Michael with his prized new electric guitar...

..I'll send a video once we're up to speed..!

Disneyland Paris

As part of Halloween weekend, we took the boys & their French cousins to Disneyland (Anthony & Maeva are Pascal's kids - you remember him, Susan?)

Here they are on the special effects tramway tour at Disney Studios...

Passing along an interesting email from a friend...

A psychology professor Carol Dweck (at Stanford) has a well supported theory about why some people achieve their potential and others do not. "The key, she found, isn't ability; it's whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed." Praise can have a great effect in either promoting or undermining an individual's confidence and motivation.

Here's how I understand the Mindset theory...

- those with a "fixed" mindset of intelligence are concerned with how smart they are and prefer tasks they can already do well and don't like to make mistakes.

- those with a "growth" mindset of intelligence want to challenge themselves to increase their abilities, even if they fail at first.

But the best news of all is that the research showed that shifting that key self-belief in people was possible and made a major difference. There are some interesting implications and research she's done about this in business and young children.

** For kids the important thing to remember is to praise the child's efforts, not their intelligence.**

Here are links to 2 articles about her work:
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/february7/dweck-020707.html

Some people do cool stuff with their kids and capture it on film. Me, I go for long, solitary walks and photograph leaves...

..fortunately, after browsing through Annies's blog, I can see I'm not entirely alone ! Here are a few of my fall favorites...

Summer BBQ at Susan's house

I'm hoping this will work, and that clicking on the link below will take you to the slideshow... Yes, it works ! Go ahead now, CLICK !!!

http://www.kizoa.fr/i-Contact/sflex.swf?fmode=5&did=270193&kc=8984007

Halloween Weekend

The whole Halloween thing started catching on over here in France, and now for some reason it seems to be petering out again. Determined to keep the tradition alive, we threw a costume party which turned out to be fun for the grownups AND the kids.. The next day, we took the boys & two of their cousins to Disneyland Paris (lousy weather notwithstanding..) I am now in recovery mode. I will post a few pictures as soon as I figure out how this works !