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Honest Abe as Parental Figure
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried out on him personally.” (Abraham Lincoln) Ok, so maybe this one is a stretch. Don’t get me wrong. I am not intending to liken certain authoritarian parenting styles as slavery, but old honest Abe does make a good point […]
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A Helping Hand
“It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one on the end of your arm.’” (Sam Levinson) I wouldn’t go quite this far when trying to teach my kids self-sufficiency, but I like the spirit […]
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Loquacious Location
“Speech is conveniently located between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.” (John Andrew Holmes) Unfortunately, this statement is all too true. And when our mouths lead the charge, we have no choice but to follow. If we could just realize that speech is another form of action, we might have more success […]
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Halo Effect
“Be aware that a halo only has to fall a few inches to become a noose.” (Dan McKinnon) When we are trying so hard to do everything perfectly and be the “model” mom or dad, we might as well think of it as tightening the noose. We are not only choking the life out of […]
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How Much Do You Care?
“How do you explain to a little child why you have to go to jail? Coretta has developed an answer. She tells them that daddy has gone to jail to help the people.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) One night during the Montgomery bus boycott, Dr. King received a late phone call just as he […]
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A New Foundation
“Maybe the foundation for a new Birmingham will [not] be in mortar and stone, concrete and steel, or industry and commerce, but rather in the memory [of] the innocent blood of these precious children of God.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) When four little girls were killed in the horrible bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist […]
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The Power of Nonconformity
“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) Rosa Parks is often used as an example of what it means to be a true revolutionary. Her statement, “You do what […]
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The Passive-Resistant Parent
“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” (Dr. Martin Luther […]
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SpankFree Parenting Part 1: Can We Have a ScreamFree Conversation?
[Before you start reading this, please note: this article is a bit longer than what you may be used to. I’m inviting us all into a thoughtful conversation about an emotion-filled topic, and I find that hard to do in our modern brief blog format.] Years ago, when we at ScreamFree were just starting out, […]