Tag Archives: growth

Can You Feel Yourself Growing and Changing as a Parent?

I often talk about how my kids and I have influenced and affected each other. I know that they have picked up things from me, but I have picked up things from them too. I wondered if other parents can actually feel this growth and evolution? Can you look at who you used to be and who you are now and FEEL the difference? There have been some pretty intense periods in my parenting career—times when I felt as though my skin was being stretched and my brain was imploding. I could literally feel myself being pushed and pulled into … Continue reading →

Reach Out to New Markets

While I often write about different ways to identify and tune in to your target market for your home business, it is also important to find ways to expand and grow your business. This usually means figuring out how to reach out into new markets and stretch out of your comfort zone. There are some similar steps to reaching new markets as there are to penetrating your current market base: identify who they are and the details about the demographic and then figure how best to reach them (and what the message should be.) In my years of fund raising … Continue reading →

A Child’s Physical Phases

We focus a great deal on the mental and emotional phases that our children go through, but physical development plays an important role in our children’s growing up too. Not every child develops at the same pace and while some physical phases appear on the chart at the doctor’s office (crawling, walking, climbing and skipping), others are unique to a specific child… When I look back over my children’s growing up years, I can see there were some pretty quirky physical phases that they all went through—one of my daughters went through several months where she tried to watch herself … Continue reading →

A Bigger Business is Not Always Better

We often talk here in the Home Business blog about ways to grow and expand our businesses. Growth, overall, is considered a good thing. We need our businesses to grow and expand in order for them to stay healthy. Many of us are a little wary, however, about how big we really want to get. After all, we may have started our home businesses precisely because we needed something small and manageable and we wanted to get away from that big corporate mentality. The question we ask ourselves is whether or not a bigger business is necessarily a better one? … Continue reading →

Be Ready for Big Leaps

I realized when I was writing earlier that some of my cautionary articles can come across as big downers! I know that many of us single parents are often dealing with all sorts of changes, trials, and transitions but there are some amazingly positive things that happen as well. As a matter of fact, times of big transition can also bring some big leaps into the future! I know, I know—it can seem as though you have been slogging and plodding through the mire of change for a long time. You start to wonder if you will ever see the … Continue reading →

Children Learn and Develop One Step at a Time

While many of us parents find that our children definitely do not follow those growth and development charts perfectly and fit absolutely into the “average”–I do still believe that children do learn and develop step by step. One child may speed through the steps faster than another, and many children tend to go in stops, starts and spurts–but overall, I think as parents we need to respect that things happen step by step. Expecting a child to go from sitting to running sounds pretty ludicrous, doesn’t it? Still, if we get stuck comparing our children to others we may wonder … Continue reading →

Letting the Child Decide when He’s Done with Something

I cannot count the times that parents have lamented to me about two sides of the same issue—they are either upset that their child won’t give up something—a bottle, pacifier, sleeping in the crib, diapers, training wheels, etc., or they are upset that the child WANTS to give up something—the bottle, pacifier, sleeping in the crib, diapers, training wheels, etc. Instead of letting our child determine when he or she is ready to give something up, we parents seem to think we should exert more control and be the ones who choose when the child is done. In my opinion, … Continue reading →

Finding Balance between Giving and Receiving

I wrote earlier to day about the importance of learning how to be good to ourselves as single parents—this means not only self-care but making personal choices that take our best interest into account as well as those of others. The other side of this issue is that we also need to learn how to balance our tendencies to give and be giving with our ability to receive… I have met many people with whom either one side of this coin or the other is an issue—either they have a hard time giving and being and generous but are happy … Continue reading →

Expecting Transitions

We adults and parents are not the only ones to go through transitions. We may think of our children as growing up or going through developmental stages, but our kids go through plenty of transitional periods too. As parents, understanding and expecting transitions can help us to be able to keep things in perspective, be supportive, and keep from making a “big deal” out of behavior choices or circumstances that are transitional. Sure, there are those reasonably predictable developmental stages that appear on the charts at the doctor’s office and in parenting books, but our children have individual growth patterns … Continue reading →

Imagining a Dynasty

Have you thought beyond next week or next month with your business? Do you picture your home business turning into something bigger or is it something you are doing temporarily? Some individuals start a home business as a way of making some money while they are tending to family, or making extra money on the side while they are still working the “day job.” Others of us, start a home business with the intention of supporting ourselves and nothing more. Have you given much thought to what you would like long term from your home business and whether or not … Continue reading →