We encourage every teen to think about who you are and who you want to be as you grow into adulthood. Happiness can be achieved through the values and beliefs you live. A list of teen values and beliefs will determine your character and reputation, the memories you leave with your friends and schoolmates and, ultimately, your legacy. The good news is that the choice and teen happiness is ultimately up to you. You can decide if your ethics, morals, values and beliefs will distinguish between right and wrong. You can determine how you are going to treat others and let others treat you. You can deal with teen peer pressure and teen stress. You can develop confidence and learn it is more about what you think about yourself than what others think about you. In other words, we are telling you that it is OK, all right, fine, perfectly acceptable and your obligation to be yourself. Each choice you make in life as well as your happiness is up to you!

To help you, we suggest that you write down your list of teen values and beliefs, put them in a visible location to remind yourself every day and be confident in all the decisions that your make. Teen peer pressure and the effects of teen peer pressure will subside and you will have more happiness in life. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”

For more information and a template to write down your teen values and beliefs, please visit our website, http://www.liveourvalueseveryday.com/love-teens/

For me, Christmas is…

A Father’s Love
Light shining in a dark world
Silent Night, Holy Night

A Promise fulfilled
Angels singing
Hark! The Herald Angels Did Sing

Shepherds shocked and awed
Wisemen searching, finding and worshipping
O Come, All Ye Faithful

Humble beginnings and a life of service and obedience
The Gift of Life and the offer of Eternal Life
The grace of God on display
Joy to the World!

The only thing tougher than being a parent in this world is being a kid. I grew up in the 1970’s and life was much simpler and the lines were black and white in regards to morals, values and beliefs. Kids were allowed to be kids. We were closer to our families and extended families. We ate meals together and went to church together. Fathers and mothers taught morals, values and beliefs. Neighbors looked our for neighbors. Everything was not perfect, but there was rules, boundaries and structure to life that guided our decisions.

Look at the words, images, distractions and multiple commitments that our kids are faced with today. They must be reading by kindergarten and grown up by the 5th grade in many instances. They always have to be doing something, sports, video games, computers, homework, and many other activities. They hear words and see images that were banned by society just a few years ago. They are running 24/7 just like we are and running out of gas. The rules, boundaries and structure of past generations have be compromised and even erased in some instances by our society.

If we want our kids to have our beliefs and values, we have to take time to teach them, talk to them and most importantly, live our values ourselves. We call this positive parenting and teaching them to LiveOurValuesEveryday!!! In order to counter the negativity in the world, we also have to teach and show our children how to share L.O.V.Everyday!!!

Our L.O.V.Everyday!!! 4 Kids template helps you visually reinforce the values that you want to teach and encourages your kids to share L.O.V.Everyday!!! We believe this will strengthen your family and better prepare your children for life’s challenges.

- Kids are kids and usually forget about the game a few minutes after it is over.
- Sports are good exercise and a diversion from school and all the electronic devices that dominate their lives.
- Kids make friends and learn valuable life lessons through sports.
- Winning or losing a game will not impact their life or your life.
- Kids love the snacks and drinks after the game
- 99% of kids in sports will not be professional athletes or even get a college scholarship in a given sport. Think about your own life.
- Sports provide parents make new acquaintainces and to get some fresh air and clear the mind of the day’s challenges.

So put on some comfortable clothes, cheer for the home team, give you son or daughter a hug and pat on the back afterwards and enjoy the game for what it is, just a game.

1. Many basic values such as honesty, integrity and respect are not being taught at home. Kids are also coming to schools without acceptable manners.
2. We gain consistency in our communities by sharing common values and beliefs.
3. Understanding basic values are essential to build a firm foundation for making decisions throughout life.
4. Most children learn their morals, values and beliefs between the ages of 4 -8.
5. Character, ethics and values are part of the social and emotional development of the children.
6. Children want rules and boundaries in their life.
7. Early elementary kids idolize their teachers and will listen, learn and respond.
8. Teaching values helps with class management and teacher retention as behavior improves.
9. Schools are the best distribution points to affect the most children.
10. It doesn’t do a whole lot of good to teach kids reading, writing and arithmetic if they use their education to lie, steal and cheat their way through life.

There are many good programs available including our unique approach which we call L.O.V.Everyday!!! 4 Kids in which we use our LiveOurValuesEveryday!!! brand and L.O.V.Everyday!!! slogan and logo to visually reinforce the values that each school chooses. See at www.LiveOurValuesEveryday.com/school-program/ We encourage you to have this discussion with your friends and neighbors. We welcome your thoughts and comments.

We have issues in our country that need to be addressed and resolved. In reverse order, we have a spending and debt issue, we have a moral issue and we have a God issue.

We are now borrowing almost $200,000,000(Two Hundred Million Dollars) every hour of everyday and have accumulated over $5,000,000,000,000 (Five Trillion Dollars) in the debt the last couple of years. Not only is this unsustainable, it is absolutely nuts. Our government is printing all this money out of thin air with one hand and purchasing it with the other hand. And all those bad mortgages that almost collapsed the financial system in 2008, our government now owns them. We are going to hit the wall in the not to distance future and we are going to hit it hard. We have no one to blame but ourselves as we become complacent and have not held our politicians accountable. We have an obligation as American citizens to make sure our country is solvent and our name is good. I believe there will come a time in the not too distance future that the rest of the world will demand that we pay our debts and may not accept our dollars. This could get ugly real fast.

We have a tremendous moral issue in this country. Simply put, we do not tell the truth anymore and nowhere is it more evident than in Washington DC. Politicians may tell part of the truth, some of the truth, half of the truth but rarely the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Take the recent budget deal for instance. $38,000,000,000 (thirty-eight billion dollars) in cuts were only a few million in reality after all the accounting tricks and slight of hand. I am not sure about you, but I am getting tired of people spending my hard earned money on items that give me no return. Washington is not the only culprit either. Do you tell the truth all the time? Are your family, friends, neighbors and colleagues at work totally honest with you? As a result of not telling the truth, we do not trust each other anymore. We do not trust our government, our politicians, our colleagues at work, our neighbors or our family members. Truth, honesty and trust are the fabric that holds society together and ours is coming apart. We must confront this issue and decide our fate. We must demand truth and honesty.

Finally, we have a God issue or a lack of God issue in this country. I am talking about the one true and living God, the maker of the heavens and earth, the giver and sustainer of life and the one who sent His son to atone for the sins of the world. If we go back to the Mayflower Compact, this country was founded for the Glory of God and for the advancement of the Christian Faith. Our forefathers and founding fathers frequently called upon God for strength and guidance. Our country was blessed and prospered because of our belief and trust in Him. We were a God fearing nation, fought wars against evil causes and lived our lives to the best of our ability as Christ lived his. We were not perfect but we had our hearts in the right place and took care of our family, our neighbors, our community, our countrymen and the world. We have lost our way, become too comfortable, too complacent, too busy and totally diminished the role of God in our lives and our country. I am just a guilty as my fellow countrymen. As a result, we are losing God’s blessing and darkness has cast its shadow over our country and the world. We need at Re-Awakening and a Revival throughout our country to get back to our roots.

So I beseech you fellow Americans to stand up for your beliefs, to stand up for our American values, to be counted, to change the course of this once great country or to be buried in history with all the other great civilizations.

- 79.3% of teachers surveyed agreed to strongly agreed that the behavior of their students improved as a result of teaching values. This is the standard that we are using to measure the impact of the program

- 94.8% of teachers surveyed agreed to strongly agreed that their students understand the values that they taught

- 86.3% of teachers surveyed agreed to strongly agreed that their students were using the values that they were taught.

- 94.8% of teachers surveyed agreed to strongly agreed that it helped to have the whole school participate in the project.

- 81% of teachers surveyed agreed to strongly agreed that the tee shirts, bracelets, magnets and banners were effective in reinforcing the values

- 88% of teachers surveyed agreed to strongly agreed that the LiveOurValuesEveryday!!! and L.O.V.Everyday!!! brand, slogan and logo were helpful in teaching values.

Here are some of the comments from our teachers.

” I just want to comment that this program is very powerful to teach students those values.”

“Not only did I find myself teaching the values at school but I also found myself using them at home with my own family!!”

We are showing all interested schools how to visually reinforce the values that they choose to teach. You can see our techniques under the School Program tab on our website. http://www.liveourvalueseveryday.com/school-program/

Most schools do not have anything on the back of their schools tee shirts, so we encourage you to put the values and character traits on your school tee shirt as a start. Banners, bracelets, magnets and book marks are a minimal cost. Contact us and we are happy to help you get started.

We teach our children and the schools that participate in our programs to LiveOurValuesEveryday!!! and share L.O.V.Everyday!!! Looking at life through the prism of L.O.V.Everyday!!! gives them the right outlook and right attitude for life. Basic values like honesty, respect, responsibilty, caring and making good choices give them a road map for daily living and allow us as parents to teach, coach and mentor them as they are growing up. Our children become and are defined by the values, beliefs and behaviors they are taught and choose to live.

Visually reinforcing the values, beliefs and behaviors that you choose to teach are a powerful tool in the process. Most of us are visual learners and if we write down the values, beliefs and behaviors that we want to teach our kids and put them in a visible location like the bathroom mirror, this will help immensely in seeing that our family name and legacy is perserved. Using the terms LiveOurValuesEveryday!!! and reminding our children to share L.O.V.Everyday!!! gives you a brand that can easily be remembered for a lifetime. For additional suggestions, visit our website, http://www.liveourvalueseveryday.com/

At home, unemployment remains a problem, we are fighting two and a half wars (Lybia), our debt is exploding (we just added 2.4 Trillion to the credit card) and we are printing money as fast as the printing presses allow and buying it back at the same time. In addition, our morals, values and beliefs are being compromised and disregarded. While Rome is burning, we are fiddling with trivial matters such as the Harry Potter, So you think you can dance and J Lo and Marc.

We will have to pay the piper soon and it will be a painful process. One of the most important things that we can cling to as we move through this process is our morals, values and beliefs. Our morals, values and beliefs will be tested and we will have to make some tough choices. Our very way of life may be affected. My advice is to know who you are, pay attention and be prepared.

That’s the chorus of our song that we offer schools as part of our visual reinforcement techniques. But what exactly does sharing L.O.V.Everyday!!! mean in real life?

L.O.V.Everyday!!! is our slogan that will give us the right outlook, attitude and focus in life. LOVE is in our nature and why we were put here in the first place. We need to share it! L.O.V.Everyday!!! reminds us that we are here to help our family, friends, neighbors and community. It’s not what we have that matters, it is what we share that makes a difference. If you take time to think about it, we leave our reputation, the values we have instilled in our children and memories with people that we have met in life’s journey when we pass from this world.

Sharing L.O.V.Everyday!!! will allow each of us to leave a lasting legacy.

Let’s L, O, V, E everyday!!! Live Our Values Everyday!!!
(To hear the complete song which we customize for each school, click on the school program tab.)