School is starting soon so we thought we'd throw out some ideas for packing quick, healthy Meatless Monday lunches for the kiddos. If you read our blogs regularly, you'll know that we unschool Z so we don't pack lunches daily. But we have times during the summer when she goes to summer day camp, and during the spring, Z and I had a weekly picnic between my gym class and Z's Kindermusik class.

Some of our favorite things to pack:

• Carrot sticks with hummus or pita triangles


• Fruit like cherries, blackberries, grapes, sliced apples with cinnamon, or other finger-sized fruits


• Cherry tomatoes or steamed broccoli


• Wasa Crackers and cheese


• A green smoothie (our favorite recipe - makes three servings - 1 banana, 8 oz frozen pineapple, and a heaping cup of spinach - dilute with water or coconut milk, blend.)


• A nut-butter and jelly or banana sandwich (if your school is peanut free try something like soynut butter)


• Mock tuna salad on bread, pita, or crackers


• Ants on a log


• Dried fruit and nut mix (we make our own based on what we have in the pantry)


• Cheese stick


• Granola bar


• Fruit leathers (we love the Fruitabu organic fruit leathers)

We usually pack a combination of items that offer a balance of fruits, veggies and proteins. We usually include a small treat like animal crackers or a square of fair trade chocolate for dessert. Z's not big on leftovers and there's rarely a place to heat them up so we don't usually include leftovers in our lunchboxes anymore - but make sure if you do, you include a ceramic plate for reheating!

If you have five extra minutes while you're packing your child's lunch, do something to make the lunch fun - cut the sandwich or bread slices into fun shapes using cookie cutters (you can do this with slices of cheese or fruit leathers too), include a quick handwritten note, make a portion of the lunch DIY or toss a few chocolate chips into the fruit and nut mix.

Tell us, what are your kids' favorite lunches? Also, what would you like us to address in future Meatless Monday posts?

And if you're looking for a good lunch box, check out either the PlanetBox or the Laptop Lunch kit or our other suggestions in the ZRecs Guide for Safer Children's Products.

Working on deepening the friendship in your relationship can help you resolve address conflicts when you need to work on some of your important issues. But what if your problems aren't disagreements you can just "argue" your way through to a resolution?

John Gottman's research suggests that only 31% of problems are actually solvable! He calls the other 69% the "perpetual problems." The most important question is not whether you and your partner will have conflict, but how you get through the conflicts that occur. The Masters and Disasters approached the conflicts differently. Working through your conflicts assures that you will have greater relationship satisfaction.

Gottman posits four steps that are necessary to follow when regulating conflict. These steps are the Softened Start-Up, Accepting Influence, Repairing the Interaction and De-Escalation, and Compromise.

The Softened Start-Up

Gottman, in studying couples in relationships, found that the first three minutes of how a problem is raised will determine the outcome. He went so far as to begin predicting which couples would stay together and which would be divorced based on this first three minutes. Women are more likely to start a discussion with a harsh start-up. If you think you don't know how to do a "softened start-up," consider how you would usually treat a guest in your home. Try this out when bringing up a topic with your partner. You would never accuse a guest or use the same tone you might use with your partner.

Here’s an example of a harsh start-up: "You always ignore me at the breakfast table." A softened start-up might be: "I really would like to have more of your attention when we're sitting at the breakfast table." Can you tell the difference? This start-up needs to be a complaint, without blame; contain "I" statements rather than "you" statements; be clear, rather than requiring guesswork from your partner; be polite; show appreciation; and should not be a cataloging of all past wrongs!

Accepting Influence

So often in conflict we dig our heels in and become entrenched in our own opinion. In order to learn to regulate conflict, it is essential that you begin to learn to accept and understand your partner's point of view. Understanding that his/her point of view may have validity allows you to communicate understanding.

Repair Interaction and De-Escalation

A repair interaction is where you or your partner recognize that the discussion has gotten off track and is heading rapidly towards areas that you know won't be productive. One or the other of you may be experiencing flooding or used name calling or some other negative fighting trick that has derailed the discussion. Gottman suggests using an actual repair checklist to put up a stop sign and try to get back on track. Either partner can call a "time out" and use one of the phrases. Here are just a few examples from his checklist: "That hurt my feelings." "I feel criticized. Can you rephrase that?" "Let me try again." "I'm sorry, please forgive me." "I need things to be calmer right now." "Can we take a break?" "I see what you mean." The list is endless, and you can add your own calming repairs to the list.

Compromise

The fourth and final step is compromise. At this point, draw two concentric circles. In the inner circle, put the minimal points on which there is no possibility of compromise. In the outer oval, begin to identify the core areas where you can yield. Work together to find the areas of overlap, agreement, shared views, feelings, goals. Work on finding ways that you can develop a compromise plan.

Here's an example from my own life. My husband and I fought for years whenever we were in stressful driving conditions, usually vacations and unfamiliar cities. He drove and wanted me to read the map in the same precise way he would if he were reading it. I'm not a great map reader and I would get us lost and couldn't find our way back and my husband would be upset and we'd be lost in a strange city, mad at each other. My unyielding concentric circle was my need to feel safe and my desire for our vacation to be without conflict. My husband needed to know our location and feel in "control" of the situation and to be looked on as competent. Our compromise agreement was that I would drive and my husband would read the map! If he got us lost, I didn't get upset, I would just let him figure out a way back to the correct road. He enjoyed the map reading and the "control" and I enjoyed driving. We have carried this solution to our vacations as well as local car trips and have enjoyed our travels much more since finding this solution. With the advent of GPS, we no longer have the same relationship issues, but the example still stands out as one where we managed to compromise.

Would that we had a GPS for all of our relationship issues, right? Try out these four steps and see if you can become one of the "Masters of Relationships!"

Terry McNichols is a Marriage and Family Therapist who also blogs at Grace and Gravity and Are We There Yet?

In my last post I talked about the relationship changes that occur when a baby enters a family. This is an important time for a couple to remember why they were attracted to each other in the first place, and begin to reestablish their "couple-ness."

What makes a good marriage? John Gottman, after studying marriages for over thirty years in his research at the University of Washington, put couples into one of two categories. He called them the Masters and the Disasters. The Disasters were the couples who either got divorced or managed to stay together (often for the sake of the children), but were miserable. The Masters were the couples who stayed together and were relatively happy. And to become a Master required just two things. The Masters of relationships worked on the friendship in their marriage and learned how to regulate the conflict.

One of the concepts that Gottman teaches is that becoming a Master involves a lot of "small things often." Many people think that it’s the big things that impact a marriage - the vacations, the gifts, the large gestures - but these things cannot take the place of the small, daily things that have an impact on our relationships. In light of the need to work on friendship in a marriage, there are several “small things” that you can do to improve your friendship.

The first step in growing your friendship and learning about your partner is beginning to understand the inner psychological world of the other person. To do so, Gottman takes couples through two different types of questions. The first are questions that help you understand the likes and dislikes, thoughts and feelings of your partner. You read a question and then answer it in the way you think your partner would answer. Then you find out if you are correct.

Here are a couple of examples of this type of question: "What is my favorite holiday?" "What kinds of books do I most like to read?” “What do I fear the most?” (You can find many more questions of this type in Gottman's Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work.) This helps couples see where they might have some preconceived ideas about what the other person is thinking or feeling, but actually may be very incorrect.

The second type of question gets to a deeper level of understanding. Open-ended questions are questions that can't be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" answer. Examples of this type of question are "How can I be a better friend to you?" "How have you changed in the last year?" "What are some of your life dreams now?" More examples of these questions can be found in And Baby Makes Three, by John and Julie Gottman.

The whole purpose of these questions is to get beyond the daily grind interactions that most couples have. Spending all of your time talking about issues of childcare, family logistics, chores, schedules, drains your emotional bank account. Spending time together, learning about each other's inner world helps you to create what Gottman calls a "Love Map," and helps to strengthen the friendship - step one in becoming a Master of Relationships.

The other important point in building and maintaining friendship for couples is to learn to express appreciation, affection, and admiration. This is where the "small things often" concept comes into play. It doesn't take much effort to offer a word of praise or a thank you or a touch. So often we ignore the things that are appreciated and criticism becomes the norm in our families. When a couple learns to make this positive perspective a habit, their relationship - and their friendship - grows! But remember, it isn't enough to think the positive thoughts. They need to be expressed, often! This is what the Masters do differently from the Disasters.

In my next post, we'll discuss the second part of Gottman's prescription for stable and successful relationships: Regulating conflict.