{"id":36588,"date":"2020-07-08T07:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-07-08T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=36588"},"modified":"2020-07-07T17:06:10","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T00:06:10","slug":"book-freak-46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/book-freak-46\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Freak #46: How to Have a Happy Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book Freak is a weekly newsletter with short pieces of advice from books. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sponsor message:\u00a0Scrivener is an application (Mac, Windows, and iOS) that helps writers complete longform writing projects. I\u2019ve been using its powerful organization, research, and writing tools for years to write books and magazine articles. It\u2019s the most well-designed software application I\u2019ve ever used, and the tutorial videos and support are excellent. At $49 it\u2019s a bargain. If you\u2019re serious about writing, you should give\u00a0<\/em>Scrivener<\/em><\/a>\u00a0a try! \u2013 Mark<\/em><\/p>\n

Bruce Feiler writes the \u201cThis Life\u201d column about contemporary families for\u00a0The New York Times.<\/em>\u00a0Here is advice from his book,\u00a0The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Have your kids pick their rewards and punishments<\/strong>
\n\u201cBy picking their own punishments, children become more internally driven to avoid them. By choosing their own rewards, children become more intrinsically motivated to achieve them. Let your kids take a greater role in raising themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solve problems quickly by agreeing to start negotiating<\/strong>
\n\u201cOne of the things that happen in the world is that people try to avoid conflict. Whereas in the home, you can\u2019t. You\u2019ll end up getting divorced or becoming estranged from your kids. Keep in mind, the hardest part of any negotiation is agreeing to start it. Once you\u2019ve gotten past that emotional barrier, the solutions usually present themselves.\u201d
\n
\nAsk three questions at your weekly family meeting<\/strong>
\n\u201c1. What things went well in our family this week?
\n2. What things could we improve in our family?
\n3. What things will you commit to working on this week?\u201d<\/p>\n

Vote first, talk later<\/strong>
\n\u201cI was shocked to learn that groups are better at making decisions if participants express their views at the start of a meeting, before they\u2019ve had a chance to listen to anybody else. Countless studies have shown that once the discussion begins, the people who speak first tend to persuade others of their position, even when their positions are wrong.\u201c<\/p>\n

Book Freak<\/a> is one of our five newsletters from Cool Tools Lab (our other\u00a0four are the Cool Tools Newsletter<\/a>, Recomendo<\/a>, Gareth\u2019s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>and What’s in my bag?<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Short pieces of advice from books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36591,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36588\/revisions\/36591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}