Tag Archives: bad habits

Curbing Bad Behavior: Biting

Once bitten, twice shy. Or in my daughter’s case, indefinitely shy. And in my case, infinitely outraged. Last year, my child was on the receiving end of a serious bite.  Not by a spider, a dog, nor a snake, but by a boy diagnosed with a developmental disorder. My daughter’s bloody injury required emergency medical treatment.  Fortunately, her tetanus shot was up-to-date, so she wasn’t forced to endure a booster. Despite the passage of time, the details of that traumatic day are still seared in my memory.  As I learned from the attending physician, human bites can be far more dangerous than … Continue reading →

Thumb and Finger Sucking—Problem or Not?

Time and again I have heard the debate over thumb sucking, finger sucking and pacifiers. I have heard parents who worried about how to control and stop it in babies and older children, as well as the debate over which form of “sucking” is better for a child (or worse.) I cannot help but wonder if this is really a big problem, and what is behind all the worry and concern? Some parents encourage infants to suck on their thumb or fingers instead of a pacifier because it is natural, less management and it allows the child to learn to … Continue reading →

Discipline During the Week, Wild on the Weekends?

If you’re good during the week, it’s okay to be bad on the weekends, right? Your weekend behavior may be sabotaging your hard work — like exercise, eating right, and living healthy — during the week. Here are some tips to help keep your weekends healthy AND rewarding. Entertaining requires eating, right? Wrong! Plan an activity between meals so you can see your friends and be social without involving food. Eating with friends can make a person eat up to fifty percent more than they would alone. A tough week deserves a weekend splurge, right? Right — just splurge wisely. … Continue reading →

Catch Bad Habits Early

I believe that children are habitual creatures. If truth be told, we probably all are habitual creatures, but I have just been able to notice it more in my children than I can in myself. One thing I’ve learned about bad or unsavory habits is that it is best to catch them early—before they become so ingrained that they are incredibly hard or impossible to change… Sure, there are plenty of times when kids just seem to evolve and outgrow bad habits. But there are others that can be so insidious and ingrained that they last a lifetime. According to … Continue reading →

Fitness Journal – Sleeplessness and Exercise

The more you sleep, the better you feel – that sounds reasonable, right? Sometimes though, you can sleep too much. If you are low on energy and you don’t eat well, chances are you sleep long hours and you sleep very hard. In today’s fitness journal, I want to share a story with you. Years ago, I had a friend who rarely if ever ate very well. Her diet often consisted of Dr. Pepper and fast food. On the rare occasions she ate ‘meals’ she did not eat vegetables or whole grain products. She was more inclined to eat steaks, … Continue reading →

What Habit Am I Giving Up for the Next Five Days

We talked about making a change in our Change Your Habits in Five Days Challenge and today is the day we launch that challenge. So what habit am I going to give up for the next five days? I had to think about this because right now I’m still a bit laid up and taking a shower requires a two hour nap afterwards so I chose to give up my favorite drink – my Venti, half-café, non-fat, peppermint mocha. My Starbuck’s Addiction I’ve been drinking Starbuck’s for more than ten years. At one point in time, I was drinking two … Continue reading →

Smoke Break – Back in the Saddle

Many of you were here a few weeks ago when I made an attempt to stop smoking. I lasted only a few weeks and then fell promptly off the wagon. I can attribute the cause to a number of things including my husband’s hospitalization, but the truth is – I didn’t make it. Well, don’t let it be said that I’m giving up. In an effort to quit smoking again – I’ve gone back to the drawing board and I’ve started researching stop smoking methods, inspirations and more. One of the first places I found with tons of information is … Continue reading →

Don’t Ask for Help – Break the Bad Habit

Interestingly enough, my husband and I had an argument recently and the fruit of that argument was a revelation I wanted to share with our readers here. It’s a bad habit to ask your spouse for help on issues like household chores and activities. Why is it a bad habit? Because asking for help implies that if you don’t ask, you have it all covered and that this task is ours to ask for help on or not. The truth is, our responsibilities from household chores to financial responsibilities – they are shared responsibilities and have been since the very … Continue reading →

Day 11: Falling off the Horse

You know, I knew it was a mistake somewhere in the back of my head when I just let myself off the hook for that slip on Day 7. So that one cigarette wasn’t satisfying, I slipped again on the 8th and on the 9th day, I smoked 5 cigarettes during the day. Yesterday, which was day 10, I sat down to re-evaluate my plan for quitting and realized that because I kept saying they didn’t matter, I was still smoking them without paying attention to them. New Beginnings So I guess today is a day of second verse, same … Continue reading →

10 Mistakes That Make a Bad Marriage

It’s hard to put a finger down on what makes a marriage go bad. It can be bad attitudes, it can be accenting the negative, and it can even be an inability to forgive. But more often than not, it’s an inability to find anything positive in your relationship that demonstrates how damaged a marriage has become. Before that time, however there are attitudes and behavior that we can bring into our marriages and if we don’t correct them we may be limiting our chances on finding that happily ever after. Here are 10 of the most common bad attitudes … Continue reading →