Tuesday, May 1, 2007

To Nag or Negotiate

I was told that life begins at 40 - but I've learned that your 40's is just the time when it really starts to show...

When I had turned 40, we had recently been blessed with the birth of our son. He has been the best thing in our lives - and was definately worth the wait! Today I took a free noon hour seminar offered through my work on "Negotiation with Teens". Albeit a tad premature, it was well worth it in that she talked about the foundation and patterns we develop for communication within the family and how it begins when the children are small. In a nutshell, we want our children to develop strong negotiation skills - we don't want them to follow our rules just because we have set them. She said that people will only be bossed or told what to do for so long (ie: the military). In the end, they will make their own choices to agree or disagree with us (and also choose which nursing home they will send us to!). It was very interesting and, to be perfectly honest, I've always been a little frightened when I do the math... J will likely be a "pre-teen" or in his "terrible teens" just when I'm right smack in the midst of menopause. If this is anything like PMS, I will need to keep going to these courses every Tuesday in May!

J had his first full day of grade 2 today after his one month term break. He is bright and loves school and has a teacher who has set very high expectations for him. Anyway, he is happy to be back for term 3 -- and although he saw quite a few of his classmates during April, he really misses some of his friends during the extended break. We also started a new set of swimming lessons tonight.

Anyway, I better get some "shut-eye" -- tired and crabby moms aren't as good with the negotiation tactics as they should be. Daddy comes home tomorrow so J is pretty excited today!

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