Familius

When You Are Asked a Question

Sometimes in business when we ask a vendor or client a question, they respond, “As we wrote in an email last November . . . ” or “As written in your contract . . . ” or “As we mentioned in our communiqué . . .” I’ve never liked this. It's a CYA. It makes me feel like a child, that I’m being reprimanded because I didn’t pay attention to their email, communiqué, or letter which was received with hundreds more.

As children and adults, we’re busy, we’re deluged with information, we forget. But we are not incompetent, lazy, or cavalier about our relationships and agreements and what people say or write. Sometimes we don’t understand. Sometimes we need things repeated. We all do.

Whether in business or with your family, could we recommend that when someone asks a question, that we validate and appreciate their sincerity and simply answer the question rather than remind them how often and how specifically we’ve either answered it or preempted it before?

“Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.” —Ronald Reagan 

Haiku and kids

I love the way haiku allows you to conjure up an entire story, indirectly, in just a few words.  Here's a stripped-down haiku my wife came up with:

Writing For Young Readers

I've presented the last few years at the annual Writing and Illustrating For Young Readers conference (WIFYR) put on by Carol Williams. It's a fantastic conference that features national book writers and illustrators, literary agents, publishers, and exceptionally talented writers looking to get published. This year, Familius is sponsoring their novel competition with the winning entry receiving a publishing contract and $1,000. We're very excited about the quality of talent we find at this conference. 

The Trenches

It is definitely self-serving to write about your own book. It’s embarrassing to do so, but as I’m one of the few people I know who has at least nine children, there’s something to be said about living in these unique parenting trenches. While I’m really not the general in this household (Michele has earned that distinction), I am a soldier in this family trench and have the battle scars to prove that fatherhood is not an easy task.

What I’ve learned about parenting and my role as a father continues to evolve. But there are common denominators. Everyone already knows them—patience, love, forgiveness, time, play, education, culture, friendship—but we tend to forget them, particularly during a salvo of family frustration.

I hope that the thoughts in Living in the Trenches: Successful Family Strategies From a Father of Nine (yes nine!) can help you appreciate and successfully manage your own little army a bit better.

Remember, never let a problem to be solved get in the way of a person to be loved.

Perspectives on Parenting

If you’ve ever listened to national storyteller Bil Lepp you’ll appreciate what I mean when I say he’s one of the funniest storytellers out there. While all storytellers use material from their own lives, what makes Bil so unique is that his stories are so wonderfully personal and self-effacing. His new book Muddling Through: Perspectives on Parenting is a collection of stories that explore what this crazy, frustrating, educational, challenge-ridden parenting job is in all its colors.

Whether he’s talking about teaching his children about fishing, showing how to have fun baking cookies with his kids, or strengthening meaningful family traditions, Bil takes us on a personal journey that we can all relate to and that through reading someone else’s experiences helps us feel that we’re not alone, that someone has been there and done that, someone who can help us find the humor in our role as parents.

I love Bil’s writing because he doesn’t sugarcoat the truth. Instead he shares what we’ve all experienced in an honest yet creative way and we’re the better for it. 

Family Ever After

Familius is launching a few books this week and we’ll take a moment each day to share with you why we love them. We hope that you’ll share these books with your family and friends. Why? Because they are great! 

Family Ever After: Simple Ways to Achieve Extraordinary Happiness With Your Ordinary Family by Michelle H. Packard is one of my favorite books this season. We loved the original idea—that after the honeymoon, after life begins to fill the gaps between a woman’s ideal of marriage and the life realities, she may wonder what happened to her “Ever After.”

Michelle is a writer and a blogger, but more importantly, Michelle is a stay-at-home mom who understands the often contrasting friction between the dream and the reality of marriage and family life. With exceptional research and real-life stories Michelle provides a wonderful exploration of what is a realistic view of marriage and family life and how to actually find that Ever After we all look for.

I love this book because it’s true and it’s real. It’s funny. It’s poignant. It puts our family life in perspective and allows us to keep our dreams and continue to work toward them.

Thank you, Michelle, for a refreshing look at what family life is and what it can be. 

The Ice Cometh

Yesterday I watched  some of my children play on a thirty-ton boulder that had been pushed by the  winter ice one hundred yards from the interior of the lake to the beach.  H2O, three small atoms forming one single molecule, joined to others and then once  frozen pushed thirty tons 100 yards over 60 days.  Something microscopic overcame a significant challenge with time and continued energy.

 Watching my children play on that boulder I thought about how persistence and determination eventually outlast any challenge. 

If you struggle with something that is meaningful, persist. Be determined. Don't give up. Eventually, all obstacles, regardless of the size, are overcome by persistence. 

“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”  —Calvin Coolidge

It Smells Like . . . Children!

An agent showed our home the other day to some prospective buyers. When we asked what they thought he said, “Well, they said the home had a peculiar odor.”

“Odor?”

“Yes, odor.” I could tell he was being evasive.

“What kind of odor?” I asked.

He hesitated.

I waited.

“Well,” he said, and cleared his throat, “they said that it smelled like . . . children lived in the home.”

“Children?”

“Yes, children.”

“Hmm, I see,” I said. “But did you mention that the children do not come with the home?”

For more humorous stories about family read Bil Lepp's Muddling Through: Perspectives on Parenting. 

Communication

My wife said, “What I told her was . . .”

I responded, “But I thought you wanted . . .”

To which she said, “You didn’t hear me when I . . .”

So I asked, “When did you say that?”

She then said, “When you were doing the dishes and . . . “

I responded, “But I had two kids hanging on my legs, two spilling their milk, and two signing Les Miserables ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ . . . and two fighting over the iPad. . . ”

We sighed.

Communication. It’s often about cutting each other some slack. 

Plagiarism

Sometimes even the most trusted brands fail to dot all their I’s or cross all their T’s. In yesterday’s Publisher’s Weekly online edition they reported that “Grand Central has delayed publication of Jane Goodall's Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants after it was found that multiple passages in the book were borrowed without attribution from Web sites including Wikipedia. Among the passages in question is an entire paragraph in Goodall's book on pesticides and tea estates that appears word for word on the Web site for Choice Organic Teas. In another passage, Goodall's book has a sentence on botanist John Bartram that is nearly identical to a sentence on his Wikipedia page.”

When we look to further ideas and conversation, it’s paramount that we provide attribution to those who have had the ideas before us. Even if you are a giant, it’s important to realize that every step in your individual climb is made possible because you stand on the shoulders of giants.

Give credit where credit is due—in your profession, in your marriage, to your children, in your family.

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.” –Jane Goodall