Parenting
We were just talking the other night about how much we love to read. Want to know what makes us feel rich? A stack of new books from a favorite author and time to dive in. Our kids love books as much as we do. It didn't come naturally to all of them, though. Here…
When a 5-year-old announces he wants to marry the little girl next door, you might say (sweetly), “Well, maybe one day, Sport, but you've got to grow up and get a job first.” Ditto for your pre-teen. But when Sport is 17 and he can smell legal adulthood just a few calendar pages away, a…
Recently we wrote about how to effectively parent a pre-teen son with a crush. It's not a real, mature sort of Christian love, but a 11- or 12-year-old doesn't realize that … it's feels real to him! So we recommend you take it seriously enough to talk about relationships, not just laugh him off. An…
We've all seen them: the viral videos of parents smashing their kids' computers or sharing their stupid mistakes. Some of them are pretty funny and most of us have been tempted to do something outrageous some time or another, but is this really a good idea? Public shame has been a form of punishment throughout…
Boys will be boys, they say, which is usually an excuse for any sort of foolishness short of downright criminality. It should come as no surprise when a young man begins to notice that young women are different in ways that seem interesting rather than irritating. There's nothing wrong in that – God created the…
One of our webinar participants asked a simple but significant question: When two children have an argument, how do you determine the truth when the two disagree? What do you do when you get two different stories? "Mama, would you please lower the boom on somebody?" Often when the kids have a disagreement, we only…
Let me be upfront. I love Star Wars. The original Star Wars was released when I was a young teen and I think I saw it 5 or 6 times the first month. It was a grand story of nobility and sacrifice, knights and princesses, tyranny and resistance, epic battles and spaceships. Spaceships! It was…
Our family loves movies - our sons like to take their mother to opening nights, and we have a local theater that runs popular films a couple months later at bargain prices - great for a large family! The two hour feature film is like a literary form of its own, and there are powerful…
Erin asked a great question on our Open Wall Friday post, "One of our sons (almost 6) is a "slow-ski". He is far from the youngest and always the last to put on his shoes, coat, come to the table, walk into the grocery store, keep up with the group, get out of the van…
A friend on Facebook said, "My 2-yr old son is driving me insane with his destructive behavior (mainly out of curiosity and inventiveness). He's very bright and physically and verbally advanced. But I'm losing my mind. Spanking doesn't seem to help since he repeats messing with everything and breaking things. ... I can not reason with…