Hello, October

 About October

Holidays

Yom Kippur
Columbus Day
Child Health Day
Halloween
National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sep 15 through Oct 15)
Italian American Heritage Month
Polish American Heritage Month
National Breast Cancer Month
National Pizza Month
National Dessert Month

Country Music Month
National Book Fair Month

 

Symbols of October

• Birthstone: Opal and pink tourmaline
• Flower: Calendula
• Zodiac signs: Libra and Scorpio

History:

October was originally the eighth month of the Roman calendar. It comes from the Latin word "octo" meaning eight. Later, it became the 10th month when January and February were added to the Calendar.

The Saxons called the month Wintirfyllith because it had the first full moon of the winter season.

 

Interesting Facts about October

• It is the second Autumn month.
• National Fire Prevention Week falls during the week of October 9 each year. It commemorates the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
• October in the Northern Hemisphere is similar to April in the Southern Hemisphere.
• The leaves of trees often begin to change their colors during this month.
• The World Series for Major League Baseball generally takes place during October.
• The NBA, National Basketball League, and the NHL, National Hockey League, both begin their seasons in October.
• There are many health observances that have October as their national month. These include Healthy Lungs, Breast Cancer, Lupus, Spina Bifida, Blindness, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
• The United Kingdom celebrates the 21st as Apple Day.

 

Here's some free advice

 Here is story number 27 of the second volume of my book.  I thought it would be appropriate to include it here.

The story title is "What advice from my parents do I wish I had followed?"

 This week’s question is a tough one and the answer is going to be short.  In fact I almost changed it to something else.  The reason is because first being 80 years old I have a lot of years to look back on and second in thinking back on all of those years I come to the realization that there simply wasn’t all that much advice from my parents to think about.  My parents weren’t really advice givers.  Life was not easy for us growing up so everyone had their hands full just dealing with it.  There really weren’t any occasions when my parents sat me down and dispensed advice nor did they in any other way.  So I was kind of free wheeling it and learning as I went.

 Oh sure, there were the usual platitudes like don’t smoke or do drugs, get an education, be nice, yada, yada, yada.  But I don’t honestly recall any specific piece of advice they might have given me much less did I follow it.  Besides, you know what they say about hindsight.  It’s always 20/20.  

 

The fact is giving advice is generally a fruitless gesture.  If someone asks for it, that’s one thing but let’s face it, how many people ask for it outside of a lawyer’s office.  I believe this holds true with children as well.  You can’t just simply sit down and start unloading your valuable advice on them.  Most kids are going to learn life’s lessons in one of two ways.  Either they’ll learn them the hard way which is to say they’ll make mistakes or they’ll learn them by seeing how their parents model decision making and then they’ll copy them.

 

The latter of the two is pretty much how we handled it as our two children were growing up.  My wife and I tried to model behaviors that would lead to good results or we would tell our kids stories of times when we were growing up when we wished we had done something or when we were glad we had done something.  From that point on the lessons of life tend to sink in as kids become adults. 

 

Sometimes problems occur when our children learn the wrong lesson or simply don’t learn from it and they make poor choices.  What will sometimes happen then is parents blame themselves for their children’s mistakes or problems.  That’s very unfortunate because it’s often not the parents’ fault.  The simple fact is grown children are going to make mistakes-sometimes big ones-in spite of their parents-not because of them.  My wife and I, as usual, learned that lesson the hard way.  In fact the lesson is never ending.

 

So what’s the take away to all of this (here it comes, more advice!)?    Simple.  Save your advice. Don’t worry. Be happy.  Easier said than done, isn’t it?

What makes a good coach?

 There must be some kind of law in coaching that goes something like this: The closer you get to a player's face and the louder you scream the better that player's performance will be.   I'm sure this is the mantra of many coaches because I see it all the time the most recent being this past weekend at my grandson's football game.  I'm happy to report it was not his coach who was doing the screaming-although he's been known to do so-but the opposing team's coach.

Frankly I find this coaching style stupid, counterproductive and in many instances downright cruel.  As far as I'm concerned there's absolutely nothing to be gained from humiliating a kid in front of a bunch of spectators.  To the contrary there is actually a lot to lose. 

I've done a little coaching back in the day.  My daughter played girls softball for 5 years and I coached her team the whole time.  We did very well-not because I'm a particularly good coach but because I had good players. Sure, they made mistakes but they knew immediately what they did and next time they tried to improve without me berating them.  

Why do parents tolerate such poor coaching habits?  I guess many of them think their child's coaches know what they're doing so they say nothing.  The fact is while many coaches no the mechanics and techniques of a given sport very well they don't necessarily know how to impart that knowledge on to players.  In other words they're lousy teachers.   Good coaches are good teachers.  It's hard finding a person who has that combination of knowledge of a sport and teaching ability.