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Gifts that Remain: Life Lessons for Keeps from Africa

Reading Time: 4 minutes

I view the items in my home differently now. Everything is slid into a category in my mind: Pack it. Sell it. Give it. Just as we did five and a half years ago in Little Rock, we’re packing up our lives here in Africa. But of course the person who packed up then isn’t the same person who’s packing now.

And thankfully, those intangibles are things I can keep.

They don’t take up precious luggage space; I won’t need to sell them for pennies on the dollar with which I bought them. They’re Africa’s gifts to me.

Essential Social Skills for Kids (and Ideas to Teach Them), #1-4

January 10, 2017 / Janel Breitenstein / 0 Comments

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Think of these social skills as little golden keys to the future for your kids: They can get your kids into a lot of places! Bummer is, they can shut some doors, too, when our kids don’t master them. (Disclaimer: Writing this post does not declare my children in mastery of said skills.)

Social skills are key because manners are a form of loving others well. They lubricate the potential friction of social interactions.

(Some of them I’ve broken down because of my own experience with my son’s ADHD, such as giving him “scripts” for social situations; see #1. I won’t speak directly to special needs in this post. But some of these ideas might work to put tangible steps onto often intangible skills.)