Welcome FlowerChild

Will children be happier when their mum or dad is always around? I don’t think this is best for all children. I know that in my case it would drive me crazy, if the only thing on my mind would be the children (I love them more than anything), cooking and cleaning. I would become very unhappy and that for sure is very bad for the children.

Luckily I can back-up my opinion thanks to Ellen Galinsky. She is the co-founder of the New York Families and Work Institute and conducted a five-year study on work and parenting, and the children’s perspectives on that. Galinsky claims that children don’t mind if both their parents work but they must make them (the children) number one priority. Galinsky believes the best parenting is intentional and when parents make their children their number one priority they will generally succeed as parents. Well that is good news.

A few months ago we had the plan to develop a website where juniors can contact seniors for advise on school, education, career or social issues. Everyone at several points in their lives can use guidance from more experienced and older people, other than parents. Almost always it leads to a clearer vision of what a young person wants or does not want. I have had this experience myself when I was younger and I am very motivated to pass my lessons on to the younger generation as well. If everybody would do this, I am convinced that together we can create a happier next generation and as a result change the world.

As with a lot of great plans, this idea was parked because there simply was not enough time to develop it. But I found out today that it already exists. Check out www.mentoring.org.

In our society failure is seen as wrong and dishonourable, but if you study the life of successful people, there has been a lot of failure before they became successful. Teachers and parents should learn children that failure is extremely useful. Train the brains as if they are a big muscle. By learning from failure you will get better step by step. J.K. Rowlings learned the hard way as she will explain in her speech, but everybody knows now how she was able to fight back. A wonderful, funny and inspiring speech.

This weekend I finished a research for one of our clients and compared data on family life in 10 different European countries. With the help of our international teams, we found out some very interesting things. One of the questions was a salary comparison of households with kids between 6 and 12 years old. The differences are huge in Europe. The Norwegians are richest with a net yearly income of 71.000 euro. In Poland families are a lot less fortunate with only 4.100 euro per year. Raising kids with barely enough money to buy food is unimaginable for us, but it happens even in Europe.  I really hope that one day there will be equal chances for all children.