parenting on Intimacy

Ronald Rohlheiser tells a true story of a Jewish boy named Mordechai who could not be coaxed into going to school. When he turned six years old, his mother forced him to go, but the process was misera...

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...

There really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.

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...

“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 ...

Inside every child is an “emotional tank” waiting to be filled with love.

We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.

Let me share one more lesson I am learning about daily surrender. It concerns the way we relate to others. Daily we encounter people who express views opposite to our own, hold values with which we ca...

We do not develop habits of genuine love automatically. We learn by watching effective role models – most specifically by observing how our parents express love for each other day in and day out.

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...

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,...

Preaching Commentary Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgri...

Over the past few years, I’ve often heard parenting and child development experts offer the charge: “Give your kids a childhood they don’t have to heal from.” I’ve heard its echoes even in my own comm...

"There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears."

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...

Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgrims making their way to ...

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...

Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children's most primitive fears.

“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...

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

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...

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 ...

Principle: Nothing is more important in your life than being one of God’s tools to form a human soul.

You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way.

I was standing in line in a crowded public rest room engaged in one of my favorite hobbies, people watching, when I observed a brief interaction between a mother and daughter. Mother looked harried an...

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 ...

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...

Dr. Kevin Leman once told me that parenting is like an airline emergency. Before takeoff, every plane passenger is instructed that if the oxygen masks come down, parents should put on their own masks ...

Our Father, Lord, the world is sometimes a dragon with teeth set to devour the dreams of our children. Help our little ones go softly from our homes remembering all we taught them of your great love a...