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Fire Safety – Ensure Your Children Know How to Stay Safe

9/30/2018

Photo: Ricardo Gomez Angel

Protecting our children sounds like an obvious duty for us as parents…and it is! But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Overprotection, such as coddling, can hurt your children’s ability to cope as adults molding a ‘safe, but a possibly weak, person’. Little or no protection could cause harm to your children or get them in trouble molding ‘an independent person, but in jeopardy of harm’.

What you protect your children from is a question to ponder when regarding lifestyle choices. But there is no question about the protection you owe your children when it comes to their physical safety. Protecting our kids from the danger of fire is one of the most critical responsibilities of a parent. Below is an article that every parent should read, with lessons all families should learn and practice regarding that responsibility.

Be sure to click on all the links to get invaluable and lifesaving information!

Thanks to: CrownFire — Fire Protection & Life Safety!

Photo: Ricardo Gomez Angel

Fire Safety – Ensure Your Children Know How to Stay Safe

As a parent, ensuring the safety of your children is one of, if not the most important thing in your life. You try your best to protect them as they grow up and prepare them for when they’re on their own. Even then, their safety is still in the back of your minds.

When is the last time you’ve talked with your kids about fire safety? Would they know what to do if they smelt smoke or saw a fire? Because flammable materials that could easily catch fire surround us, it’s important to teach your children fire safety.

Do You Have Escape Routes?

It’s crucial to ensure your children know how to escape the house safely if it was on fire. Not even that, they should have an idea as to what an escape plan is all together. Starting with your home, walk through the designated spots they would use to get out of the house. If at all possible, try and decide on two routes out of every room in the house.

How to Safely Escape

It is one thing for kids to know that they need to escape if they’re caught in a fire. However, how to safely escape, that is a whole other thing to teach them. In case you are not around or incapacitated when a fire breaks out, ensure that they know to stay down low, to touch a door before going through to see if it is hot, and never to hide. Once they are safely outside, they should go to the neighbors for help, or call 911 if they have a cell phone.

See or Smell Smoke?

Smoke is a major indication of a potential fire. The only thing, though, is that there are different types of smoke depending on what is burning. First, teach your children what the smell of a burning fire smells like versus the smell of burnt food from the kitchen or any other form of a controlled fire.

Most likely if you see or smell smoke, the smoke detector should go off. Take your children to test all the smoke detectors, so they know what they do, how they work, and sound. If they do not go off though, ensure your kids know that if they see smoke from a fire in the house to head to their nearest escape route as discussed.

Know When to Call for Help

It’s a good idea for your children to know the difference between an emergency fire and a fire that is okay. For example, a flame to cook food wouldn’t require emergency services, but an out of control fire in the kitchen likely would.

Encourage your children to call for help if they ever spot a fire hazard. If they see an open flame near flammable material, that would be a sign to call for an adult to point out the danger. The more you can teach your kids about flammables, ignitions, and the types of fires, the better off they will be.

Fire safety should be a regular conversation you have with your children. As they get older and start to stay by themselves, you want to ensure they will be safe while you’re gone. Go through fire drills frequently to see where you can help them out.

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Successful Families Have These Two Characteristics

9/24/2018

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Families may have similar experiences, but that doesn’t mean they are similar people. It’s important to remember that we were never put on this earth to be like each other. We need thinkers and doers, liberals and conservatives, artists and scientists, men and women, introverts and extroverts, beauty and brawn, and on and on.

Sometimes our ideas and views make us clash. This is understandable because we think and evaluate things differently. But the synergy of different modes of thought will help us find better answers to the problems we face. Sometimes the forcing together of cultures, when neither one is ready for it, does not always work although ‘hooray’ when it does! Real diversity is having different viewpoints and experiences to consider among people who respect each other, no matter who or what they are.

Diversity in a family is usually devoid of race and ethnicity issues. Diversity is more personality driven and rarely do children in a family have the same personality. Two points on that. First of all, parents must be careful to treat all children fairly, but not treat all of them the same because each child responds differently. The second point is this: for diversity to work, there must be cooperation!

I’d like to expand on the second point. Families come in all shapes and sizes. But regardless of their composition, the most successful families have balance. When everyone has the same characteristics, there may be no balance, no back and forth. On the other hand, when everyone has the different characteristics, there may be no cooperation.

Consider a family where every member thinks the same way, always critiquing those outside the family with whom they commonly disagree. They sympathize with each other constantly and provide excuses for failure within the family. Any possible lessons to be learned from outside criticism or failure will be nullified by coddling within the family. There are plenty of rules in cooperative families, stated or not, and new ideas are a threat. Individuals from highly cooperative-only families are usually not independent, nor are they contributors to society.

Now consider a family where everyone thinks differently without connecting. New ideas or opinions abound, sympathy is rare, and cooperation is very unlikely. Arguments are plentiful and encouragement is not. A diverse and uncooperative family will be chaotic! There are no rules. Individuals from diverse yet uncooperative families can be independent contributors to, or possibly a stain on, society.

The best family atmosphere is one where everyone can have independent thoughts while being listened to by those that may feel differently. This situation - of free speech and tolerance – are attributes that bring out the best in a country or a family! It allows for to both learning and/or correction. How else will we learn?

Diverse and Cooperative

A diverse yet cooperative family is the atmosphere we must encourage and strives towards, but we cannot force it to be such. It is not easy to do, but it can be easy to evaluate your family’s situation. How does your family work? Are you diverse, coddling, chaotic, cooperative, loving, honest, overly critical, forgiving, corrective, supportive, consistent, etc? Something to think about-something to help you achieve a more cohesive family.

#powerofdadhood

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You’re Perfect Just the Way You Are….Really?

9/16/2018

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"Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it."
~ Salvador Dali

While the sentiment is noteworthy, the message, “You’re Perfect Just the Way You Are” is not a useful or helpful thing to say to someone. While this is said to make someone feel better, it is dishonest and potentially misleading in my opinion. On course, if you want to tell someone you love them just the way they are, that is much more honest - if not always completely honest.

No one is perfect just the way they are! I give some leeway to infants because they are as perfect as they can be, no matter their looks, intelligence, or disposition. But as we age we have decisions to make that will decide how we approach or depart perfection, never to get there. Because of our limitations, we will make the mistakes all human beings are destined to make. Paradoxically, making mistakes often helps us to improve.

Telling someone that they are 'perfect as they are' is taking away goals they have yet to achieve. It’s like saying, “you’re done”…. nothing left for you to do." Wouldn’t that be depressing! You’re not perfect until you reach your full potential and that assumes your full potential is perfection, and that’s an awesome goal, but not achievable.

We use the 'your perfect' phrase when people fail or are disparaged in some way. Children and adults with disadvantages are sometimes demeaned by others. People that do these reprehensible things are far more damaged as human beings than anyone they talk down to or criticize. They are the antithesis of perfection and that should be explained to someone who has been ridiculed. “You may not be perfect as none of us are, but you are far superior to the nincompoop that ridiculed you!” - maybe a more appropriate retort.

I doubt anyone with self-respect wants to hear that they are perfect the way they are. I would be suspicious of the person who said that, wondering how ill-prepared they think I am to handle my life. I would even hesitate to say to my wife or kids that ‘I love you just the way you are’. More appropriate would be to say that I love them, “scars and all”. I may not say that, but that is what I mean (and they know it).

Strangely, I found a blog from ‘Be Positive Now’ entitled “We are Perfect”, that claims we and everything is perfect. Yes, when you fall off a cliff, nature will work perfectly to take you down. When you eat fatty foods continuously, you will become perfectly fat. If you smoke, your odds of dying earlier than normal go up. The world reacts perfectly to our imperfections. Nature is closer to perfection than our reactions to it. For example, why did some people feel compelled not to leave on the East Coast when warned of Hurricane Florence? Florence was a perfect, if not a welcomed, storm. Citizen's reactions to Florence’s threat were not always perfect.

There is one paragraph in the “We are Perfect” article that I agree with. The problem is that this paragraph argues against its theme.

“Flaws, wrong, bad and ugly are thoughts that exist in our parent’s heads and thru negative training are passed along to us. We believe them and act as if the lies are true and pass them onto our children. Humans have been doing this since the first human wanted something other than what nature provided.”

Interestingly, all the comments praised this article immensely! But all the comments were dated to the year 2019. Maybe there is hope! Maybe we will all be perfect next year!

We are never done improving ourselves until we give up. That may be the furthest from perfection we can ever get.

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Where are the Heroes? Whose Pulling the Strings?

9/10/2018

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I watched a lot of television when I was younger. It was a common friend and pastime during my many moves as a kid. Today, I’m not into TV that much. I’ve found more productive ways to keep busy, but I do watch a few chosen programs with my wife, Kathy. Kathy enjoys relaxing while watching TV and likes my company while doing so.

Mostly we watch stories on cable or Netflix where I think the writing today is much superior to the writing of my childhood, partly due to the freedom of expression. But I enjoy watching much less because, while entranced by the stories, I come away feeling depressed, disgusted, and sad after almost every episode. It could be the infidelity and violence of “Donovan,” the absence of morality and ethics of “Shameless,” or the portrayal of insanely flawed characters you may cheer or feel sympathy for in “Ozark” or “Better Call Saul.” Likeable characters these days are as rare as respectable politicians.

Never did I feel anything but happiness and/or positivity from watching “Andy of Mayberry,” “Father Knows Best,” or “Gunsmoke.” Sure, these programs did not always reflect real life. And I was okay with that. We saw real life everyday, so no one was fooled. But the escape and lessons they provided were valuable. Now it’s the opposite. There is no escape from fear or sadness, and the lessons are all negative!

Currently, Kathy and I are into about four, maybe five episodes of Netflix's “Ozark.” There is one character that I am holding out hope that he may be a decent person. He has been reasonable so thus far, but I fear he will fall into the circles of Hell like everyone else. Even the tough-minded and admirable Ruth, maybe the heroine of the series. is not shy of real violence, cheating, and harassment.

I wonder! Am I naïve? Are some of us seemingly saintly when compared to these people, and does that make us fools? Is real life like this and some of us live in a bubble? From a scene in ‘Ozark’, “So you skim a little from the top. Everyone does, don’t they?” Is this the line you want your children to hear? Does everyone skim from the top? Is every honest person a sucker or weak, to be pushed aside? I hope not. But I am truly beginning to have doubts because of the avalanche of negativity and repugnant behavior on most limited access programs. I get it. People like these programs for their shock value or voyeurism. I don’t expect goodness and light from everyone or every program but how about a little balance?

I know the reactions of some who read this. Hopefully, many will agree with my observations. Others will think, “What kind of Pollyanna is this guy?” Well, I’m not a Pollyanna. I have made many mistakes, some on purpose because I am a flawed human being. But to make evil the baseline, a common theme to entertain us, will also dull the senses of decency. Children should never see these programs and young adults could be harmed by idealistic sabotage.

When infidelity, violence, complete lack of morals, ethical vacuums, and cheering-on bad guys seem normal, then cheating on a test or stealing a candy bar doesn’t even move the scale of what’s inappropriate. What’s the harm of selling a little illegal weed to the kids when the other guy is selling crack cocaine? Let’s go shoplift what we need. It’s no big deal, the department and hardware stores already price in the shoplifting of their products.

Someone I respected greatly once gave a kid $5 to throw a couple of extra, unpaid-for bags of mulch in his trunk at a garden shop. I couldn’t believe he did that and especially in front of me. I had considered him a mentor. Was it a big crime? No. Were the few bucks he saved worth my loss of respect for him? Like watching characters on TV, I could have been influenced slightly to believe that is smart, it's okay. And some would have taken the bait.

Commercial Illuminati

Even on broadband television commercials we are brainwashed. And that is perfectly understandable when a product is being sold. Outside of that, there is a coordinated attempt to bend our thinking and socially train us. When a company has a message beyond selling a product, watch closely what you see that has nothing to do with their product. Unless what they are selling is directly addressed, it’s not their business to train you or me. Understand, I may or may not agree with their unrelated, somewhat hidden message(s) - that's not the point because generally I do. I just don’t want their opinion on anything beyond their explanation of how their product can help me. And as mentioned, these underlying messages are coordinated among many different products. Who is the gatekeeper? Keep social training and politics out of commercials!

Let’s face it. There’s enough built-in evil in every one of us. Of course, some more than others. Our morality is affected when we allow ourselves to be brainwashed in ways that make malevolence seem commonplace or to be depressed by attacks on our fragile morality. This will not help us or the people we rely on and trust every day. There was a time when it was good against evil. Now the common theme is ‘evil against worse evil’.

Where are the choices? We need heroes to show us there are other ways to act and react. Where have they gone? Marshall Matt Dillon (Gunsmoke), Ward Cleaver (Leave It to Beaver), where are you?

Marshall Matt Dillon from the TV series, "Gunsmoke".

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The Risks of Fatherhood

9/3/2018

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There is a risk of sending your kid out into the world. But also risks if you do not!

Where in life will you find more opportunities for reward and failure than parenting? Let’s face it, it’s a risky undertaking. Here are some thoughts on the topic.

Risk. That word scares some people and excites others. I think of these daredevils who jump off cliffs in flying suits, taking risks that don’t need to be taken but the thrill is worth it to them. Or the brave soldiers who put themselves in danger in foreign lands. They were aware of the possible risks when they joined and accepted them. While a few may do it for the thrill, most do it out of responsibility to meet their commitment to the job and their country.

Most of us think of risk-taking as an action, just as those taken by daredevils and soldiers, but there are risks you assume by doing nothing. Sometimes those risks are obvious and dramatic and sometimes they are subtle and/or internal. But you can’t discuss risk without discussing reward because why would anyone take a risk if no reward awaits them - like the thrills experienced by the daredevils. For example, you can speak against a popular idea (or speak for an unpopular idea). You risk criticism if you speak up, but you are rewarded by the courage of your conviction and influence. Conversely, if you don’t speak up, you avoid criticism but your opinion of yourself may suffer and your voice on a topic will not be heard.

Analyzing risk should not be limited to engineering, gambling, or finance—we can do it in everyday life as well. Risk is basically a balance between likelihood and consequence (penalty or reward). We can ask ‘what is the likelihood that a bad (or good) outcome will occur?’ We can also ask the consequence if it does or does not occur. So let’s look at risk from a fatherly viewpoint.

Risk Factors of Fatherhood

Here are a few consequences of being a father.

Good (rewards) – love, pride, intimacy, excitement, memories, caring, a continuation of family lineage, support, successful children, grandchildren, etc.

Bad (penalties) – expense, worry, fear, conflict, pain, unsuccessful children, etc.

The likelihood of any of these good or bad consequences occurring lies mostly on the actions you take as a father. It also depends on your reactions to the events for which you have no control.

You many think being a good father is difficult - it’s not difficult, not if you are a decent human being! That’s not to say there aren’t difficulties because difficulties will be with you throughout your parenthood. In other words, the likelihood of difficulty is high, but usually worth the rewards. But your likelihood of being a good dad is amazingly high if you are loving, available, caring, interested, and involved, as well as a nurturing teacher, disciplinarian, coach, and cheerleader. These are not difficult notions but they require conscientiousness, something poor fathers’ lack.

Thoughts from my book, ‘The Power of Dadhood’,

“To children, young or grown, a father’s support enables them to take risks. You are their safety net because you are on their side, constantly and enthusiastically. If they succeed, you will be there to celebrate. If they fail, you will be there to recognize their efforts and to encourage them to try again. A hug or a pat on the back is a powerful thing, especially when it’s from your Dad.

The Rewards are beyond comprehension!

“No man is a failure who has helped a child, especially his own. The greatest single gift a man can give his children is his attention. It seems so simple, but somehow it is lost in its simplicity. There is no excuse for not trying your best to be a good father. There are reasons, obstacles, and hardships, but no excuses.”

So understand what it takes to be a good dad and tackle the risks of fatherhood!

The consequences of poor fathering can be disastrous

An example of a risk from non-action is a passive or missing parent. The personal and social consequences of fatherless homes, for instance, can be seen in jails, drug rehab centers, teen mothers, bad neighborhoods, out-of-control schools, mental health centers and more. Why? Because children are rudderless! They can have energy that needs positive direction. They can have fears that must be resolved. They can have potential that must be noticed and nurtured. They can have demons that must be defeated. Children need parents who are socially educated, motivated, and aware to guide them successfully!

Summary

When you prepare properly for anything, the likelihood of success increases and the consequences will tend highly towards reward! So, prepare for and take risks with your children. Tell them things that they don’t want to hear, but must. Hug them when you don’t think they want to be held. Stand up to their persistent complaining. Don’t give in against your better judgement. Have rules and stick to them! Healthy children come from healthy parenting. We can build a healthier society, one child at a time. We have but one chance to help our children create [and be] a positive impact on society.

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​Fire Safety – Ensure Your Children Know How to Stay Safe

Successful Families Have These Two Characteristics

You’re Perfect Just the Way You Are….Really?

​Where are the Heroes? Whose Pulling the Strings?

The Risks of Fatherhood

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Fire Safety – Ensure Your Children Know How to Stay Safe

Where are the Heroes? Whose Pulling the Strings?