Category Archives for "Kids"

1 How to reduce stage fright

Sarah asks: In two weeks I am going to perform (rap) on stage and I am extremely nervous. What can I do to help me reduce that fear?

Hi Sarah –

The first – and most important – thing for you to know about this is that Stage Fright is the most common greatest fear in the human race.  Let me clarify what I mean: when people are asked in surveys “What is your greatest fear,” and there are answers like illness, death, and losing all your money, they answer “Public Speaking” more often than anything else!

We dogs don’t have as big a problem with this, because we don’t have self-awareness and self-consciousness in the way humans do (simply because our brains are smaller!).  But I sure see humans freaking out about it a lot, so I can offer you a few suggestions to help you with it (try them out and see which ones work for you, and don’t worry about the Continue reading

0 How to get a child moving in the morning

momgrt asks: Hi. I have a 5-year-old son. He is never in favor of getting ready for school. He has to be pushed for everything during the day. Let it be brushing his teeth, drinking milk, bathing, lunch, dinner, anything. Now with playing and watching TV, he is not at all like that. But he is responsible enough to finish his homework. We both (parents) are working and have to leave home at 8 am. My son’s school is at 8.15 am. So every morning is a jam-packed situation, where my son doesn’t want to get out of bed and get ready. What could be the problem? At times I end up screaming and hitting him. But it disturbs me a lot. I am afraid he won’t take me seriously otherwise.

Hi momgrt –

Okay, first things first:  Stop hitting him to get him moving.  Stop now.  It won’t do any good, it will only turn him against you, and (depending on where you live) it could even get you in trouble with the law.

All right.  So it’s possible that your son is actually suffering from some emotional disturbance, or some chemical whatever that a doctor could help with.  But before you go looking at things like that, it sounds to me like he’s just trying to create some control in his life.  You say that he’s doing all his homework, which is great (though why in the world schools feel they need to give five-year-olds homework is beyond the understanding of this mutt!).  But he needs to be able to be a Continue reading

0 Why would someone choose to sleep with wet hair?

Shira asks: My daughter wets her hair each time she takes a wash and keeps it wet without wiping. She even sleeps with wet hair, and she is having a blocked nose most of the days. Every night she is under antihistamine medicines due to this. We have tried our best to tell her not to wet the hair, but for some reason she cannot do this. Please help us to know how to correct her as it is very bad for her in the long run.

Hi Shira –

Okay, I have to admit, I am totally mystified about this!  Let me be clear, I hate baths!  I hate getting wet at all unless it’s because I’m playing and jump in the water.  And I love getting toweled off afterwards, largely because I (did I say this already) HATE baths!

So why someone would choose to stay wet, especially in bed, confuses me.

In fact, it confuses me so much that I think there has to be a Continue reading

0 How one can know what they’ll be when they grow up

Bright asks: When I grow up, what will I be? I am not really sure, and I don’t even really know what I like. Can you help me?

Hi Bright –

Ah, the truth is that I can’t help you decide at all.  I have hundreds of questions on my website about building one’s future, but what’s absolutely great is that you will be the one to decide for yourself!  For today, the best thing you can do is to find things that you do like, and pursue them.  Even if they’re not the things that school says are important.

Handsome really fell in love with old horror movies when he was about ten years old.  Did they get him a career, a marriage, or anything remotely like that?  Nope.  Does he think about them every day today?  Yep.  Did he totally flip out a couple of years ago when he got to meet Boris Karloff’s daughter?  You bet!  In other words, that love from his childhood has deepened and strengthened his adult life today.  And that is a great Continue reading

0 How should one learn the meaning of obscene words?

prettyndsweet12 asks: A lot of the kids at my school are older than me and use a lot of profanity and talk about mature things like sex terms. Most of the time I don’t know what there saying, but I’m too embarrassed to ask what they mean, and I’m too embarrassed to ask my mom. What should I do?

Hi prettyndsweet12 –

Well, I’m of three opinions here, and I can’t decide between them, so I’ll throw all of them at you and let you make your own mind up, okay?!

First – Relax.  You’ll learn what all those words mean soon enough.  In fact, you’ll eventually hear them so much that you’ll wish you didn’t know what they meant anymore!  People use bad words more than ever before – it’s not that the words are new; it’s just that people used to save them for specific times, and now they throw them around like adverbs and pronouns!  Frankly, most of them aren’t all that interesting.  So relax, and trust that, just as you once learned thousands of words just by listening to your family talk, you’ll pick up on these just fine soon.

Second – Trust your Continue reading

0 How to fill in for a missing parent

junemarie6 asks: My grandson said last night he could not do his schoolwork at the table because it was too noisy. I said, “OK, then go to another room.” He said no! However, I made him go. He is always sassing and making smart remarks. (I guess I need to give you a little more information on the case: My son has asked mom to move out so I have taken over, which does not make them (boys) all that happy) What can I do to get my grandsons to complete their tasks and do what I ask?

Hi junemarie6 –

I feel funny offering you advice on child-rearing, because… I mean… you’ve already done it!  But you are in a specific and difficult situation, given what’s happened with your son’s marriage.  The best advice I can give you on this is to be patient!!!  Your grandsons are in a terrible situation, where they probably feel that being good and obedient to you is an act of disloyalty to their mother.  It’s as though you went from being the fun loving grandmother to the feared stepmother overnight!

Given that, it’s very understandable that they won’t know how to treat you for a Continue reading

0 How to celebrate a four-year-old’s birthday

Chel asks: How do I give birthday wishes to my 4 year old boy?

Hi Chel –

What you should do to celebrate your boy’s fourth birthday?  Well my easy advice is to ask him!  Does he want a party with friends?  Does he want to go see a movie?  Does he want any new toys?  Does he perhaps (if he’s really super-smart) want a puppy?!  Does he want ice cream or cake or a trip to the zoo or a ride in your friend’s Continue reading

0 Should a child drink tea?

Tania asks: My girl is 6 years old. She likes to drink tea very much, and she drinks it 2 or 3 times a day. Is tea harmful for her?

Hi Tania –

Regular (black, or orange pekoe) tea has many healthful qualities, and Green Tea has even more.  So as a general rule, tea is one of the healthier things that humans drink.  The two issues, of course, are sugar and caffeine.

Many people consider tea without sugar to be, well, just not tea!  Once you put sugar into it, we have to reclassify it as a Sweetened Drink, in the same class as juices, punches, mixes like Kool-Aid, and soft drinks like colas.  The simple fact is that kids love sugar, and it’s not good to give them much of it.  So if your daughter is putting lots of sugar in her Continue reading

0 What makes a motivated student lazy?

Achu asks: I am too lazy in studies. Though my exams are approaching, I’m always sleeping – but I dream of getting rid of my easygoing nature and finding success in life. What should I do?

Hi Achu –

There’s a big word for the situation you’re in, and that’s “Incongruent.”  If you’ve studied geometry, you might know that word – Congruent triangles have all the same angles as each other, for example.  But in psychology (Handsome knows and tells me all this stuff – all I’m an expert in is squirrel hunting and making people happy!), Congruence means that each part of your mind works well with the other parts.  Someone who really wants to be a perfectly behaved child but is scratching bad words into the furniture is not Congruent!  Someone who hates everyone and behaves rudely might be a rotten person, but he is Congruent!

So you, who have great trouble motivating yourself to study, but dream of being a hardworking success, are… not a bad person at all, but Incongruent.  Our job here is to get the two sides to work together.

I often find that, especially when it comes to schoolwork, this problem can come because the person aims too Continue reading

0 How to handle a friend who’s jealous of your other friends

emily rose asks: I have a ”friend” in my school who is jealous of me being friends with someone else and she’s always making fun of us and tricking us into doing stupid things and making us feel bad about our selves (but she is mostly hurting my friend). What should I do?

Hi emily rose–

Jealousy is such a lousy feeling, both for the person who’s feeling it and the person who it’s about.  Of course some mild jealousy is all right, and even can be fun (married humans say it can keep a romantic spark going), but what you’re describing isn’t fun at all.

I think the best thing about your letter is the quotation marks you put around the word “friend.”  Not that she doesn’t care about you, even to the point of devotion, but that she’s not doing a good job of being a friend right now.  Instead she’s being Continue reading