Everyone is Talking
About Will Smith dropping wisdom to his fans via video blogs and imagery on social media.
Why do I care?
While some of Will’s videos and photos are just in good fun, he is also offering up thought provoking lessons and insight into how he views the world.
Tell me more.
Recently, Will Smith has been taking to social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram talking about things like failure, fault, responsibility and even marriage. Based on the comments and shares, people are digging it.
Will’s video on failure has been shared over 67,000 times on Facebook and viewed 3.8 million times. In the video Will digs deep into his favorite quote on Failure by John C. Maxwell, “Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.” In short, Will believes you have to be comfortable with failure to be successful.
One of his latest videos covers fault vs. responsibility which he shared on Instagram Stories. Unilad shared it a week ago and it already has 16 million views.
Will’s signature humor is still present on all his channels, but we’re totally digging his life lessons. Who needs a life coach when you have Will Smith?
In The Trenches
Let’s talk about messy kids because the daily struggle is REAL.
Meredith from That’s Inappropriate recently released a video which shows the hilarity and frustration of kids who just mill about leaving a trail for parents to pick-up and/or fix. From couch pee to a treasure trove of wrappers and toys under the couch – she illustrates the struggle perfectly. The video does a great job of making the rest of us feel like we’re not constantly failing and man, we love that.
But what do we do about our messy monsters? Is it possible to turn the tide and get them on the right track? We’re not 100% sure (let’s be real), but here are some resources we found to give you a few extra tools in your toolbox.
Watch (in awe) how the Knorrp family with NINE kids makes cleaning work with a simple spreadsheet. What we love about their strategy is that it offers a plan for each week that gets to all of the places and spaces in the house over the weeks and month. Each child’s responsibility rotates from place to place so they get experience doing it all.
Aahmazing.
A few additional things to note:
- In their family, a child is only added to the chore rotation after they turn 8 years of age.
- The parents spend a lot of time guiding, coaching and doing things themselves as well.
- They have a policy for absences. If a child knows they will not be home for their dish day, for example, they make sure to trade days with someone.
The Dad, Michael offers one piece of sanity saving advice at the start of the video that we should all take to heart. He says, “You have to be comfortable with a little bit of disorder at times, or…alot.”
Word.
You can also tackle the kids spaces in the ‘Magic Art of Tidying Up’ way and Konmari that mess with these tips from PureWow.
Cute storage baskets as a clutter solver? Turns out, not so much.
*sigh*
To make Konmari cool (see what we did there?), take a page out of Chip and Joanna’s playbook by making it a game. You win, and clutter loses.
Throw these 7 Must-Read Books for Kids with Messy Rooms into the weekly reading rotation. Get your kids slowly thinking more about their personal contributions, especially for those little ones who may not have regular chores just yet.
Change won’t happen overnight, but there is hope. WE hope.
Hack it Up
Raise your hand if your kids turn down food based on appearance?!
(raises both hands)
Apple slices are a great example of a snack that is often being vetoed. As soon as the slices are exposed to air, they turn brown. A no-go for many kids.
Deva from My Life Suckers recently added to her Parenting Hacks video series with tips and tricks for tackling this long standing apple slices issue. To add some additional entertainment value, her kids were nice enough to test the apples out once she doctored them up a bit. There’s a usable apple slices hack for your family in there somewhere, we swear..
Parting Thought
Looking to make a move? Time’s MONEY took their original Best Places to Live feature and tweaked it to consider family needs even more. They kept focuses on safety, economic health, and diversity, but gave additional attention to education and child-friendly amenities. Check out the Best Places to Raise a Family in America right. this. minute. Ok fine, as of December 12, 2017.
Do you happen to live in one of these places already? Score!
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