January is National Mentoring Month

Where is time going? Have you heard that question from your children? Time is passing so fast and it seems like every minute is filled with stuff that has to get done. No wonder our children are experiencing stress and the feeling of “not enough time.” We’re the best models of that behavior!

Here is a suggestion that I would like to share with you. Be a mentor to your very own children! Mentoring is simply a way to ensure that our young people have the support they need to discover success. It’s an attitude and a way of being.

What Makes a Mentor?

A mentor is an experienced and trusted adviser who can be instrumental as a guide, counselor, confidant, trainer, teacher, or tutor. Granted it wold be great to spread the wealth and mentor others as well, but if you can’t fit it in to your schedule, at least discover and utilize the skills with your own children.

Or maybe you mentor another family and those parents mentor your children. Sometimes it really makes sense to get different perspectives and who better than someone you already know and trust? At the very core, mentoring children guarantees that there is someone who cares about them and makes them feel like they matter.

Reasons to Be a Mentor

What better person than a mentor to help a child, no matter their age, to move forward towards goals and objectives that YOU help them realize?

Mentoring, at its core, guarantees young people that there is someone who cares about them, assures them they are not alone in dealing with day-to-day challenges, and makes them feel like they matter. Research confirms that quality mentoring relationships have powerful positive effects on young people in a variety of personal, academic, and professional situations. Ultimately, mentoring connects a young person to personal growth and development, and social and economic opportunity. Yet one in three young people will grow up without this critical asset.

When you’re spending time with your own children or others in that mentoring mode, plan on doing the Daily Clean Your House Flow before you “get down to whatever is happening that day.” It will help everything go smoother, even homework!

Photo credit: Northern Ireland Executive viaFoter.com / CC BY-ND

Mentoring is a Way to Create Success for Our Children

Mentoring is a way to share with our children. It seems appropriate to contemplate what we can do for the children in our communities as we celebrate National Mentoring Month during January.

How You Can Help

Mentoring doesn’t have to take a huge amount of time. It can easily be a short period of time in your week. Contact one of your local schools to see how you could participate in any of their programs. Or go to www.mentoring.org to see how that organization can get you on the mentoring track.

Everybody Wins with Mentoring

When you’re contemplating the possibility of becoming a mentor, consider these positive effects noted on their website:

• Students who meet regularly with their mentors are 52% less likely than their peers to skip a day of school and 37% less likely to skip a class. (Public/Private Ventures study of Big Brothers Big Sisters)
• Young adults who face an opportunity gap but have a mentor are 55% more likely to be enrolled in college than those who did not have a mentor. (The Mentoring Effect, 2014)

• In addition to better school attendance and a better chance of going on to higher education, mentored youth maintain better attitudes toward school. (The Role of Risk, 2013)

If you decide to become a mentor, let me know how it goes! And a suggestion is to make use of the Daily Clean Your House Flow when you get together with the young person you’re working with. Both of you will discover how much more you get accomplished and how much better you feel!

Life Is So Very Full

And yet it is so very important to find ways to help our children discover success at home, school, and in all of their activities.

The children, parents and teachers I work with have found that doing the Daily Clean Your House Flow (a self-help acupressure flow) helps increase focus, attention, and productivity. It reduces stress and anxiety and helps balance emotions. So imagine what benefits are being seen when a classroom of kids are doing the Daily Flow together! And it takes less than 10 minutes to watch the video!

Mentoring is another way to ensure that our young people have the support they need to discover success. At the very core, it guarantees that there is someone who cares about them and makes them feel like they matter. A mentor is an experienced and trusted adviser who can be instrumental as a guide, counselor, confidant, trainer, teacher, or tutor. What better person than a mentor to help a child, no matter their age, to move forward towards goals and objectives that YOU help them realize?

Photo credit: opensourceway viaFoter.com / CC BY-SA