Your Kids are not Kings

Our three-year-olds aren’t clad in togas and wreaths of gold leaves. They don’t sit on an enormous throne with a royal scepter in their hands.

Without this, it doesn’t matter what you want

“We want what we want.” I’ve heard that phrase used as…

Wait a minute…

Some thoughts on procrastination:

—it’s not an aversion to hard work, because procrastinators end up working very hard…

The Easiest Way to Earn Respect

I hear parents complain about their “disrespectful” kids all the time.   Here’s my question in reply: When you lose your cool with them and say and do things you regret, how quickly do you apologize?   Some folks actually tell me they don’t apologize, ‘cos that would communicate “weakness.”   Others tell me they’ll […]

You’re Not a Lizard

There’s something about the power of quietness that modern society doesn’t know how to cultivate. We get anxious and feel like…

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, […]