I received a call today asking if I would be willing to bring food to a family in need. The mother was having a major operation and would be lying down for several weeks. Of course, I responded with an immediate Yes!

    As I planned the meal in my head, I reflected on how many times over the years I had been asked to prepare food. I have done so countless times with a very open heart. But the truly amazing thing is that I have received double over the course of my life. When my mother passed away, our house was filled with fresh dinners for weeks. A woman from the church of our community stopped by each evening with some food. The gift of food was her small way of trying to ease our pain. Later in my life, when I was on bed rest during my pregnancy with twins, women of the church again stepped in to help. They arranged babysitting for my two-year-old daughter, and brought lovely dinners to our house. Even when I was put in the hospital, my husband would bring cooked meals to my hospital room. How we relied on these dinners to feed my tired husband and young daughter. Food is all about comfort. It feeds our bodies, but it can also feed our souls. When you hear people talking about their favourite holidays, it usually includes their feelings connected with sharing food. I know that I will have many more opportunities in my lifetime to prepare food for others. It is truly a gift I want to prepare and deliver to someone in need.

    For years now, I've been wanting to sell our house, the place where my husband and I raised our children. But to me, this house is much more than just a building.

    In the front room, there's a wall that has hundreds of pencil lines, marking the progress of my children's growth. Every growth stage is marked in grey, with each child's name and the date when they were measured. Most people I know have been featured on a wall like this, or at least had a wall like it in their home.

    Of all the objects and memories, it is this thing in a home that is the hardest to leave behind. Friends I know have returned home after work only to discover their wall of heights has been freshly painted over. A new paint job wouldn't normally be greeted by tears, but erasing that evidence of motherhood hurts more than it should. Our children grow in so many ways, but the wall is the physical evidence of their progress, right there for everyone to see.

    Over the years, I've talked about how much I would hate leaving that wall behind when I moved, even though the last marks were made 10 years ago when my children stopped growing.

    So one day, while I was at work, my children decided to do something about it. They hired Jacquie Manning, a professional photographer. She came to our house, and over several hours, took photos of the hundreds of drawings and lines, little grey fingerprints and old marks. Somehow, she managed to photograph all those years of memories perfectly. Afterwards, she put all the photos together into one image, changing them into a beautiful history of my family.

    Three weeks later, my children's wonderful gift made its way to me — a life-size photo of the pencil lines and fingerprints that represents an entire lifetime of love and growth.

    From The 12 Days of Christmas to See You in the Cosmos, these children's books are ideal for holiday giving.

    The 12 Days of Christmas by Greg Pizzoli

    It's a classic Christmas reading material! It's a counting lesson! It's a crazy tale of elephant love. Have you ever wondered how all those calling birds, turtle doves and French hens fit in one room? Pizzoli, a Theodor Seuss Geisel Award winner has your answer. ($ 15.99, ages 3—5) Amazon. com

   Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers

    Yes, this book by the illustrator (插画家) of the great hit “The Day the Crayons Quit” is for kids ages 3—7, but don't let that fool you.     Inspired by the birth of Jeffers1 first child, this is a father's “welcome to the earth” letter to his baby, filled with the heady wonder of parenthood .A great gift for new parents. ($ 19.99. ages 3—7) Amazon. com

    Wishtree by Katherine Applegate, illustrated by Charles Santoso.

     When a towering oak tree learns that she may be cut down, she starts getting extraordinarily involved in the lives of the humans below her, particularly a girl who is being escaped due to her ethnicity (种族). A lovely tale about common ground and the power of community. ($ 16.99, ages 8 —12) Amazon. com

     See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng

    Eleven-year-old Alex is too busy trying to communicate with space aliens to worry about his troubled family life. When Alex runs away from home to launch his homemade rocket, he finds himself sidetracked by new friends and hints of a family secret. ($ 16.99, ages 10 and up) Amazon. com

Great holidays in Europe!

    Do you like the beach but want a bit more?

    Then come on an Active Beach holiday at one of our centers in Greece, Turkey or Croatia. All the centers are near beautiful beaches and all offer sailing, windsurfing or waterskiing with our excellent instructors. For a change from the water, you can also book a short trip to a nearby village and visit the colorful markets or eat in a local restaurant. At the end of the day, relax in your hotel room or dance the night away at one of our open-air clubs.

    Who was King Arthur? Where did he live?

    Join us on a five-day UK Road Trip holiday. Imagine life hundreds of years ago as we visit ancient Stonehenge, Roman Bath and Tintagel Castle, the home of King Arthur. Learn the history of these interesting places from your guide as you travel in one of our famous blue coaches. In the evenings we stop at some of the best youth hostels in the country. They have everything you need you don t even need to pack a sleeping bag!

    Are you bored with the usual holidays? Do you want to do something you really enjoy?

    Then Fame Camp is for you! Spend a week at Hightree House in Yorkshire and learn how to play the piano, violin and guitar! Bring your tent and stay at a campsite near the house. At the end of the week try your new skills in a live performance.

    How many countries can you see in 21days?

    On our Explore Europe holiday, you can see ten! Learn about them from our best guides as you watch them go past from the window of an air-conditioned coach and stay at some of Europe's top campsites on the way. Of course, we'll also have time to do the important things such as visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the historic Sistine Chapel in Vatican and eating apple ѕtrudеl іn Vіеnnа.

    For more information about any of these holidays, call 0845 333 4523 or visit www.comewithusuk.com.

    PTSD(战后创伤) is sadly a common affliction(折磨) for many soldiers who have witnessed conflict, an invisible wound that continues to cause incredible suffering long after the guns have fallen silent.

    "A lot of us come home without realizing we are bringing the war home with us," said Josh Marino, a veteran (退伍兵)of the Iraq war who suffered the effects of PTSD of suicide .

    "I didn't want to deal with it anymore," Marino said. He wrote a goodbye note, grabbed a knife and went outside for a final cigarette in the rain. But then, from the deepest depth of despair came hope. Meowing out of the bushes next to him came a stray black and white kitten (小猫) which, according to Marino, "just walked up and started rubbing up against my leg and let me pet him. I came to life again and I broke down crying. I burst into tears."

    From this accidental encounter everything changed. Marino found a new purpose in life through the friendly cat, who he named Scout, and who he credits with saving his life. "I stopped thinking about all my problems, and started thinking about all his problems, and what I could do to help him, "Marino said. The bond between them was instant，but that wasn't the end of the story.

    Marino has made a video of his and Scout's remarkable story of healing and heartbreak which you can watch on the Internet. The story is dedicated to showing how animals can help humans through tough times, as well as humans can help them. It is a beautiful story that is sure to tug at your heart strings, showing just how powerful the bond between humans and animals can be. We love it, and we hope you do too!

By now you've probably heard about the "you're not special" speech, when English teacher David McCullough told graduating seniors at Wellesley High School: "Do not get the idea you're anything special, because you're not." Mothers and fathers present at the ceremony — and a whole lot of other parents across the Internet — took issue with McCullough's ego-puncturing words. But lost in the uproar was something we really should be taking to heart: our young people actually have no idea whether they're particularly talented or accomplished or not. In our eagerness to elevate their self-esteem, we forgot to teach them how to realistically assess their own abilities, a crucial requirement for getting better at anything from math to music to sports. In fact, it's not just privileged high-school students: we all tend to view ourselves as above average.

Such inflated self-judgments have been found in study after study, and it's often exactly when we're least competent at a given task that we rate our performance most generously. In a 2006 study published in the journal Medical Education, for example, medical students who scored the lowest on an essay test were the most charitable in their self-evaluations, while high-scoring students judged themselves much more strictly. Poor students, the authors note, "lack insight" into their own inadequacy. Why should this be? Another study, led by Cornell University psychologist David Dunning, offers an enlightening explanation. People who are incompetent, he writes with coauthor Justin Kruger, suffer from a "dual burden": they're not good at what they do, and their very incapability prevents them from recognizing how bad they are.

In Dunning and Kruger's study, subjects scoring at the bottom of the heap on tests of logic, grammar and humor "extremely overestimated" their talents. What these individuals lacked (in addition to clear logic, proper grammar and a sense of humor) was "metacognitive skill": the capacity to monitor how well they're performing. In the absence of that capacity, the subjects arrived at an overly hopeful view of their own abilities. There's a paradox here, the authors note: "The skills that lead to competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain." In other words, to get better at judging how well we're doing at an activity, we have to get better at the activity itself.

There are a couple of ways out of this double bind. First, we can learn to make honest comparisons with others. Train yourself to recognize excellence, even when you yourself don't possess it, and compare what you can do against what truly excellent individuals are able to accomplish. Second, seek out feedback that is frequent, accurate and specific. Find a critic who will tell you not only how poorly you're doing, but just what it is that you're doing wrong. As Dunning and Kruger note, success indicates to us that everything went right, but failure is more ambiguous: any number of things could have gone wrong. Use this external feedback to figure out exactly where and when you screwed up.

If we adopt these strategies — and most importantly, teach them to our children — they won't need parents, or a commencement (毕业典礼) speaker, to tell them that they're special. They'll already know that they are, or have a plan to get that way.