Exploring Sydney

We had two days to explore Sydney before the Sydney Retreat. What a great city! To me, Sydney is a wonderful mix many of my favorite cities - New York City, Boston, Paris, London... I loved the old stately buildings mixed in with the shiny new ones. I loved the beautiful parks and churches, the buskers (street musicians), the outdoor cafes, the fancy shop displays, the pie and kebab shops on every corner, the kids in their school uniforms roving the city starting at about 3pm, plus the friendliness and helpfulness of every person we met. I loved hearing the accents and seeing shops and products that took me back to England where I used to live (Woolworths, Cadbury's, McVitties biscuits, muesli...)

April, Alia, Ashton and I stayed at a good hotel right in the center of it all and walked all over that beautiful city thanks to a great free walking tour (check out the I'm Free tours - one of the best tours ever and we used the free map like crazy as we did a lot of wandering on our own and visited most of the recommended free attractions- I love free stuff so much). We explored the Rocks (the oldest area of the city), Australia Square, Martin Place, Pitt Street Mall, Town Hall, the botanical gardens, the Art Museum of New South Wales, the currency museum, St Mary's and St Andrew's cathedrals, and Hyde Park plus we walked across the beautiful Harbor Bridge and explored the fabulous Sydney Opera House. We were busy - and happy - so happy.

In that collage above, you'll see the word "Eternity." Here's the story. In the early 1900's, the word "Eternity" started appearing all over the city of Sydney - written in chalk on sidewalks, buildings, you name it, always in the same handwriting. They'd clean off the writing and then the next morning, it would be everywhere again. Officials finally found out who'd been doing all this writing. An illiterate alcoholic petty criminal became interested in religion. He was sitting in a church service when the minister started talking about the concept of eternity. This man was taken with the beauty of the word and the concepts it represented and when the minister suggested the word should be written on the hearts and minds of every person, this convict took it upon himself to write "Eternity" all over the place. The word became very important to the resident of Sydney and is now found here and there in the city plus it's been emblazoned on the Harbor Bridge during their big harbor fireworks display for New Years and was featured in the 2000 Olympics opening ceremonies in Sydney. I love the concept of eternity and the idea that one person, no matter how humble and broken, can really make a difference.

Here's an overview in photos:

taking the train into the city from the airport

at the old Mint with Alia (April's daughter) and Ashton

"The Strand" - the oldest mall in Sydney

The "golden bucket" tower - landmark you can see from almost everywhere

Pitt Street Mall

The Harbor Bridge

The only images I really had in my head of Sydney was its iconic Opera House. I learned there's a whole lot more to Sydney. But it was very cool to see that opera house I've seen in photos all my life! Ashton and I went right up by it and explored the inside parts you could go in w/o paying the huge tour fee - the bathrooms alone were pretty impressive - light-up alcoves for the toilet paper, curved wood doors to the stalls.... There are actually 3 buildings there that look like one from afar - a restaurant, a concert hall and an opera house. The architecture is truly amazing. Totally interesting to learn about its history. Jorn Utzon, a relatively unknown architect from Denmark, won the international competition for an opera house design for Sydney. Then the building project went way overtime and way over budget and by the time it was finished, the architect was totally out of favor and wasn't even invited to the grand opening. Crazy! But now, according to the World Heritage Committee, "The Sydney Opera House stands by itself as one of the indisputable masterpieces of human creativity, not only in the 20th century but in the history of humankind." I guess that sometimes projects that are larger and harder and longer and more expensive than anyone could have anticipated can turn into truly wonderful successes - and the tough stuff fades away when you see the beauty of the final product.The Sydney Opera House sort of reminds me of The Power of Moms in some ways. I've seen the hard, long work that has often involved lots of overtime and has stretched the budget. And I've seen some exciting success in the emails we receive about Power of Moms changing lives. I do hope that this organization will be a thing of beauty for 1000's of mothers both now and in the future!

The Opera House - SO exciting to come around a corner and see it in person!

view of the city

Ashton's favorite food in Australia were the meat pies. With a "Pie Face" shop on every corner in Sydney, he was in heaven!

Here's Alia with a girl in her school uniform. They wear full-on school uniforms - matching hats, dresses, socks, shoes, everything. Made Ashton complain less about his school uniforms!

Here I am blogging (or trying to blog - bad internet connection) on the rooftop of our hotel while Alia and Ashton had a nice little swim.

View from the rooftop of the hotel - that's Hyde Park and St Mary's cathedral - the largest cathedral in the world built in modern times.

 

Ashton and I in Hyde Park

St Andrew's cathedral. I love cathedrals. I love the coolness, the calm, the quiet, the stained glass, the hard work and faith they represent. And the fact that they're free to visit is pretty nice too.



This picture in the Art Gallery of New South Wales totally reminded me of the gorgeous Gold Coast beaches were we'd just been. So beautifully painted.

Beautiful Aborigine art - sad to hear about how their population was almost totally wiped out by European settlers - sort of like the American Indians. Loved seeing their art and culture celebrated many places we went. The sound of the diggery doo from buskers was a great thing to hear as we walked around the city.

Ashton presenting the Sydney Opera house as we headed up to walk the bridge

walking across the harbor bridge just before sunset - amazing views, perfect weather, great times

 

After our walk across the bridge, Ashton and I sat down on a bench to watch the opera house light up on one side of the harbor while the sun set behind the bridge on the other side of the harbor. We enjoyed some great take-out Thai food and Ashton turned on a perfect song on my phone - "Good Life" by OneRepublic. It was so beautiful - a crystal moment. As we sat there smiling and tried to get I said I wished Jared could be there with us and Ashton sighed and said, "I'm going to bring a girl here some day and do this same thing. Maybe I'll even propose here." Clearly the magic had sunk in.

We tried to get some decent photos (none of mine worked out so the one above is one from Wikipedia that looks just how it looked as we sat there together) but I really can't capture the feeling of being with my wonderful boy in such a wonderful place after days of enjoying so many exciting adventures together and building memories that will last forever.

Amazing Mums in Sydney, Australia

We had a truly fabulous group of bright, interesting deliberate mothers gather for our Retreat in Sydney this past weekend. I learned so much from everyone I got a chance to talk to and all our presentations came off beautifully. It really couldn't have been better.

Here are some of my photos of the Retreat including the TV appearance we had the morning before the Retreat started. It makes me miss my new friends to post all this!

We started off the day with an appearance on "Breakfast" on Channel Ten (sort of the the "Good Morning America" equivalent in Australia). We got a chance to talk about how Power of Moms is different from most blogs because it brings together so many voices and follows a different theme each month plus we offer online programs and in-person get-togethers as well as the great online content (unfortunately the link to our segment only works in Australia or I'd post it). It was fun to bring Ashton and Alia along - they loved seeing the behind-the-scenes view of a TV show.

We're so grateful to our fabulous Australian publicist, Sarah Osmotherly (on the right in this photo), for setting up this TV show as well as some great radio shows. Sarah is one fun and accomplished mum!


The make-up lady got us all polished up as we headed onto the set. 
After the show, Sarah drove us around Sydney a bit and introduced us to beautiful Bondi Beach where we had a scrumptious breakfast.

Then we were off to the Retreat in the hills above Sydney. Here's the gate leading into the beautiful property where the Retreat was held - thank you wonderful Hobby family for your kind hospitality and your gorgeous home!

 Beautiful road leading to the Retreat home:

And at the end of the road, we found this gorgeous home - such a great Retreat location!
 
Here are the beautiful, wonderful mums we got to spend Friday and Saturday with:

 We had lots of small group discussions and panels along with large-group presentations. Everyone was so receptive and had so many of their own great ideas to share - truly dynamic women!

Friday evening, we had a great dinner together followed by lots of laughter and games. "Reverse Charades" is always a big hit (one person guesses and everyone else acts out the word - you can get the game in a box or as an ap on your phone - we play it at all the Retreats and at all our family reunions - never disappoints!)



The food was really fabulous - beautiful morning and afternoon teas plus a lovely lunch and delicious dinner.



Here are a few end-of-Retreat shots with our new friends:

Always some very cute babies on hand at Retreats 

Above are the wonderful women who stayed at the end to discuss becoming trainers. We're so glad we could leave Australia knowing there will be wonderful women who'll keep Power of Mums workshops and Retreats going there!

Finally, here's the Retreat through the eyes of Corrie, a great "mum" who runs a lovely blog called Retro Mummy and who served as one of our panelists at the Retreat. Corrie captured great photos and it was so fun to read about what she learned and experienced at the Retreat. 

Power of Mums Sydney Retreat Day I
Power of Mums Sydney Retreat Part II


*** If you'd like your own Retreat experience, we've Retreats coming right up in Palo Alto, California and in Las Vegas, Nevada. As always, we'll work with you on price if cost is keeping you back. And if you can't make it to one of these locations, we've got some great new online trainings available at The Power of Moms - check them out here if you like and you can create your own "virtual Retreat" in front of your computer! The special introductory pricing is good for ONE WEEK.
Family Systems Online Training 
Mommy is a Person Online Training

Home is a great place to be

Yesterday was a LONG day - we left Sydney, Australia at 11:00am on Sunday, flew for 14 hours, then got into LA at 6:00am on Sunday. Pretty weird to spend 14 hours in the air and then get off the plane 5 hours earlier than you got on the plane.

It was hard to say goodbye to our wonderful new Aussie friends. We seriously met such fabulous people on this trip - and we know it might be quite a while before we see any of them again. But the great women who helped organize the Retreats and the media stuff we did insisted that we put 2014 on our calendar for the next round of Australian Retreats. I have a feeling we will be back there before too terribly long. But 2 years is a long time!

April and I with Felicity Aston, our amazing Retreat organizer. She did a truly fabulous job with everything and after exchanging literally 1000's of emails with her over the past years to plan these Retreats, she's become a great friend. So fun to finally meet her in person and work with her in person on the Retreats - so hard to say goodbye!

The flight was fine. I edited all my photos, Ashton got the rest of his homework done, April and I had a good planning meeting plus I watched most of a couple good movies (The Iron Lady and The Artist - good stuff and not movies Jared would really love watching with me - such a luxury to sit there and watch movies and have people bring snacks around every so often - but I did fall asleep through parts of them - sleep is all over the place in random snippets these days!). My seat sure got uncomfortable and it's frustrating to know you need to sleep but not really be tired at the right times. The luggage got very heavy as we trekked through airports and security lines and passport lines and customs lines. But overall, we had nothing to complain about.

After getting off the plane in a daze in LA and having to half carry Ashton off along with both of our luggage (after claiming he was NOT tired, he finally crashed hard the last hour of the flight and I had the hardest time waking him up - I almost had to ask the flight attendants for a wheelchair!), we said our fond farewells to our wonderful traveling companions, April and Alia, and got on our final flight for SLC.

Oh, it was so good to see Jared and the kids at the airport! Wow, those hugs felt good and I swear they all got way cuter and bigger (or simply more handsome in Jared's case) while we were gone. The last few days I was really getting homesick - between the time difference and conflicting schedules (Jared and the kids were heading off on their own adventures - skiing with relatives who were in town and going to the bull sale at the farm where Jared grew up Ashton and I were having all our own adventures in Australia), we were only able to find a few precious times when we could use Skype to catch up with each other.  So by the end, Ashton and I were really really missing Jared and the kids!

The kids had this beautiful banner waiting for us when we walked in the door

Here are the kids with some of their cool Australian souvenirs (Thanks Felicity for lots of them!). 

They loved the sand and sea shells and Asutralian licorice and Cadbury's "lollies" we brought back as well 

(Those are mini koala and kangaroos clipped to their shirts - a bit hit!)  

Now I've got piles of stuff to catch up on for Power of Moms and lots of exciting new things to pursue based on the great people and exciting new connections from this trip. Plus I need to catch up on a little more sleep (but jet lag is seeming better in this direction so far, thankfully - it was pretty brutal when we first got to Australia!). But mostly, this week is going to be about catching up with Jared, Isaac, Eliza, Oliver and Silas - while re-stocking the house with food, working on the dust that seems to have taken over the house while we've all been mostly gone, and doing all the good, basic stuff involved in being a mom.

After talking about motherhood at the two wonderful Australian Retreats, I'm just so excited to be back in the full game of motherhood myself. I love my husband and kids more than ever. I'm re-committed to so many things I talked about at the Retreat and have lots of fresh new thoughts and ideas thanks to the great Aussie moms I had the chance to talk to. I'm so grateful for the new perspectives this trip has offered about so many things! And I feel so grateful that I get to be part of The Power of Moms - it's hard, hard work but it's so worth it as I see it help me become the mom I really want to be while helping other moms - and mums - do the same.

Prior to every Retreat, especially these ones with all the travel and extra work and stress involved in our first international Retreats, I always wonder what in the heck I'm doing. I wonder if all this work and stress is worth it. But every time, especially this time, I come away from Retreats feeling so fulfilled, so empowered, so glad to be able to be a catalyst and a recipient of the beautiful experience of Retreats.

I'll get photos of the Sydney Retreat plus our site-seeing in beautiful Sydney up soon. Stay tuned!

Australia Part II: Wildlife and Beach

(I wrote this 3 days ago but now I finally have a fast enough internet connection to get this post finished and posted. I'm appreciating the internet speed I usually take for granted at home! Since this post, we've spent 2 perfect days exploring Sydney, did a radio show and a top TV morning show here - pretty exciting - and did the first day of our Sydney Retreat - going beautifully so far - one more day to be with this fabulous "mums" and we head home Sunday morning. Will be so sad to leave so many dear new friends and such a beautiful, fun, exciting country we've grown to love. But will be SO good to see Jared and the rest of the kids again - missing them so much!)

What a perfect day!

We got up early and headed to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary on the southern end of the Gold Coast. We spent the day petting and feeding kangaroos plus seeing great reptile and bird shows and seeing koalas and wombats and all sorts of crazy and cool creatures. We also did this really fun and challenging ropes course through the jungle of the sanctuary.

After a great day at the Sanctuary, we had dinner at this amazing place right on Currumbin Beach - the Currumbin Surf Club. Then after our early dinner, we had a great time swimming (Ashton) and wading (me) on probably the prettiest beach I've ever seen until the sun went down. Warm water, gorgeous white sand, the prettiest colors in the water, tide pools, perfect weather. Happy happy happy.

I'll let photos fill in the details.

Of course Ashton was the first to volunteer to hold the snakes in the reptile show (Did you know 1 in three houses on the Gold Coast has snakes in it? And Australia has 10 of the top 10 species of deadly venemous snakes? But luckily most house snakes are innocent and do a great job eating any rodents around.)  

Ashton had to climb every tree he could find. See him up there? This tree was a favorite.

Koalas really are terribly cute. Fun to be about 3 feet away from them.

These guys were wandering all over the place - they are about 3 feet long!

 Those are koalas in the trees behind us.

We went into this enclosure where there were like 200 kangaroos and we could feed and pet them - pretty cool!

 

Ashton and this Emu became best friends.

 

As well as awesome wildlife and beautiful grounds, Currumbin Sanctuary had this quite amazing ropes course. We put on snazzy jump suits and had a very challenging and fun and exciting time tight-rope walking and zip-lining through the jungle. I did the easy and intermediate courses with Ashton and bravely ziplined and climbed all over the place. But I was a bit shakey and tired after that so I opted out of the "extremely challenging" level course and watched Ashton do it. He's brave. And strong. I was impressed.

 

This is Ashton WAY up there. I was zoomed way in for this photo.

After plenty of good times at the wildlife park, we headed to the beach that was just a few steps down the road. We started off by climbing a big rock where we could get sweeping views up and down the coast.

 

Beach at Currumbin - amazing views both directions,
gorgeous baby-powder sand, clean green water

View down the Gold Coast towards the big buildings of Surfer's Paradise

delicious dinner with amazing views at the Currumbin Surf Club 

 We played in the waves as the sun set - pretty darn beautiful stuff.

Australia Part I: Gold Coast Retreat and Rainforest

We're in Australia! It felt mostly like we're in a surreal dreamworld thanks to jet lag the first couple days. But now we're really having fun. We've become accustomed to the accents and new words. Some favorites: candies = lollies (people have given us all this wonderful new Australian candy to try), worn out = flat out, whining = winsing (kids' whining is a topic of discussion at EVERY Retreat!), exit = way out, yield sign = give way. April and I have learned to drive on the left side of the road and have found that we're constantly turning on the windshield wipers when trying to turn on the turn signal (we have to concentrate really really hard and we're pleased to announce we've had no head-on collisions yet!!). It's so green and beautiful here and it feels like a wonderful combination of England (with the accents and the green) and Hawaii (with the beautiful jungle-like plants and heat and humidity). We've met wonderful people who've welcomed us with open arms and made the Gold Coast Retreat run beautifully and we're staying with a kind, fun family who took us into their home without even knowing us.

We've spent most of our time here so far preparing for and presenting the Gold Coast Retreat. We found out that Australian moms (or mums I should say - we're getting used to that) have the same loves, concerns, and needs as American moms. It's great to see that everything is so universal. They laugh at the same things. They have the same hard issues. They love and cherish the same things about motherhood. It's great seeing how universal motherhood is.

Here's a glimpse of the Gold Coast Retreat (SUCH a fabulous group of women!) but you can see most of it on April's blog HERE:

Then yesterday (Sunday), we enjoyed church presented with beautiful Australian accents and were treated to two talks by people we actually knew (our hostess, Sharon, and one of our new friends from the Retreat, Hannah). The topic was families and it was so great to hear beautiful talks that totally built on what we'd been discussing at the Retreat. I got a bunch more great ideas. The kids loved going to Sunday School with Australian kids and seeing what the youth program here is like - a lot like in the United States!

After church, we headed off on a gorgeous drive through the rainforest - tiny zig zagging one-laned road through amazing views and vines and ancient huge trees. We were pretty excited when we spotted this on the side of the road - our first kangaroo!

We ended the drive at O'Reilly's Rain Forest where we got to explore beautiful botanical gardens and go on a "tree top walk" through the canopy of the rain forest.

More photos coming soon (slow internet connection here and I just spent an hour trying to put up photos that didn't load - so more later!)

Why I'm Going to Australia on Tuesday

Ashton and I along with my Power of Moms partner, April, and her daughter Alia leave on Tuesday for Australia where we'll be conducting two Retreats - one near Gold Coast and one in Sydney.

Here's where we get to hold our Gold Coast Retreat. Nice huh?

And here's where we'll be spending a little down time:

I can't believe this is really happening!

Here's the story:

Back in August of 2009, I this email from a "mum" in Australia:

Hi Saren,

I'd love to get some Learning Circles or Retreats going here. I was so excited when I read your email [about what Power of Moms offers], I almost cancelled my booking at the gym to start organising immediately. But as I sat at the computer my 18-month-old started stomping on the keys and I knew it would have to wait :)

I feel SO excited about this! I'm sure I ran WAY faster at the gym today as I thought about implementing things and how great it could be!

Thanks again and I look forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards, Felicity Aston  

Power of Moms was in its infancy in 2009 and I was so excited to see that we had people in all the way in Australian who were excited about The Power of Moms - I forwarded Felicity's email to April and we were both thrilled about it.

Felicity kept doing what she could do to support the mums around her and thinking about how to bring more of what The Power of Moms offers to Australia. She entered some beautiful photos in our photo contest, spread the word about The Power of Moms on her blog (Felicity's Bits and Pieces) and wrote a great article for us (Find You, Be You). She mentioned the idea of doing a Retreat in Australia in emails a few times - and then she got serious about the idea.

In January 2011, we got this email:


Saren and April:
I have been wanting to send you another email for a while about holding a Retreat here in Australia, but I always think you must be SO busy then I decide to put it off for a bit longer :) 

I mentioned previously that Naomi (from www.sevencherubs.com ) and I have been talking about the possibility of putting a retreat together over here.We would love to get information on 'where to start', how you run the retreats and what classes you offer so we can do something similar. Of course we'd really love it if you just flew on over here for it, but we realise that may not be possible and we would love to organise one for sometime this year if we can do that with your help from afar. 

Any advise and or training(?) would be wonderful. 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Love Felicity

I replied with:

Felicity:

If you could get a large group of moms together for a Retreat and/or conference, it would be financially feasible to do a Retreat in Australia and we'd be over there in a heartbeat!  It's just so darn expensive and time-consuming to get there that we'd need a lot of moms' participation to get enough funding together.  Maybe if we could do a couple big one-day conferences in different areas there plus a 2-day traditional weekend Retreat, we could make it financially feasible.

If you don't think you could get a largish group together for Retreats and/or conferences quite yet, we can do an online training via our Trainer Manual and emails to get you up and running as a trainer so you can set up great workshops and Retreats in Australia.  It's SO much better for everyone when you can experience one of our Retreats in person - but the best case scenario is not always possible.

Let me know your further thoughts and let's get some great stuff going in Australia!

Saren

Then Felicity replied with:

Hi Saren:

Oh the thought of you coming over is VERY exciting :) We feel really confident that we could absolutely get a 'large' group of women together for conferences and retreats......what kind of numbers would we need? Also what kind of costs would be involved? Even just approximate amounts would be great so we could start generating interest and getting an idea of just how many people are interested. We would LOVE it if Power of Moms were able to come and present it personally here :) that's a whole lot cheaper than us flying to the states to attend :)

Let us know the numbers and we'll get back to you asap!!

Felicity

And that was the beginning of about 1000 emails back and forth with Felicity over the past year. Felicity and other great mums, true to their word, have gathered about 120 mums to attend two Retreats in Australia. Felicity has found generous families who've agreed to host the Retreats in their gorgeous large homes,  arranged all the catering, chair rental and countless other details, set up our flights, helped us figure out what site seeing we should cram in on our non-Retreat days, etc. And in a few days, I finally get to meet this wonderful friend I feel like I've known forever thanks to all the emails!

I'm so glad that April and I decided to bring our 12-year-olds with us. They both do a lot of data entry and behind-the-scenes work for Power of Moms and this will be a great chance for them to see the more exciting parts of Power of Moms while hopefully having some bonding experiences with their moms that they'll never forget. Plus they'll be able to work together on the Power of Kids blog that they've been running with their younger siblings for a while now. Ashton's worked really hard to raise the $500 he had to put towards the trip plus his spending money.

We've got our Retreat agenda all squared away and have coordinated with Felicity on countless details but we haven't had much time to think about what sights we should try to see on our days off. Anyone have suggestions of must-see's near Gold Coast/Brisbane or in Sydney? We won't have long but we'd love to pack in what we can. Mostly, though, I'm so excited to meet so many great Australian mums and learn from each other.

***There are a few spots left if you know anyone in Australia that should know about this! And while we're on Retreats, we just launched Retreats in April in Vegas and Palo Alto. For details on all upcoming events, click HERE.

Q and A: Tricky Questions

Question: I'm curious to know what you think about this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Amelia/when-your-7-year-old-son-announces-im-gay_b_1277910.html

Answer:
My first thought on reading the article was that I really do not think that most 7-year-olds have enough understanding of themselves or the world around them to know for sure whether or not they are gay - or to know a lot of other things about what sort of lives they might want to lead down the road. I've got two very bright 7-year-old boys and I've worked with kids of all ages all my life and in my experience, kids go through phases and have different passions and interests that come and go. I don't think it's wise to "pigeon-hole" any child into any particular thing they identify with at a young age. I think it's good to accept our children's interests and tendencies and talk about them openly. But I think it's good to encourage them to enjoy childhood and not worry much about their present or future identity right now.

My daughter has been telling me she wants to be a doctor when she grows up since she was 2. She's now 9 and is still saying she wants to be a doctor and while I totally support her in watching medical documentaries and researching medical things on the internet and getting books about the body at the library, I don't feel like it's a done deal that she's going to be a doctor. She might change her mind. We talk about what might be great about being a doctor and what might be hard about it. I tell her that we'll love her and support her in whatever she wants to pursue. But I also tell her that she really doesn't need to make decisions about her future career right now.

Can't we accept and support possibilities but defer a final answer when it comes to our children's identities?

So I guess my main first thoughts spurred about this article were focused on our children's identity and these were my conclusions:

• Accepting our children for who they really are is a beautiful and important thing.
• Understanding who our children really are is a real challenge. I'm always trying to figure out what is part of the fabric of who my kids are and what I can and should help them tweak or change or enhance. How do you decide what to keep pushing on and what to give up on? (See this post on how I gave up on a particularly clean room for one particular child...)How do you decide what to encourage and what to discourage?

But then, the more I thought about this article and saw what others were saying about it (there were quite a few comments made when we shared the article in our Power of Moms forum HERE - plus there are tons of comments on the article itself), I realized this article brings up a whole other topic that's really important to me.

• Teaching our children the values and norms that are centered upon beliefs that are dear to us is an important parental duty. But how do we simultaneously help our children learn to to understand and respect the opinions and choices of others?  

In my family growing up, my parents really focused on teaching me and my 8 siblings the values they held dear (and went on to write a book about the methods that worked that become a #1 NYTimes Bestseller - Teaching Your Children Values). We had clearly explained and enforced family laws that echoed values of respect, kindness, and hard work. We did awards around the dinner table (for more on that, click here). We watched movies together and analyzed what people had done and why and what we'd have done in those situations. We made "decisions in advance" (when we were 12, we wrote down in our journals a list of things we wanted to commit to always or never do in our lives and signed the list like a contract with ourselves).**

But at the same time, my parents really focused on teaching us about other cultures, other ways of thinking, and other ways people choose to live. We were reminded again and again that "different is good" through dinner table discussions and excursions around the world. We were taught to be friends with everyone and to seek to understand and love all those around us while holding true to what we feel is right in our own practices and beliefs.

In my own family, as my kids get older, there are more and more questions that come up. I want to do what my parents did for me. I want to help my kids develop their own strong sense of right and wrong (and of course, I'd like it if that sense was pretty close to my own) but I also want them to be empathetic and understanding and respectful.  We do a lot of discussing and talking in our home  - it helps that we know a lot of people who have made very different choices in their lives. I think that welcoming questions and  talking and discussing is a big key to the understanding part - as well as the "forming their own opinions" and "solidifying values" part. But we're still figuring all this out.

I want to help my kids have a clear moral compass and a strong sense of right and wrong but I also want them to be open-minded, empathetic and loving.

So I guess my question back to you is this: How do you teach your kids the values you hold dear while helping them develop their own opinions and teaching them to be understanding and respectful of others' choices? 

I'd love to hear your ideas on this topic and I just put up a new topic in our Power of Moms forums on this. Please add your comments and ideas here:
http://powerofmoms.com/forums/topic/teaching-values-while-teaching-understanding-and-respect/

**Just FYI, any of these ideas are laid out in detail in my parents' books (Teaching Your Children Values and The Entitlement Trap).