I have seen repeatedly the breakdown of the cost of raising a child, but this is the first time I have seen the rewards listed this way. It’s nice, really nice. In America, the government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle-income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn’t even touch college tuition.

For those with kids, that figure leads to wild fantasies about all the money we could have banked if not for their kids. For others, that number might confirm the decision to remain childless. But $160,140 isn’t so bad if you break it down. (Caution to the reader: Please don’t try converting dollars to peso value. Simply stick to the universal application of this to any family with kids, including yours, and all of us will do just fine.)

It translates into $8,896.66 a year, $741.38 a month, or $171.08 a week. That’s a mere $24.44 a day! Just over a dollar an hour. Still, you might think the best financial advice says, don’t have children if you want to be “rich.” Well, it’s just the opposite.

What do you get for your $160,140?

Children are God’s gift to us. More than enough reason to be thankful for.

So, if you are in business and you deal with a lot of figures, you will have to agree with me that having children is one of the greatest deals you will ever have in your life.

The ROl is simply great. And I’m not talking about money here.

Source: The Early Bird Gets the Worm But the Second Mouse Gets the Cheese

Bob burg says: The gymnasium school my Dad founded almost fifty years ago had a motto he wrote and taped to the wall, and its message is forever etched in my mind. It said, “To have a body does not make one a man. To have a child does not make one a parent.” Please pardon the seeming gender bias. It was written when that writing style was the norm, but the saying is certainly true of each of the sexes, then and today.
According to Dad, the saying meant you just can’t judge people by outward appearances. He says, “A couple would walk into the gym with their child, the husband handsome and looking as though the world was his, the wife attractive and confident-looking. Your first impression was that this is the perfect, happy family. Then, as you got to know them, you learned the husband had serious self-doubts, the wife did not feel at all attractive, and they were both unhappy with each other. Unfortunately, often the child was also not happy with himself as well. Wow, it really made you realize there’s a lot more to people than just what meets the eye.”

Isn’t that so true of the people we come across with on a daily basis? We assume people are what they appear to be. And they assume the same about us. The fact is –people have challenges they are constantly fighting. Some are external –most are internal. When we remember that, it helps us in dealing with the negativity that person seems to have towards us for no apparent reason. It helps us to empathize with them, and understand them.

We realize their unhelpful attitude is more than likely nothing personal, and more a reflection of what they see in the mirror every morning. By extending a pleasant countenance and an attitude of understanding, we have an opportunity to help them, and help ourselves at the same time.

Dad had always had the gift of building confidence in people – making them feel good about themselves. In fact, that was basically his goal as he left the house every morning. It was literally his profession. He’d work with the couple, helping them see in each other what they saw when they were first married. He also helped them to get in touch with what they like about themselves.

We can do the same. First, remember that appearances can be deceiving, and that a person probably has a desire to feel better about himself and herself than they presently feel. Make the usually difficult-to-deal-with person feel good about himself, and he will have a strong desire to do the same for you. Oh, and the unhappy child mentioned earlier?

Typically, once the parents feel good about themselves and their relationship, the son or daughter would feel likewise.

Bob Burg is right. Let’s make it our life mission to build people up. To encourage them and to make them realize that they have a loving Father in heaven and that they are precious in His sight.

The important thing in life is to leave something behind that would far outlast our own lives, and this would be the number of lives we touch while we are still on planet earth.

Indeed this country needs a lot of more fathers like the one mentioned in the story today. Fathers who teach their children correct values in life. Fathers who do not only teach values but live them so clearly and so plainly for their kids to see. The saying goes: The greatest power for good is the power of example.

I want to be like those fathers and I will try my darn best to be one.
Perhaps after coming by this story today, you may want to be one, too, if you’re not one already.

Source: The Early Bird Gets the Worm But the Second Mouse Gets the Cheese

Let me present to you 12 steps guaranteed to train your children to be delinquent, or your money back.

1. When your kid is still an infant, give him everything he wants. This way he’ll think the world owes him a living when he grows up.

2. When he picks up swearing and off-color jokes, laugh at him, encourage him. As he grows up, he’ll pick up “cuter” phrases that will floor you.

3. Never give him any spiritual training. Wait until he is twenty-one and let him decide for himself.

4. Avoid using the word “wrong”. It will give your child a guilt complex. You can condition him to believe later, when he is arrested for stealing a car, that society is against him and he is being persecuted.

5. Pick up after him—his books, shoes, and clothes. Do everything for him so he will be experienced in throwing all responsibility onto others.

6. Let him read all printed matter he can get his hands on…(never think of monitoring his TV programs). Sterilize the silverware, but let him feat his mind on garbage.

7. Quarrel frequently in his presence. Then he won’t be too surprised when his home is broken up later.

8. Satisfy his every craving for food, drinks and comfort. Every sensual desire must be gratified; denial may lead to harmful frustrations.

9. Give your child all the spending money he wants. Don’t make him earn his own. Why should he have things as tough as you did?

10. Take his side against neighbors, teachers and policemen. They’re all against him.

11. When he gets into real trouble, make up excuses for yourself by saying, “I never could do anything with him; he’s just a bed seed.”

12. Prepare for a life of grief.

Parents help their kids chart their life’s direction.

I’ve had the privilege of sharing the same speaker’s platform with many of our country’s most brilliant business personalities as well as government officials and I would be amazed just by their introduction alone. Their resume would read this way: Graduated top in his class from the State University…took up his masters in Stanford…got his doctorate on philosophy at Harvard…continued a different course of education at Wharton…and the list goes on and on.

I would interview them asking how they are able to accomplish so much in short a time. And the reply I got from them was always the same. That early in life their parents have already helped them chart their direction in life. And that their parents were very strict and disciplined people. And today, with this background and training they have accomplished much in life, and they also live a life of discipline.

This is why parents need to help their children chart their direction. If not, we will not have the right to confront them one day with this lamentation, “Why don’t you have any direction for your life?”
I see today a great number of kids who lack discipline. Their motto in life: “If at first you don’t succeed…try something else.”

And then I’ve had some of my well-meaning friends reveal to me: “You know very well, Francis, that when we were small we were poor and our lives were difficult. And because I have tasted poverty, I will never allow my children to experience the same.”

This Neanderthal wisdom is hard to beat!

I would respond this way. “Well, congratulations. If that is your philosophy on parenting, you have just succeeded in wrecking your children’s future. Have you failed to understand that the reason why you are successful today is because you’ve had the distinct privilege of having gone through the discipline of living a challengingly difficult life? And now you are refusing your kids that same privilege by providing them everything they want?”

The Chinese have a saying:

Grandfather starts a business.
Son expands the business.
Grandchildren destroy the business.
Grandfather started with nothing. Built the business from the ground up. Father got good education. Applied science to business and expands it. Then both generations spoil the grandchildren now that the business is well established.
And the grandchildren grow up having no idea what difficulty is; proceed to destroy the business.
How I have seen this happen time and time again.

The Bible says: Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
PROVERBS 22:6 (NIV)

The surest way to make it difficult for our kids is to make it easy for them now.

I was invited to dinner one night after a couple of speaking engagements in Dumaguete City a couple of years ago. Everybody seated on the round table were successful people in their respective fields of endeavour. Business people, bankers, other professionals. After a sumptuous dinner we began exchanging notes.
The conversation turned to reminiscing the times when they were kids and how their parents treated them. Without a single exception, all of these successful people came from very strict parents who taught them the value of hard work. All of them. And this is why disciplining kids works. This is why the Bible says: “He who does not discipline his child does not love him.” And the same Bible declares: “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

Source: Why Don’t You Grow Up ….Dad?

Scenes from an American ad:

Business bondage. This is what entangles most fathers. It comes in many forms. It could be an insatiable appetite to expand one’s business empire. Or it may just be a case of being overly dedicated to work. However you may want to put it, it is that which interferes with your relationship with God and family. Some call it the unbalanced life.

Living in today’s world offers countless choices that can satisfy us. But, sad to say, even if most offer only fleeting, momentary satisfaction, we still drive ourselves crazy in work just to attain them. This often results in a deeper emotional investment that robs us of a more meaningful life. In our desperate pursuit, we fall into a trap until we are in bondage to our work.

Psalm 127:1-2 says, “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, tolling for food to eat – for He grants sleep to those He loves “(NIV)

I had once come to a point where I firmly believed that success belonged to those who gave all their time, all their strength, and all their dedication to work. This was what I exactly gave – my all. And then one day, it suddenly dawned on me that my children were growing up so fast and I hardly spent quality time with them. It scared me that I knew so little of them and, worse, that they knew so little of me.

Another deep realization came.

Let us break free from the bondage of our career. Jesus Christ has set us free. If He is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all. All includes our time and our business. Or, should I say, His time and His business.

On returning home, he breathlessly informed his mother there were two boy kittens and two girl kittens.

“How did you know?” his mother asked.
“Daddy picked them up and looked underneath,” he replied. “I think it’s printed on the bottom.”

Another three year old put his shoes on by himself. His mother noticed the left was on the right foot. She said, “Son, your shoes are on the wrong feet.”
He looked up at her with a raised brow and said, “Don’t kid me, mom, I KNOW they’re my feet.”

On the first day of school, the kindergarten teacher said, “If anyone has to go to the bathroom, hold up two fingers.” A little voice from the back of the room asked, “How will that help?”

A mother and her young son returned from the grocery store and began putting away the groceries. The boy opened the box of animal crackers and spread them all over the table,

“What are you doing?” his mother asked.
“The box says you can’t eat them if the seal is broken,” the boy explained. “I’m looking for the seal.”

Can people predict the future with cards?
My mother can.
Really?

Yes, she takes one look at my report card and tells me what will happen when my father gets home.
A father was reading Bible stories to his young son. He read, “The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his wife looked back and was turned to salt.”
His son asked, “What happened to the flea?” (f-l-e-a)

A four-year-old girl was learning to say the Lord’s Prayer. She was reciting it all by herself without help from her mother. She said, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some e-mail. AMEN”

Kids! They make us laugh in ways no comedian could ever.
Why? Because there is so much innocence in them.

We go to work, we’re doing business and our defenses are up. Haven’t you noticed the fact that we no longer trust people? It has been said that many experiences are gained the painful and expensive way. When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man of experience usually ends up with the money and the man with money ends up with only the experience. That’s why we distrust each other, and somehow people we deal with are assumed guilty before proven innocent. This puts a lot of stress and strain on our system.

And then kids come along and we can rest by putting our defenses down. This is why kids are gifts from God. I don’t know about you but I may have an extremely difficult day in the office, but the moment I go home and embrace my youngest child with her arms open and her kisses ready, my weariness disappears. Kids are innocent and they are so trusting. Maybe this is also the reason why Jesus says that as long as we do not have faith like that of a little child, we cannot enter heaven. Somehow this makes sense. There are people who want to play theological games. And then there are people who want to play religion. But when it comes to accepting Christ as personal Lord and Savior, they refuse to.

Why? It’s not because Christ is hard to believe in; it’s simply because their defenses are up and they do not want Christ to interfere with their lifestyles.
But then again there are those who would embrace Him with the faith of a little child, and guess what happens? They experience genuine joy and lasting peace because they have discovered the Way, the Truth and the Life. Every single genuine believer is a child before God. They know the Father and they know where their true home is.

Some grownups feel that children have cornered the market on happiness. They’re wrong. They can be happy, too. If only they would become like little children.

Source: The Early Bird Gets the Worm But the Second Mouse Gets the Cheese