Strengths And Weaknesses Of A Family Business

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Every company, and every type of company has there own set of strengths and weaknesses which differentiate them from their competition. Here are some of the differences between owning a family business, and a non-family business.

1) Nepostism
Family business owners often feel some sort of obligation to hire there relatives, instead of outside people looking for a job. The other people who are not related to them, often have better qualifications, and are clearly much better choices. The owner however may still chose to hire his or her relatives however, due to family pressure or sense of obligation.

2) Donations To Charity
Unlike public companies who feel pressure from share holders to make money, and not donate too much to charity, small business owners, specifically family business owners, can to a large extent do what they want with the money. Often they will donate it to there favorite charity, even though they may not be able to afford it, or it’s not in the companies best interests.

3) Less Profit Concerns
Small businesses often want to make their customers happy, or do what is morraly right. This in itself is a great thing, and it’s great that the companies want to do this, however sometimes the company will go over board, doing too much for too little profit. This can cause some serious problems and it may even cause the company to go out of business.

4) Loyalty
Employees in family businesses feel loyalty to their company. They are unlikely to leave, and if they do leave it is extremely rare for them to go to work for a competitor. In public companies on the other hand this is constantly happening. Even in high position jobs employees will leave and go work for a competitior, to get an increase in salary.

5) Huger Sacrifices
In family businesses the members of the family will work extra hard to make sure their company works out good. They will do every thing in there power to make the company as succesful as possible. They will work longer hours, without expecting additional pay. They will constantly think about how to improve the company, in order to make it better. They do this, either because they own part of it themeselves, or even if they don’t have any ownership in the company, they will do it to benefit there family.

6) Teamwork
Family business members don’t have to question there coworkers motives (most of the time) because they know that they are acting in the companies best interest. If a coworker asks someone to do something, they will usually do it without second guessing why they made that request.

Celebrating Christmas Away from Your Family

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Having to celebrate Christmas away from your family is definitely not the end of the world. It can be great fun if you don’t let yourself get upset, and don’t stay cooped up in your flat all alone.

Fairs and Markets

Something that can put any lonely soul into a cheerful mood is visiting a Christmas market or fair for an overdose of seasonal food, beverages and entertainment. Better still is if you can arrange to go together with friends and indulge in numerous mugs of steaming mulled wine. In as cute and cosy a setting, you won’t have the chance to get upset about being away from your family.

Celebrating With Friends

You are bound not to be the only one staying in town for Christmas, being unable to get home to celebrate with your family. So be the organiser of the group and arrange to spend the festivities together with friends.

Decide on where you will celebrate. The most likely and practical venue is someone’s home so that you have access to a kitchen for preparing the festive meal.

Put together a menu. This can be particularly fun if you have an international bunch of friends. Ask everyone to contribute a traditional recipe from their country. The easiest way of organising the meal might be to ask everyone to pre-prepare things at home, and just reheat them upon arrival if necessary.

You can also ask everyone to prepare some form of entertainment, whether it’s a national song or dance, or a game that could get everyone involved.

To avoid having to spend vast amounts of money, speak to your friends to ensure no one splurges on expensive gifts leaving the others feeling uncomfortable.

Staff Parties

One of the most fun occasions people associate Christmas with is the staff lunch or night out. It is usually a really jolly event that fuels the coffee break gossip sessions for at least the next few months or so. Towards the end of the year, people seem to lose their inhibitions and forget what is considered appropriate behaviour among colleagues. Most seasonal staff nights out involve a meal, drinks, dancing and at least one person wondering around the room with a branch of mistletoe.

Hotels, restaurants and other event spaces offer special deals and party packages, in which prearranged entertainment such as a cheesy DJ usually plays a part.

You may not have the chance to spend Christmas with your family, and you could be missing out on presents, but you do have your corporate Christmas gifts to look forward to as companies reward their employees for a year of hard work. These are either handed out at the office or during the Christmas party.

Family Problems Faced By Today’s Parents

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From getting pregnant to effectively handling the stages of childhood and even keeping a marriage together through it all, being a parent today is a full time occupation. Of all the occupations in the world, none are as challenging or as rewarding as raising a family. The journey is one of self discovery and personal development. The lessons learned are some of the most important you will encounter. The heartaches come, as do the blessings. If you survive through your family problems, you will earn a sense of satisfaction unlike anything you could imagine.

Women of all ages struggle with pregnancy. For some, a pregnancy may be unplanned. For others, pregnancy is a miracle. Some women struggle with carrying the baby to term. 1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriage. Even more have issues with infertility. Tubal obstructions, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, and ovarian cysts are all causes of infertility in women. Overcoming infertility can be an expensive, time consuming challenge. It is becoming more and more rare to find a normal pregnancy where everything happened from start to finish as it was planned, if it was even planned at all. But in the end, no matter how they get here, there is a reason babies are called a “bundle of joy.”

Once the baby is born, especially a first child, parents often find themselves overwhelmed and underprepared. The unknown is always scary and nothing is more so than a brand new baby. Its life is in your hands and you realize you have no idea what you’re doing. The crying, the colic, diaper rash, and worrying about the terrifying Sudden Infant Death Syndrome can give a new parent many sleepless nights. In addition to all the worrying, newborns rarely sleep through the night. You can always tell a new parent by the sleepless zombie gaze.

Eventually you develop a routine with your newborn and get to know its wants and needs. All of that is about to change. As your child becomes mobile, they move into the toddler stage. At first this is an exciting time. New parents get excited about the baby’s first steps and the real words the baby starts using. Then your toddler learns the one word that will change their life and yours – no. This is their first taste of free will, and boy do they choose to exercise it.

This can be an intensely stressful time for parents. Temper tantrums, fits, and refusing to cooperate are how the word “terrible” became attached to the word “twos.” The terrible twos are when boundaries are first recognized. Patiently learning communication skills is your most valuable asset in getting through these family problems. Once they have settled into their boundaries, the toddler years become an exciting time of discovery. As a parent, you get to see the world again through the eyes of your child.

As your child develops, you’ll notice that they mimic things around them. They’ll act like characters from books and television. They will pretend to talk on the phone and say the exact things you do. Conversation skills develop. And somewhere around age 8, they begin seeking their own independence. It’s not that they’re trying to break away from you (that comes later in the teen years). What they’re really attempting to do is define who they are. This is a crucial time for a parent to learn when to and when not to enforce boundaries. Of course you want to protect your child. However, at this point they need to be allowed to make their own mistakes so they can start to learn how to handle them. They also need to learn to be accountable for their actions.

By the time your child reaches the teenage years, if you haven’t already invested in some form of parenting education it is time to start. Once they hit the teenage years, your child has the reasoning skills of an adult without the life experience to back it up. That can make for a challenging time for both the child and the parent. It’s not uncommon for a sweet and loving child to grow into an abusive child when they reach the stage when hormones rage rampantly and social pressures put them into a position to make hard decisions without the experience to back them up. They will develop emotions that they don’t know how to express or control. You can help them through this time, but you could use some help yourself. With some patience and a bit of understanding, your child can finally grow up and you can look back with that sense of satisfaction mentioned earlier.

From the time the child is born until the time they can be considered an adult, you are their number one role model. “Do as I say, not as I do,” is not something you’re going to find in any book on parenting. It makes us accountable for our actions, just as we expect our children to be. Having children can make you want to be a better person. Overcoming the challenges of raising children and dealing with family problems builds your own self-confidence. You give so much to your children over the years. If you’re paying attention, they’re giving back to you as well.

Blended Family Summer Bonding Activities

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As a blended family, you have likely already identified activities that everyone loves doing. Going to the beach or the pool, outdoor activities like softball or lawn darts, going for drives, to the movies, theme parks, camping, visiting relatives; any or all of these might be something your family is looking forward to doing this summer. Whenever you find something that everyone likes to do together, try to fit it into your schedule.

Family game days
A day at home does not have to be boring or spent in front of the television or the computer! If your blended family ground rules prohibit overuse of electronic equipment, offer alternative activities. You might like to set up a scavenger hunt for the step siblings in your stepfamily.

These hunts might be limited to the house and yard, or you may feel comfortable sending off teams or pairs of step siblings to find and carry home the items on their scavenger lists. Items on the list might include things like a tennis ball, a pink shoe, an empty tin can, a maple leaf, etc., things that can fit into a plastic garbage bag. If you like, make the game more challenging and include things like a seed for an oak tree, or a tube of dentifrice. Appropriate rewards for finding the most items might be presented, such as a pass on nightly chores.

Board game or computer game marathons are always a good way to spend a day or two locked in competitive fun. You may want to check online for ideas of free family computer games that are appropriate for your step family. It really does not matter whether you and your step family enjoy monopoly, checkers or a fast-action computer game together. What matters is that you enjoy doing something together. Having fun together builds bonds and memories.

Share laughter
A movie or television show that makes everyone laugh is a free ticket to blended family fun. Sharing a laugh is among the best bonding activities a blended family can have, so take advantage of every opportunity to share a laugh with your step family members. Building a blended family based on shared laughter and enjoyment of each other makes for bonds that endure.

Step family group projects
Summertime is a great time for a group project within your blended family. Building or erecting a swing set or tree house, taken from planning sessions at the kitchen table to the home building supplies store to the backyard, are the kinds of projects that can keep step parents and their kids involved, communicating, and accomplishing something together.

Choose projects that encourage teaching moments, such as measuring, cutting, hammering, and problem solving needed to construct a swing set. When step kids learn something useful from a step parent, and have fun at the same time, bonds are created while life lessons are learned.

The most important project for step family summers is to enjoy being together. Whatever you do as a blended family, make it satisfying for everyone, make it family-focused, and make it fun. Although step kids may not spend their entire summer vacation with you, make time for a project; something that takes planning, execution, and has a definite accomplishment factor so you can celebrate it together. A blended family that plays together stays together.

Bring Your Family Together This Christmas With Personalized Ornaments

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Through ensuring that you have some good craft ideas in mind when the kids are let out of school for the winter, you’ll be able to ensure that your Christmas season is both joyful and fun-filled for the entire family. Making homemade Christmas ornaments will exercise the kids’ creativity and make for superb gifts to give out to loved ones. After they grow older, these kids Christmas ornaments will likely be looked upon fondly and join yesteryear to the present, potentially bringing many generations of your family together. What greater gift could there be?

Personalized Christmas ornaments can take numerous forms, dependant upon what their expected use is. Should you have something fairly complicated planned, think about having your kids Christmas ornaments used as Christmas tree toppers. An original Christmas ornament will almost certainly be prominent, so another suggestion would be to have your kids embellish their own Christmas balls each year. You may use glass ornaments to mark special events, such as a babys very first Christmas, particular anniversaries, or notable achievements.

On the subject of picking which kids Christmas ornaments to make and/or personalize, there are a whole host of available options. Even though an elaborate centerpiece or a homemade Christmas wreath may necessitate a lot of creativity, time, and effort, they will certainly offer a personalized touch that goes beyond the regular Christmas tree ornaments. But when you wish to keep things rather simple, there are lots of Christmas tree ornaments you can acquire that are easy to customize. A few ornament sets are made up of multiple individual pieces, such as Santa in his sleigh, driving a line of reindeer. The sled may have a blank space big enough to add your child’s name and the date.

Other choices for easily individualized Christmas ornaments make use of pictures. These enable you to have a good time and play photographer while you take fun holiday snapshots of your kids and family, and then you can let them determine which pictures they would want to see immortalized on plaques, ball ornaments, or even the inside of a snow globe.

If you are feeling a little more daring and want to create your kids Christmas ornaments from scratch, salt dough is a timeless and creative solution. After picking out the perfect formula and directions from the library, a friend, or an Internet search, you can leave the remainder of the project totally up to the kids. The ornament style, paint, decorative touches, and whatever else . are only limited by the child’s own creativity. Older children might choose to try their hand at ceramics, knitting, or embroidery in an attempt to keep them interested with the crafting project. Should you have a less artistically-inclined child, craft stores and specialty shops typically make available a wide array of ornament kits which are readily personalized and only call for a little bit of assembly.

No matter which craft idea you ultimately choose, these personalized or homemade Christmas ornaments offer an activity that simultaneously occupies your childs mind and fosters holiday memories which will last for many, many Christmas seasons to come.