*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on PsychCentral. Boys who are raised in a warm family environment are more likely to feel secure in romantic relationships in their 80s, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological Science. The findings show that boys who grow up in loving homes tend to…
I’m going to guess you wish you had a little more courage as an adult, and maybe even as a parent. We all do. Fear isn’t just an emotion, it’s also a habit. Same with courage. Courage is a habit, and habits start young. Very young. So how do you raise a courageous child? There’s…
*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on the Daily Mail. Family fun often means new activities and destinations but a new study suggests leisure time spent at home in familiar pastimes may be a better route to happiness. “That may be because when the brain is focused on processing new information, such as taking…
When my daughter was three years old, she hated going to her Wednesday night class at our church. I didn’t blame her; our church had a midweek program for girls that was like Girl Scouts with all the fun sucked out. The challenge was that I was the NextGen Pastor, so the midweek girls…
What is it about having small children that prompts strangers to offer unsolicited words of wisdom? No, kind lady at Target, I’m not sure I want to hear your birthing story—though I’m sure it’s got the entertainment value of an action film—I’d prefer my curious seven-year-old not have nightmares tonight. So I’ve been keeping my…
As a new school year is beginning here in Northeast Ohio, many kids and families will face a daunting challenge at church. Transitions are highly anticipated by most kids and families. At many churches, preschoolers entering kindergarten start to attend elementary school large group worship next Sunday. Kids entering sixth grade begin middle school programming…
Words That Build Not long ago, my husband and I were asked to share with a group of parents what we would do again in regards to raising our kids. We began asking ourselves if we had to go all the way back to the beginning (20 years ago) and start over, what would we choose…
Growing up, whenever I got in trouble, my punishment was being sent to my room. To an introverted kid, this was a delight. I just curled up with some good books and got lost in my imagination for a while. My oldest boy, Asher, shares this same affinity for quiet time. When sharing a room…
Conversations Happen Over Blueberries and Bathwater “My husband died when my children were in preschool. He was sick for twelve hours with an illness the ER doctors misdiagnosed, and he died on our bedroom floor two days before Christmas. Overnight, my children lost their dad and I became a 31-year-old widow.” These are the…
So you might have noticed there’s this tension in parenting. Okay . . . you may have noticed, there are 1,000 tensions in parenting, but today I’m going to focus on just one. What tension you ask? The tension between the parent who wants to enforce the rules and the parent who wants to focus on…