I still remember the first time I drove our first new born home from the hospital. The journey was slow, careful and deliberate. Since then, a lot has changed, not only in the way I drive, but also in the way I parent… If parenting can be described as a journey, I am not sure…
Just last week I talked to my wife, Lisa, about my ten year old daughter who seems to have changed overnight. Just as I was getting to understand how to interact and support her, I was suddenly interacting with someone else… She’s starting to look different, think different, act different, and even smell different! Whether…
I’m learning that friendship, as a parent, is even more life-giving (life-saving?) now than ever before. And this says a lot coming from a friendship-nostalgia-freak who has a file box of every single note I received in middle and high school organized by name of the sender. (If anyone under 25 is reading this, a…
Remember when you used to have fun? I know, it seems like it’s been a while. Maybe a long while. Sometimes parenting can seem like a burden. Even reading about parenting can make you feel like you need to button down and master 5 more parenting skills—which, sometimes you need to do. But in the…
My son attended a small, private high school. It was a wonderful school, that had a rule for everything, and many of their favorite rules had to do with uniforms. Students were required to wear their uniforms, and nothing but their uniforms, whenever they were on campus. As parents, we liked the uniform rule because…
A thought-provoking post popped up in my Facebook news feed yesterday that was brutally honest, gutsy, and representative of what most people think but never say out loud. . . and that’s why it’s worth pondering. Erin McClain is one of my young Facebook friends and the college-aged daughter of a pair of our youth…
I’m the first to admit it. We’re quirky. We have family meatloaf challenges and think finding a good parking spot is a competitive sport. The name Bob makes us laugh (I’m not exactly sure why but I laugh anyway). We make up names for each other, i.e. The Hair Monster (you know who you are),…
The news is heartbreaking enough to take in as a parent. Terrorist attacks. Mass killings. Planes blowing up. Beheadings. I know…please just stop right there. Add to that the political chaos that seems to dominate the headlines, climate change, job losses and more. It’s just too much to take some days, even for us adults….
Several nights ago our daughter came to us with a curious look in her eyes, almost as if she was embarrassed or did something wrong and on the verge of tears. We dropped what we were doing and asked what was wrong, but she was hesitant to let whatever was bubbling below the surface come…