Successful Relationships

Most children today are paid allowances and that in itself may not be bad, but let’s stop and think for a moment.

What exactly are we teaching them about money by simply paying them an allowance?

You are bringing up a child who will be a future husband or wife, a missionary or a volunteer worker in a foreign land, a states person. They could be someone of great influence, even a president.

A future entrepreneur?
This young man or women may one day own their own business, or they may simply end up work for someone else or in Corporate America dedicating their lives to building a giant for someone else.

A friend who recently celebrated his 16th wedding anniversary gave me big keys to a successful marriage. These three keys have allowed GD and his wife to enjoy all of these years of a great marriage. I shared one of these keys in the previous post, and now let’s take a look at the other two keys. To a great measure these two keys are unseparable.

Key No 1 – Faithfulness.

Key No 2 – Communication.
I am sure you were expecting to see this word pop up sooner or later Let’s explore this a little.

What exactly is communication? I have noticed that some people have the concept that communication is a one way street. They speak and you listen. Or worse still,

Some people say that successful marriages are made in heaven.

But this is not so.

The real secret is that successful marriages are blessed in heaven and made on earth.

The day you stand before the alter to join together as husband and wife, your marriage is blessed in heaven.

Then comes the work on earth!

These are marriages where each partner CHOOSES to make their partnership work and they BOTH work at it. They also both CHOOSE to be happy. This will create a strong, successful and happy marriage.

Strong marriages make strong communities!

I recently made a trip back to New Zealand to visit my sister, and reconnect to extended family members. My mother came from a family of 6 living brothers and sisters (2 others had died as children). We grew up living in a town near to two of these families.

One family lived in Oamaru and the other in Dunedin and we lived not too far from either of these families. This meant that vacation times were spent visiting one or the other. Consequently, in a sense my sister and I grew up with our cousins from both of these families.

Once we grew up, we all scattered across the world.
Then we all grew up and started to scatter across the world. One cousin married a sea captain. Her brothers followed her husband’s example which resulted in them being scattered across the world. Others went over to Australia as many kiwi youngsters do, looking for greater opportunities.

And Avoid the Frenzy and Nightmare

If you find that when your son or daughter enters teenage years your relationship with them starts to change do not be concerned. This is a new phase of their life. As a child, they may have been willing to follow your ways, your standards and your beliefs.

However now they are entering a stage of life where they will decide on and define their own beliefs, standards and ways. Some of their decisions may conflict with your perspectives, but do not be concerned.

Today in a celebration of Father’s Day weekend, President Barack Obama called upon fathers to be teachers and mentors. This does not mean you have to be a perfect father he stated, just one who cares and tries.

Your children will probably rate you as their perfect father if you simply do these three things:

Be involved with your children as they grow up.
Don’t leave everything to your wife. There will be times when you may need to make some sacrifices in your own agenda, but these adjustments will pay off greatly for the rest of your lives.

There are many memories that you can create in your children that they will carry into adulthood. They will become better adults just because Mum AND Dad were both involved with:

This is the seventh article of the series Teenage Years – Parents Adventure or Nightmare How you can embrace the adventure and stay away from the nightmare.

These tips were either suggested or approved by my teenage friends, and the seventh tip that was named is:

Don’t Give Up!
I recently asked some young friends what a successful relationship between teens and parents looks like from their perspective. We came up with a list of 8 tips for parents to do (see this list here), and then went on to think about things not to do. As we were going over a list of “donts” with a grin they added “And don’t give up on us”.

The other day I was working through a book about accelerated learning and came to an interesting statistic. Jack Canfield (famous for his co-authoring of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series) organized a survey where the words spoken daily by school aged children were noted.

The mindset of children today.
A team of surveyors followed 100 children for a complete day making a note of the number of negative and positive statements that each child spoke during that day.

The results were staggering:

This morning I received an email announcing that Jimmy Brown is about to celebrate his 15th wedding anniversary. Congratulations Jimmy!!

Jimmy is one of the icons on the internet marketing scene. He is one who’s work I have been following for quite a while. I like his style.

Along with comments about his plans for their celebration, Jimmy wrote an excellent post on his blog revealing the secrets to his successful marriage. Because Jimmy is an online marketer, he naturally took the opportunity to compare these three keys with our relationship to our business contacts.

However these secrets can actually help you with any relationship that is important to you whether it be with family, friends or business associates.

Written by guest writer, Dr Taffy (moneyinmarriage on twitter)

The economy has had an effect on marriages and relationships that many probably did not expect. For example, couples that were headed to divorce court ended up staying together because they could not afford the cost of a divorce.

One thing is for sure, if they were not discussing money before they are now. Couples that had not talked about finances are now in the position of having to talk about money because of the effect the economy on their personal finances.

If you are in one of these positions, it is a good thing that you are now talking about money. Whether you really thought about it or not, money has many roles in our lives.