MouthyGirl.com

It’s Not the End of the World

In April of 2009 I quit my job as a legal assistant for a work at home job….and it didn’t work out….my “employer” ended up not having the ability to pay me when his financial backing backed out. I hadn’t been out of work a day in my life since I started working and I didn’t know what to do, where my next rent payment would come from and how on earth I was going to feed the family on one salary when we’d been barely making it on two.

This is not the first time I’ve dealt with a life changing circumstance.

First, I told myself, be positive. I said self, “I have always been employed, it stands to reason that I am a reliable, important employee and someone needs me or I’d have been out of work a little more often.”

It was scary, eye opening and now that I look back without my rose colored glasses – I should’ve known better than to make an emotional decision. At the heart of the whole thing, I hated my job and it wasn’t the job, it was my boss. He had a way of making you feel like the smartest dumbass on the block and he was the only one that could bring the genius out. I had to part ways with that man and I took the first train out. If I had thought it through more, I would have realized that making that jump was a bad idea.

Suddenly, two weeks after my 30th birthday, I realized I didn’t have a paycheck coming and made the first of what I expected to be a few phone calls to borrow money until I got a job, from my family. I was very fortunate that I had someone that I could call, then I touched up my resume, which I’d been doing for a while anyways so there wasn’t much to be done there, and then I started scouring the area for jobs.

I was scared of what would happen, uncertain of our future and not sure how long it would be until I found another job, let’s face it, they’re not in the plentiful supply that some of us have been used to in other times. I found a job though, and it happened quicker than I expected, I have a large skillset to offer as well reliability, accountability and consistency. My resume speaks for me and I can interview pretty well most of the time.

“When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.” -Henry Kaiser 1882 – 1967

It wasn’t the end of the world, as with most trials that we face in life, it was scary but I survived. Hardships in life present themselves for two reasons, you bring it on yourself with a bad decision, or you have an external influence that screws the pooch, the pooch being you.

Ultimately, you have two choices in facing it, play the victim and feel sorry for yourself or formulate a plan and take action to solve the problem. It’s up to you, but know this….a bad situation doesn’t have to be the end of the world.

Tags: end of the world, harship, income, jobless, panic, salary, two income family, unemployed, unpaid, work at home

Teaching a Work Ethic

The most important things you can teach your child, you can only teach by example. A work ethic for example, your children watch you far more carefully than you can imagine and expect you to be their model. Are you aware of the eyes upon you? Do you hear yourself through your children’s mouths, isn’t it apparent that they’re watching and listening…keenly?

So go to work when you’re not sick, be nice to your coworkers and work hard. Earn praise by doing a good job and tell your family about it. Tell your family about nice things you do at work for others so that they can learn it’s good to be nice to people, always. Tell them about hard times at work, you are only human, your kids know that, show them how to bounce back. We all strive for something, our kids will learn what that is, make it the right things for them to learn.

You’ll know when it’s appropriate to discuss work ethic with your child. You can’t live by “do as I say, not as I do” it’s an appalling and horrible precedent to set. When you work hard and you do a good job you will excel and be rewarded; have high expectations of yourself and your children will learn how to do the same. Isn’t that the best legacy that you can leave?

You can do nothing more important in your life than to raise children that can go out into the world, take care of themselves and provide for themselves, and hopefully have a loving family of their own some day. You have to set the example; if you fall down on the job they will never forget it.

It’s a delicate balance, but as I am prone to say, if you know your child, you know what they still need to learn. You are the Chief Operating Officer of your home, you have to manage everything within it, who does what and when. That is your job, the one outside the home if you have one is secondary to the first. These children will be the future leaders of our companies, health and welfare programs, universities and political activists, if we do not have high expectations of them, what can our country expect from them? The world? How productive will your children be if their example is not?

Are you the type of person you would want your child to be?

Tags: chief operating officer, coworkers, delicate balance, good job, high expectations, important things, legacy, loving family, mouths, work ethic

Responsible

I know a lot of people have trouble deciding if it’s right to monitor things in their childrens’ lives. I’m here to tell you, since everything that child does you are responsible for, you should know everything your child does. I believe it is part of parenting to make your childs’ business your own.

That’s not to say you need to quiz your child every day about what they talked about and with whom, but you should know who they’re hanging out with, where they are, what they’re probably doing and they need to have the expectation that you’ll be spot checking. Is it right to search your kids room? Why shouldn’t it be, the room is in your house and in my opinion if I pay the bills over the dwelling, everything in it is my business because I’m responsible for it, good and bad.

I also think it’s perfectly fine to spot check the kids’ cell phone, it’s important to know what they’re talking about with their friends. Not to mention having strict rules about your teens texting and driving. I mean we know the attention span of these kids, it’s time that we hold ourselves accountable for enforcing our rules and making sure our kids are responsible. Or else:

It’s also important to explain to your kids that you are involved to that degree because you care about them, their well being and their emotional involvement with other people. Tell them that you want them to enjoy their childhood, move slowly, explain kissing when you think they’re ready and warn them to go no further. If you know your child, you’ll know when it’s time to explain more and provide the tools and knowledge to protect themselves, emotionally and otherwise.

You cannot be an effective parent if you don’t take the time to know your child. You have to be an observer as a parent, not absent and then over reactive when something bad happens. To be responsible is hard, it’s a constant learning experience, you know that. It’s important to temper your teaching with love, affection and praise. Additionally, if you do not expect great things, they will not know how to expect great things of themselves.

You must explain the importance of standards to your children, so that they understand why you work hard at what you do, to live by the standard that you have set for yourself. Where else will your children learn this? The bottom line is that you are responsible for turning out a productive, self sufficient adult and there is no one more capable to teach your kid how to do that than you, the one that’s supporting them.

Don’t leave anything to the imagination or to someone else to teach them if you expect them to understand your values and the standards you have set for them. They will learn what they want to know from someone, wouldn’t you prefer they get it from you?

Tags: attention span, cell phone, childrens lives, dwelling, emotional involvement, expectation, kids room, learning experience, love affection, parenting, strict rules, temper