Raising Teens in the World We Live In

In the world where we live in right now, a lot of things have been going on that will surely have an impact on how we raise our children. This holds even more true for those of us with teenagers. I have two teens so I have first-hand experience of how challenging it is to relate to them, deal with their tantrums and with their demands, and with the ups and downs of their moods.

It's not easy, and it is a continuous process. We learn from our day-to-day experience with them. From these daily interaction with them, my husband and I have learned that it's very important that despite of all the challenges that we face, we still show our unconditional love for our children.

But of course, when our kids go out of the sanctuary of our homes, how sure are we that they'll be safe not only from peer pressure, but more so, I guess, be safe from themselves. Will their self-esteem be strong enough for them to face the challenges that they encounter in their everyday lives?

It is our responsibility, as their parents, to provide them a healthy family environment that will assure them that they are loved unconditionally, that they are safe, and well-taken cared of.

Effective communication with our children is very important. Communication gap between parents and their children is very common nowadays because of too many distractions and too many activities going on. We should talk to them more often, without nagging. Nip in the bud whatever disagreements you have. Be a friend to them, but at the same time, let them know that respect is still of foremost importance in your relationship with them.

Horrible Traffic!

Last night, traffic was really horrible because of the celebration of the Chinese New year combined with the procession for the Santo Nino fiesta.

We went to the Rizal Memorial because Earvin had to practice for his swimming competition on Friday for his school's intrams. After that, we had to go to my in-laws' place. This was when we started to encounter the traffic. We had no choice but to pass through Binondo, where the people were of course very busy preparing for the New Year. We even stopped by Eng Bee Tin because I was craving for Tikoy since last week, I bought two boxes, one white and one red. People were all busy and there were lots of fruit vendors on the sidewalk, but traffic was still tolerable.

Going home was another story. The normal travel time of 45 minutes from my in-laws' place to our place became 2 hours. And it was because they closed the Roxas Boulevard to give way to the procession (i think). We had to suffer lots of re-routing before we reached our destination, so, in the end, we arrived home at 10:00pm, with the kids all sleeping at the back -- oh, except Earvin -- he never fails to entertain us with his stories whenever we were stuck in traffic.

Been too busy!

Sorry folks! I've been out of the blogging scene for quite some time now. Been soooo busy that I couldn't find the time to update my blog, and i couldn't find the momentum yet to get me started again. Hopefully, this time, I'll be able to update this regularly.

Lots of things have been going on, like, i've been busy editing our home videos. I've set aside doing this when i got busy with my blog, so, when i started doing it again, i got hooked and didn't want to stop. And of course, it's very time-consuming. I did it during the holiday vacation with spill-over even after the holidays. I already had lots of backlogs in our home videos that i promised to myself i will do them during my vacation last December, and of course not to mention the pictures that are all sitting in my hard disk, and were never developed. Digital pictures are my next projects. I need to put them in scrapbook layouts. I'm talking here of thousands of pictures, so, wish me luck!

Thanks to all those who always visit my blog and dropped ECs!