What Is Our Bad Behavior Teaching Our Kids

Click on What Is Our Bad Behavior Teaching Our Kids? to read a thought provoking article published March 20, 2015 in Parents Magazine.

A wise councilor once said that the best gift I could give to my daughter was to be emotionally healthy.   I completely agree with Zeman’s quoting of Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, PhD’s, “insecurity is at the root” in this article.

Parents reproduce what they are.  If they, the parents, feel insecure and thus are easily offended and offend, most likely their kids will be too.    It starts with us, the parent.

Mom and Dad, consider buying Rojo, The Baby Red Panda at the Zoo for yourself and not just your kids.  Read Dr. Seuss’s, Oh The Places You Will Go,  Gertrude McFuzz, and others to yourself as you read along with your kids.  Isn’t the chance to learn what you didn’t growing up through your children one of the greatest privileges of parenting?  The greatest motivation you can give to your kids is to demonstrate that you aren’t perfect and need to learn too.

St. Patrick’s Day: What does St. Patrick have in common with red pandas?

This might be a bit of a stretch to ask what St. Patrick and red pandas have in common, but I love the story behind St. Patrick’s teen life and calling to love the Irish.  My intent in writing Rojo was to give the world a unique (and educational about pandas) story to encourage loving self and others as God created and call us to do. Doesn’t St. Patrick demonstrate this in his forgiveness of the Irish pirates and those who forced him into slavery?  That plus most people know very little accurate information about both.

St. Patrick was Romano British, not Irish. He was kidnapped by Irish Pirates from his noble home in Brittan when he was a teenager and forced into Irish slavery.  He didn’t go by the name Patrick until he trained to be a Catholic Bishop many years later in France.  He returned to Ireland to share God’s love and knowledge with the Irish…the people who at one time kidnapped him. He most likely used the clover to explain God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three distinct roles in the same one God.

Red pandas were named panda first.  Not the Giant panda.  They are not raccoons or foxes. But, rather very cute creatures that can teach us something about God and his creation too.  Check out how in Rojo, The Baby Red Panda at the Zoo by Hope Mucklow.

Read more about St. Patrick in St. Patrick’s Day by Gail Gibbons and Patrick Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!