Raising kids today is more complicated than it was when I was a kid. Parents feel out of control, hopelessly overmatched by the deluge of devices. And we can’t even count on one another to back us up....
Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak arrested my heart a few years back. It begins with a poem by William Stafford, “Ask Me”, that begs this question: “Some time when the river is ice ask me mista...
If you’ve been around a kid who’s just learned to ask “why?”, it can be a bit much. You’ll be asked, “why is grass green?” “Why do birds fly?” “Why do I get hungry?” and much, much, more. Pa...
As popularized in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s fascinating book by the same name, nudges are small changes in the environment around us that make it easier for us to make the choices we want to ...
If there is one word that sums up how many of us feel about technology and family life, it’s Help! Parents know we need help. We love the way devices make our lives easier amid the stress and busy...
Author and blogger Shontell Brewer offers this fictional, but very realistic bio of a modern Christian mother trying to balance all the activities of a mother today: Sally is a stay-at-home mom of t...
At three years old, Kyle had never put on his own shoes. He always had help—shoes can be tricky. At four, he had never put together a puzzle all by himself—he’d get frustrated, so Mom or Dad or the ba...
There have been times in my life when I’ve wondered if I have failed to accomplish what God intended for me in my professional life. I have worried that I have not lived up to my potential. I judge my...
Childhood happiness has become the scorecard by which adults measure their success or failure as parents . . . Constantly striving to please your kids turns them into your boss. Their happiness become...
“My darling, what wonder have we wrought here? It’s weird and it’s wonderful, dear An ankle, an earlobe, an elbow bone It’s weird how it wonderful grows And it was only me and you That made this three...
Here’s the humbling conclusion that God, in His grace led me to: I am more like my children than unlike them—and so are you. The reality is that there are few struggles in the lives of my children tha...
As a mother you learn what it is to be both martyr and devil. In motherhood I have experienced myself as both more virtuous and more terrible, and more implicated too in the world’s virtue and terror,...
When I talk with parents of adolescents, the conversation often turns to smartphones, social media, and video games. The stories parents tell me tend to fall into a few common patterns. One is the “co...
In her book, Feminine Appeal , Carolyn Mahaney pontificates on the relationship between God’s providence and the guilt we often experience as parents who often fall short in our parenting: We can ...
When we realize that having children isn’t about us but is rather about God, then the trials and sacrifices of parenting are more easily borne. We see the purpose behind the difficulty and remind ours...
In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko shares a funny but poignant moment as she deals with the challenges...
Children are God’s gifts to immature people to help them grow up. They are also God’s gifts to help parents go deep with God. . . . Parenting is not for anything. It is not a contract with God in whic...
Becoming mature Christians will require the sovereign work of God. Only God can save and sanctify. Still, God uses men and means. Certainly we as parents must seek to bring our children to Jesus Chris...
Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about...
Above all, we [as parents] must make sure that the open book of our lives - our example - demonstrates the reality of our instruction, for in watching us they will learn the most.
Any parent who has children of speaking age has likely heard the expression, “That’s not fair.” Those words come in all shapes and sizes—quickly shouted, drawn out almost with extra syllables, or said...
Compared to earlier generations, we are emotionally closer to our kids, they confide in us more, we have more fun with them, and we know about the science of child development. But we are too indulgen...
We become who we are in the environment of home. We are shaped by our families. Home is formative. Sociologist Cody C. Delistraty explored the most recent scientific literature for Atlantic Monthly an...
“That's the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You'll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and - in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom ...
Many, many fathers and mothers carry a particular problem into their parenting, and they don’t know it. It affects the way they think about the task that has been assigned to them. It affects the way ...