20 requests from your child

My sister got this from her pediatrician but I don't know the author. Please let me know if you've seen it attributed somewhere!

1. Do not fulfill all my requests. I know quite well that I ought not to have all that I ask for. I am only testing you.
2. Do not be afraid to be firm with me. I prefer it. It makes me feel more secure.
3. Do not make me feel smaller than I am. It only makes me behave stupidly big.
4. Do not correct me in front of other people if you can help it. I will take much more notice if you talk quietly with me in private.
5. Do not be too upset when I say "I hate you." It isn't you I hate, but your power to thwart me.
6. Do not make me feel my mistakes are sins. It upsets my sense of values.
7. Do not take too much notice of my small ailments. Sometimes they get me inappropriate attention!
8. Do not nag. If you do, I shall have to protect myself by appearing deaf.
9. Do not forget that I cannot explain myself as well as I should like. This is why I am not always very accurate.
10. Do not make rash promises. Remember that I feel badly let down when promises are broken.
11. Do not tax my honesty too much. I am easily frightened into telling lies.
12. Do not be inconsistent. That confuses me and makes me lose faith in you.
13. Do not tell me my fears are silly. They are terribly real and you can do much to reassure me if you try to understand.
14. Do not put me off when I ask questions. If you do, you will find that I stop asking and seek my information elsewhere.
15. Do no suggest that you are perfect or infallible. It makes me feel small when I cannot match up and it gives me too great a shock when I discover you are not.
16. Do not think it is beneath your dignity to apologize to me. An honest apology makes me feel surprisingly warm toward you.
17. Do not forget how quickly I am growing up. It must be very difficult to keep pace with me but please do try.
18. Do not forget I love experimenting. I could not do without it, so please put up with it.
19. Do not forget to treat me as a human; a person with feelings just like you.
20. Do not forget that I cannot thrive without lots of understanding love, but I do not need to tell you, do I?

Obama's School Speech, Dublin, OH reaction

Interested to get this note from my sister-in-law:

The issue of our kids in our school district even being able to see his speech at school on Tues is a SUPER hot button topic. They actually just left a district-wide VM on our home phones (usually reserved for school emergencies) letting us know that they had previously decided not to let the kids watch, but received so many calls and emails from concerned parents that a change in the decision had been made. A full transcript of the speech is going to be released on Mon so that we could pre-read and make a decision as to whether we want our kids to see it. Then, on Tues, we are to send a signed permission slip if we want them to see it. If we don't want them to see it, those kids will continue on with class as normal.

Transcript: http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

Run Your Family Like a Business

I am a stay-at-home mom. But, for 8 years I worked as a Knowledge Manager at a strategy consulting firm. I always quickly add that qualification in there when people ask what I do. Otherwise, I'm afraid I seem frivolous or hard to connect with or maybe just stupid.

Being a mom is hard. It is hard in the sense that people frequently acknowledge: kids require a lot of patience, there's a lot of housework to do, etc. But I find myself often drawing upon concepts and skills I learned at my job in order to be a better mom. Then it struck me: I can (or maybe, already am) run this family like a business. Like any good business, I need to consciously concentrate on a spectrum of necessities:

Strategy
Operations
Finance
Communications
Metrics
Work-life balance