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TBT: Growing Kids Up is for Grownups
“You can only be young once, but you can always be immature.” (Dave Barry) Ouch. I know that this is true for me. Just because my age is greater than my kids’, my behavior often isn’t. I am just more subtly immature than they are. Whenever we are faced with a situation and we feel […]
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Risk More, Regress Less
“Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.” (Frederick Wilcox) Going backwards is never really enjoyable. I absolutely hate it whenever I make a wrong turn, and literally have to backtrack before I can make any progress. Perhaps this is why we can get reluctant to risk as […]
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Is Obedience the Goal?
“There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.” (Anatole Broyard, American literary critic, 1920-1990) I hate quotes like this one. Not only is it historically inaccurate, it is remarkably immature in its all-or-nothing mentality. The reason I […]
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TBT: Teens on Display
Adolescence is just one big walking pimple. (Carol Burnett) I can remember the first time an adult helped make sense of my maddening experience of being a teenager. It was a school counselor who simply asked me what is what like being on stage all the time. Now, I was never involved in drama or […]
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Hurting People Hurt People
“Sometimes, kids want you to hurt the way they hurt.” (Mitch Albom) I have never met a happy bully, comfortable in his own skin, and ready to take on the future. I have also never met a mean spouse who feels really good about herself. Whenever people hurt, it dramatically increases the chances that they […]
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Lead Them to Manage Themselves
“Educate your children to self-control…and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.” (Benjamin Franklin) There are few things I find more self-sabotaging than parents trying to manage their kids’ behavior. Recently I was in a conversation with other parents of teenage boys, and they were complaining about […]
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Why Kids Need to Struggle
My heart is hurting today. Does your mama heart or daddy heart ever hurt when you see your kid suffer or struggle? That’s what’s going on for me. You see, one of my kids has been on the receiving end of some unfair treatment, not getting something he deserves. Injustice strikes a nerve in me. […]
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Summer Vacation, Part 2: What Does That Even Look Like?
Summertime can be the perfect respite to balance out a year of hard work and academic achievement. As I mentioned yesterday, when I was a child I thought of school as my job. The summer break, therefore, was my vacation time. But it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Three whole months […]
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Summer Vacation, Part 1: To Veg or Not to Veg
Awwww…summer. It’s my favorite season. It’s been that way my entire life. There’s so much to do! As a kid, just the simple act of going outside to play can be a complete game-changer. Add in a significant amount of uninterrupted free time in which to do said playing, and you have yourself a whole […]
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Ask the Expert — Think Before You Trust
“I would like to know your opinion on a 13-year-old boy’s use of Facebook and Xbox Live. I want to trust him and let him choose to do the right things, but I also understand that he is too trusting of others. I have parental controls, but he complains that he can’t play with others […]