Familius

Give a Child a Book: Some Familius Favorites

I watched my wife, the mater familius, sit with one of my children on the couch, teaching him how to read. We have nine children and she has taught each of them to read doing the same thing—sitting each day on the couch reading with them for a few minutes, opening up a new world for them. It’s been fascinating to watch how their young minds quickly grasp the concept that these things on a page are letters and these letters make words and these words have meaning and when they are arranged like building blocks they create a story and that story can take you anywhere you want to go.

I asked her one day why she does this. She answered that she has never understood why any parent would turn this experience over to anyone else, that teaching children to read is one of the most rewarding experiences a mother can have.

To be literate is a key attribute to happiness and success. To be literate opens your mind to new ideas, places, and people. The ability to educate yourself through books builds imagination, creativity, tolerance, patience, the ability to consciously delay gratification, and a love of learning.

If you give gifts during the holiday season, give a child a book. It can have a significant impact on his or her life. (They might even grow up to be a book publisher!) Here are ten of the Pater’s favorites:

1.      The Giving Tree by Shel Silvertsein.

2.      Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

3.      A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead

4.      Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

5.      Mike Mulligan and His Steam  Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton

6.      The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

7.      The Napping House by Audrey and Don Wood

8.      The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf

9.      Grandpa Green by Lane Smith

10.   The Cello of Mr. O by Jane Cutler

And don’t forget the upcoming Mama, Let’s Make a Moon and The Lonely Shadow by Clay Rice! Fantastic books by one of the world's greatest silhouette artists. 

"The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who cannot read." --Mark Twain

Mediocrapy

In a famous impromptu discussion the late Steve Jobs told Mark Parker, the CEO of Nike, that Nike was a pretty good company but it would be better if they stopped making “crap”. Pretty strong comments to a company that revolutionized the athletic shoe industry. However, Jobs saw more potential and couldn’t stand any form of mediocrity. Or mediocrapy.

Crap is the stuff we do and make that keeps us from being great and developing great relationships. Crap has tremendous opportunity cost. Crap is watching mindless shows rather than spending quality time with our spouse. Crap is yelling at our children rather than sitting down with them and helping with their homework. Crap is sleeping the day away rather than helping to make a better family and better world. Crap is buying your family fast food every day rather than making a pot of tomato soup. Crap is to burden ourselves with lots of good things to do rather than focus on the really important things that make a long-term difference.

Nobody wants to be full of crap. Get rid of it and find out what you can do and make instead.

“The problem with crap is that it is too easy to make. Crap keeps people busy. We’ve always made crap! But crap gets in the way of making the remarkable, the insanely valuable, the things for which you are the best.” —David Gammel 

What Have You Accomplished?

“No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?”

—Elbert Hubbard

The Cure to Society's Ills

“If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.”  —Abdul Kalam

Unpaid Debt

Lost in time, tucked away in the jungle of the Midwest, lives a small, backward tribe who frequently sacrifice the weak, the infirm, the mentally deficient and anyone deemed “Different”.

I lived among them for a time and felt their stings firsthand.  What haunts me most now, however, is how I, too often, stood by as silent witness to these rituals.

Some part of me will continue to pay, forever.



DOWN PAYMENT

“Stupid, fat, retarded kid”;

That was what they’d say,

Whenever Dennis V. approached

And said he’d like to play.

Fifth grade is for ten year olds,

A trait that Dennis lacked.

Blatantly invisible

He always sat in back.

The burden of his sentence,

Like weighted curtains fell;

A six year old residing in

A thirteen year old shell.

His voice was thick, like gravy,

Though rather high in tone;

Heavy on the cornstarch, but

With no testosterone.

Tattered, short-sleeve flannel shirt,

Black gloves upon his hands,

A tow’ring lack of confidence;

Prisoner of his glands.

A walking human target

For bullies in the town;

A fear repository

For cowards gathered round.

He stood the jeers at tetherball,

Yet, gladly, loan his glove;

Even let opponents win,

If push would come to shove.

Then launch a solitary march

To vanish, once again;

Locked away inside himself,

Behind that stoic grin.

The only contact Dennis knew

Was ridicule and scorn.

It made one wonder why the hell

Poor Dennis had been born.

Tolerance personified,

No allies to be found.

All of us were last to stand

While Dennis held his ground.

His presence an example

To a smaller, frightened me;

If I grow up, I hope that I’m

As brave as Dennis V.

The New Familius Christmas Anthology

Christmas is a time for family and there’s no better way of helping your family enjoy the Christmas spirit than by taking time each night to explore the annual Familius Christmas Anthology. Filled with stories, poems, recipes, and activities to make Christmas time enjoyable, this collection is literally stuffed with feel-good content and activities that will bring your family together.

The stories include such favorites as the “The Gift of Magi” by O’Henry to the moving “The Child Who Had Everything But. . .” by John Kendrick Bangs. The anthology also includes favorite poems like “Long Ago” by Christina Rossetti and, of course, “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” among many others.

And delicious family favorite recipes provide an invitation to spend time at the family table, whether you’re enjoying Spiced Sugar Cookie Truffles or a simple pot of White Hot Chocolate. And don’t forget to round out your Christmas holiday with family activities like building Graham Cracker Cottages or playing Jack Frost Tag.

The Familius Christmas Anthology is a fantastic way to enjoy this wonderful holiday and ensure your family enjoys it, together.

Optimism

For a two-year-old child the glass is always half full—until she spills it on the floor. Then it is a wonderful puddle to jump in.

May we strive to have the optimism of a two-year-old.

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” –Fred Rogers

Appreciate the Little Moments

I am sitting in my office with my twin daughters on my lap. I’m trying to work, trying to do emails, contracts, royalties, phone calls, acquisitions, editorial, marketing, sales . . . impossible. Each time I put them down they cry. If I don’t put them down they lay their heads on my chest and rest.

Sometimes, whether we appreciate it or not, we need to take a moment and enjoy the little moments, the mental respites from the daily grind.

The royalties will be there tomorrow. So will the acquisitions, and phone calls, and contracts, and books to edit, and marketing to be done, and even more emails. Soon, however, the twins will be grown and I will miss them resting their heads on my chest while I tell an author, “Please hold a moment; I need to shift the phone because the twins are vying for my attention.”

“No success can compensate for failure in the home.” –Harold Lee

From Living in the Trenches: Successful Family Strategies from a Father of Nine (Yes, Nine)

Those Other Times Too

"Life at home will always be challenging in its own way.  But there will always be those other times too:  My daughter and I lying on our backs in the grass, talking quietly or just drinking in the silence, watching clouds (and for once I don’t have to check if I’m patient enough).  Me holding her, pressing my face into her fragrant hair with its little-girl smells.  And here I am on hands and knees picking up strands of plastic Easter grass, because she had to have her Easter basket from the attic, since Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast carries a basket in some scene…but suddenly she jumps down without a word, leaving her snack at the table, and begins to search the rug carefully, snatching at stray pieces of plastic grass and carrying them to the trash, both of us laughing when she can’t get the sticky grass off her fingers.  Or she’s standing in the backyard at twilight, gazing at the evening star, when the automatic sprinklers suddenly come on, and she screams--the closest sprinkler thirty feet away from her--and I come running, pick her up, within seconds she’s smiling, wiping tears away and telling me, with big solemn eyes, the story of the startling sprinklers..."

 --from Glad to Be Dad:  A Call to Fatherhood by Tim Myers

Happy Birthday!

Today is the Pater’s birthday. There will be pie rather than cake and a pot roast with taters, carrots, and parsnips for dinner with light-as-a-feather rolls. The family will sing happy birthday and the dog will howl along.

While we celebrate birthdays, it’s tradition in the Pater’s family to honor the mothers who give birth to their children.

On each birthday his mother receives a bouquet of flowers to say thank you for the life given. It’s a good life. A grand life. A life filled with wonder and delight. And this life would not be without his mother.

Thanks, Mom, for bringing me into the world so long ago. I’m doing the best I know how to make your sacrifice worthwhile.

“A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.”  ~Tenneva Jordan