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Raising children today means setting boundaries. With the ever-changing world, not everyone has the same morals. Some parents aren’t concerned with their childs’ welfare. As long as their child “stays out of their hair”, they couldn’t care less what their child is doing or where he or she is going. Other parents, on the other hand, are concerned with what their child is doing and will read this and take this information to heart. Those parents who don’t use discipline or aren’t worried about their children most likely will not read this.

I have found that setting boundaries can help ease some of the problems that most parents face. I’m a mom of four children; two boys ages 11 & 12 and two girls ages 17 & 19. No child is perfect. In the same respect, no parent is perfect. The parent/child relationship is always changing and growing. Each child is different. Therefore, it is very important to set boundaries for each child according to his/her age and maturity. For example, my 17 year-old daughter has a 10:00 curfew on school nights. She actually set this boundary for herself. She knows that she must get up early to prepare for school. In setting this boundary for herself, she shows her maturity level. My boys, on the other hand, would stay up until the wee hours of the morning. Ergo, their bedtime boundaries must be set for them.

Here are some simple rules to go by when setting boundaries for your children.

1. Listen and compromise: Listen to your children. Find out what they want. Your child may want to do their homework at a later time in the day because they are so overwhelmed right after school that they just need a break. I did this with my boys. I used to make them do their homework right after school. I used to fight tooth and nail with them on this issue. One day, I sat down and actually listened to what they wanted. To my surprise, they made sense! After listening to them, we compromised. Now, when they come home from school, they have play time or TV time for two hours. Every day at 4:30 they know to sit down and do their homework. No fights, no tantrums (from them or myself), and no excuses! NO PROBLEM! It’s wonderful.

2. Set specific rules: There are some rules that you can’t or won’t compromise with them. Therefore, you need to be specific. If you tell your daughter to be home by 10:00, then she should be home by 10:00 right? Okay, what if she’s “home” but hanging outside with friends until 11:00? You weren’t specific. Make sure that you tell her, “be home and in the house by 10:00 tonight. What happens, God forbid, if you find drugs in your teenagers’ room? What do you tell him/her? “I don’t ever want to see drugs in this house again.” That is just telling your child to go ahead and do drugs just don’t bring into the house. This subject definitely needs more attention from professionals. This was only used as an example of being specific.

3. Trust them: From an early age, your children need to learn that they can trust you. In the same manner, you need to learn to trust your child(ren). Allow them room to make mistakes and then learn from them. Let them show you that they can be home at a certain hour. If they earn that trust from you, reward them. I can’t stress how important it is to reward your children for good behavior! Most children hear the negative side. Don’t say, “You made it home on time but…” Make sure that you thank them for being home on time. If there is another issue at hand, wait until later to deal with the issue. Give them time to bask in the glory of doing something right and gaining your trust.

4. Be consistent: If you tell your child(ren) that they are grounded, stick to it! Don’t let them cajole you into releasing them from being grounded early.

• No, means no!
• Don’t give in!
• Stick with it!
• Let them learn!

If you are always letting them talk you into going somewhere when they’re grounded or you’ve already said no, then you lose! Chalk one up for your child and zero for you. It can be a long, hard mountain to climb when you stick with your first answer. Your child will try to make you feel guilty or give you the silent treatment as punishment for sticking it out. Please, please, please DO NOT give in. This is the only way that your child will understand that your word is golden.

The same goes for your positive words and deeds. If you promise to take your child to the movies, then do it! If something so totally unavoidable comes up, I’m sure that they’ll understand. Be honest with them and explain the problem. Then work out a compromise to follow through with your promise. If you’re inconsistent all the time, your child will know this. He/she will use this against you to get what they want.

James Cameron’s visually-thrilling Avatar started out modestly for a mega-Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster, pulling in only $27 million its first day at the box office (compared to $72 million for Twilight Saga: New Moon and $68 million for Transformers). But Avatar is the “iPhone of Movies,” as Michael likes to call it (I think he’s seen it four times already, and that is just what he’ll admit to on Yammer). He is not the only one enamored with the movie, which is now nearing $400 million in worldwide box office ticket sales.

If people who are Tweeting about the movie are any judge, about 75 percent of people are saying good things about it, according to Twitter Sentiment (a site which analyzes the sentiment of Tweets). You see roughly the same numbers on TweetFeel and other sentiment analysis sites.

Twitter is the new word of mouth. Twitter Sentiment counts 111,092 positive recent Tweets with the word “avatar,” compared to 37,434 negative ones. That is a pretty large sample size, and seems to be a fairly good proxy for overall sentiment. Some of these could be Tweets about avatars in general, but if you look at the actual Tweets, they are nearly all about the movie right now. Some representative Tweets:

@steveborn1: Avatar kicked ass. Best movie I have seen this year

@wam3studios: Avatar kicked ass………. Despite the acting

140 characters is really all you need for a movie review.

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