring for possessions, or planning for future careers.

Coaching and Mentor Parenting

Parents can effectively serve as coaches and mentors for their children. For example, they can consider their children’s personalities, how to provide choices when setting boundaries, and winning cooperation through effective problem-solving communications. These parents support their children by:

Effectively listening to their children’s needs and clarifying what they want to achieve when asking for freedoms and responsibilities
Helping our children identify an appropriate solution to a challenge and setting clear expectations for achieving success
Helping our children understand boundaries that must be determined to ensure their safety and success
Reassure our children feel loved and respected with their various contributions to the family and personal successes
Giving our children responsibilities and opportunities to support the family and community.

Much success as you strive to effectively mentor and coach your children.

Mary Ann

How We Can Help Each Other in Our Community

We are only in our first weeks of school and students are already prepared to give back to their communities during the ongoing Covid health and wildfire challenges. Many of our students continue to educate each other on what they should do to stay safe during the ongoing pandemic. They are very careful in wearing their masks, sanitizing their hands, and staying a safe distance from each other in the classroom and while playing outside. Many of my students have made posters of safe health practices for their homes and communities.

Community Services

Other students have been active through their church communities and continue to collect food and clothing at distribution sites for fire victims and families who have lost jobs during the pandemic. Other students have collected money through their church and community support agencies. And others volunteer by helping their siblings and friends with homework, child care, and playing on community sports teams.

Students Become Leaders

Our students learn that by being helpful and learning community leadership skills, they are able to overcome daily challenges that prepare them to effectively cope with uncertain times. Their self-esteem increases as they become capable community supporters in their schools and their neighborhoods.

What can you do to support your children in helping in your school, neighborhood, and community?

Much gratitude,

Mary Ann

How to Set Boundaries that Support Our Children’s Growth!

It is the start of a new school year and we are busy trying to help our children organize themselves for success. The warm autumn days beckon our children to play outside until the family dinner. After dinner, there are new television shows to watch. Our children want to play with their toys, look at books, and play on the family computer, phone, or tablet.

Setting Boundaries Ideas

Many parents ask us how we can set household boundaries and rules to curtail these distractions and complete homework and prepare for a new school day without arguments and negotiations. We recently asked family members for their best suggestions on setting boundaries. Summarized below are some great tips:

Plan ahead for distractions with a weekly evening schedule that defines the time for afterschool play, eating dinner with the family, completing homework, independent reading, discussing the day with parents, getting ready for bed, and preparing for the next school day.
Identify an alternative schedule when there are special events at school, dentist or doctor appointments, sporting events, and family obligations on a school night.
Work with the school to plan ahead for homework assignment completion. Most schools send out homework packs once a week for students with their parents support to complete within several days. Other schools provide an afterschool homework club that you can have your child attend for added support. Other parents plan homework sessions with friends where children can rotate their homework assignments at different households to enlist the support of an expert parent in reading, writing, arithmetic, history, performing arts, and science projects.
When children fight with others and siblings, it is important to be clear about household rules with consequences for misbehavior. When siblings hit or hurt each other, they should be removed from a situation and sit with a reflective timeout. Typically, a timeout is a minute per age. For example, a five-year old’s timeout will be for five minutes. After the timeout, discuss with the child what has happened and have them make amends with the sibling or other child.
If children continue to misbehave, they may need to return home or stay away for others as they are probably tired, overstimulated, or upset about a situation.
Limit screen time to no more than an hour a day unless it includes homework assignments. It is important to give your children time to relax and play outside.
Keep your children on a regular meal time and sleep schedule to ensure that they are well rested and ready to learn and enjoy life.
Schedule regular times that your child can play with neighborhood and class friends even if it includes scheduled afterschool activities. This ensures that your child has a support system.
Be there for your child when they are under stress or are sad and support their problem-solving skills.
Be a role model of personal healthy growth and development.

Happy first weeks of personal growth during the new school year!

Joyce

Career Explorations for Our Children

Throughout life, children aspire to become many different things when they grow up. One child may want to become a sanitation worker and recycle truck driver. Others dream of becoming a fireman, police woman, or teacher. From an early age, we can encourage our children to learn more about different types of careers and jobs by:

Taking our children to our jobs afterschool, in the evening, or on weekends
Encouraging our children to help us with various aspects of our job (i.e. sort different assignments for teachers, organize the trash and recyclables for the garbage collection and recycle centers, and conduct household fire safety checks)
Helping our children learn how to pursue specific career explorations through research, participation in early college courses, and engaging in relevant work experiences

Elementary children typically explore careers by starting small businesses and playing pretend games. Some children like to create lemonade stands to sell baked goods and refreshments. Another child may sell art creations and another may organize garage sales for selling old toys and household items. When children organize small business activities, they learn what it takes to plan for a business venture, how to manage money throughout the process, and how to conduct business with various family members and the public.

As our children enter the middle school years, they can start participating in summer internships that may include:

Working in a summer camp for kids, at community service or and church events, and at performing arts events
Enrolling in certificate and career exploration programs for preteens offered through parks and recreation programs (i.e. babysitting certification, CPR, cooking and sewing classes, sports classes, and performing arts classes)
Participating in youth groups and clubs that explore careers in STEAM types of activities, makers fairs, and STEM competitions

As our children enter their high school years, that can expand their career exploration activities by:

Securing paid internships and jobs in their areas of interest
Participating in community service events as an intern, youth leader, or paid employee
Enrolling in early learning college courses to explore career options and complete undergraduate course requirements for career preparation to accelerate learning and reduce the time and expense required for a bachelor’s degree

We can encourage our children to compete a resume each year that focuses on their immediate interests, experiences, and possible career goals. An appropriate resume for middle school students might include the following information:

Sample Resume Template

My Resume (What is your name?) _____________________________________

Job Title (What do you want to do?) ____________________________________

Qualifications (What is your experience with this type of work?)

_____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________

Accomplishments and Awards (What are awards or activities that you do well?)

_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________

Hobbies (How do you like to spend your time?)

_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________

Job References (Who can we contact to talk about your experience with the job?)

______________________________ ____________________________

High school students can expand their resumes by including a career goal, identifying college course requirements, and including significant volunteer or paid working experiences for a specific career per the sample resume below:

Sample Resume

Edward Smith Ayala

Phone Number: (818) 665-0085

Email: smith@gmail.com

Career Goal

Bio Engineering

Marine Biology

Bio Chemistry

Honors and Awards

Presidential Award Recipient

Honor Roll (9^th, 10^th, and 11^th grades)

GPA: 4.3 (Weighted)

Community Activities

Congressional Summer Intern, June 2016-August 2016, The Office of Tony Cardenas, Congressman, 29^th District, Arleta, CA

Duties included but were not limited to working with district staff in the following areas of constituent services: casework, and correspondence; grants funding; environmental science research; outreach and event staffing; general office support.

Teen Convention Vice-Chairman, June 2015-January 2016, Recovery Teen Convention, Woodland Hills, CA

Co-Managed a committee of 15 teens to oversee and run all convention details for 100 teens, including, monthly and bi-monthly meeting reminders and announcements, oversaw sub-committee selections, developed the program agenda, organized fundraisers, and selected program speakers.

Interpreter, August 2015, Christ Church of the Valley, Tacna, Peru

Translated (Spanish) for the Peru Summer Mission’s Team
Provided educational & tutoring support for students in the Semillas After School Program
Provided weekly groceries to the Tacna Community and supported work crews to replace roofing, paint, and resurface church flooring.

Assistant Martial Arts Instructor, October 2011- October 2015, Ken Nagayama Martial Arts, Burbank, CA

Assisted teaching in the Kinder Karate Program and learned to reach each student by adjusting my teaching style to better meet their needs
Taught students of all ages and levels for 2 hours a week for 4 years

Volunteer Election Campaign Worker, September 2012- March 2015, Monica Garcia for LAUSD Board Los Angeles, CA

Helped to register voters
Supported bilingual phone banking teams

Volunteer Election Campaign Worker, September 2014- March 2015, Ref Rodriguez for LAUSD Board Los Angeles, CA

Educated students and school staff members, through student assemblies and faculty meetings, about each candidate’s election platform and supported the GOTV campaign

Work Experiences/Internships

Dance Coach, January 2016- Present, YPI Valley Public Charter High School, Pacoima, CA

Established and developed after school dance club for the new early college high school for 4 hours a week (6 hours a day during school recess)
Designs daily lesson plans, provides mentoring and tutoring for the students in the program

Interests

Cheerleading-BCCS, CCECHS, All Star Athletics, and Cali- All Star (4 years)
Dance- Granada and Champs (4 years)
Acting/Performing Arts- Golden Theater (3 years)
Leadership-Student Government (2 years)
Acting/Performing Arts- Children’s Theatre Experience (4 years)
Martial Arts-Ken Nagayama Martial Arts (12 years)

As students become aviators in their career explorations, they will be able to understand and articulate clearly what they need to achieve a specific career path. This clarity can guide them to successfully complete all necessary skills and requirements for career success. These experiences can also support students’ interpersonal communication skills and leadership development.

Much success in supporting your children’s career explorations!

Yvette