Raising Real Men

Yesterday while I was writing about our Thanksgiving traditions for this blog, I looked up George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in preparation for suggesting you share it with your family. As I read it, I felt increasingly sad. George Washington thanked God “for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed.” I thought…
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We just love Thanksgiving! What a wonderful holiday! Leading up to the day, we teach our children great hymns of Thanksgiving, such as “We Gather Together,”  “Come Ye Thankful People, Come,”  “Count Your Blessings,” and “Now Thank We All Our God.” We particularly love “We Gather Together,” because it was a Dutch song of the proper…
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A few years ago, we used the book Jotham’s Journey during the Advent season to build up anticipation for Christmas. The children loved it, so the next year, we used the sequel, Bartholomew’s Passage. That one seemed a bit more contrived to me, but it was still a lot of fun for the children and…
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The problem of books and boys has been in the news lately.  It’s a known fact that boys generally read less than girls and seem to enjoy it less when they do read.  Teachers and librarians have worried about it for years, and some of their suggestions border on desperation.  Should we embrace comic books and…
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Talk about bad headlines.  Following a study presented to the American Psychological Association, the media asked, “Being A Mama’s Boy: Good For Your Health?” The gist of the study by Dr. Carlos Santos of Arizona State University suggested that boys who “resist” male stereotypes and are close to their mothers grow up with better mental…
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I’d had one of those weeks last week.  The biggest benefit to working from home is that you can be closer to your family.  One of the challenges, though, is just how close that can be when you really meant to focus on work.  The week seemed balanced between fight intervention between brothers, a high-need toddler…
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Don’t miss the contest at the bottom of this post, friends! Although we have never adopted, when author Cheryl Ellicott offered me a review copy of This Means War: Equipping Christian Families for Fostercare or Adoption, I jumped at the chance! You see, I had read the first chapter of the book as a sample…
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The earliest chapters of Scripture, God states “It is not good for man to be alone.”  There are many ways this works out in everyday life, but an interesting article in The Deseret News says that marriage even plays a key factor in recruiting — or suppressing — suicide bombers in the Islamic world.  The…
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Hal’s oncologist visit and chemo went very well Friday. His immune system was nearly twice as strong as it had been at the last visit! We are so grateful for your prayers, God’s mercy is the only answer. The doctor was encouraging and laid out the next steps for us: Hal will get chemo on…
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Several years ago, it occurred to us that maybe the teenaged years didn’t have to be full of anger, rebellion, and sullenness. Just because we went through it or saw it in our friends growing up, does that mean it has to be that way? Is that what you see in the Bible? Through history?…
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