Tag: children
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Giving Your Kids The Best Without Giving Them “The Best”
Life can get complicated. And expensive! If you have kids, you know there are infinite ways to spend money on them. To quote The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, “Pop guns! And bicycles! Roller skates! Drums! Checkerboards! Tricycles! Popcorn! And plums!” If that were written today the list might look a bit different: “Hockey and dance lessons, iPads and…
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1 Surefire Way to Build Up Your Spouse In The Eyes of Your Kids
If you’re married, you can do this. (But it’s so common-sensical that maybe you don’t do it.) Here’s the thing: We want the best for our kids and families: we want strong homes we want trusting relationships we want shared purpose we want mutual respect we want fun we want to pray for one another we…
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Improving How We Talk To Our Kids About Church
“Time to go to church!” But why? When I was young I remember pretending to sleep in one Sunday morning. Don’t tell! Over time I learned to love and need worship. And now that I have children I want the same for them. But why? And how do we talk about it? Maybe we’ve been told about…
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By The Time A Child Is Six
By the time a child is six they are a living, walking blueprint of who they will be for the rest of their lives. Will they evolve and change? Yes. But have they already received the lion’s share of input for who they’ll become? Also yes. A study published in the journal Social Psychological and…
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5 High-Value Parenting Habits from my Parents’ Generation (That We Can Bring Back)
A parenting degree doesn’t exist. Nothing can prepare you. As social scientist William Doherty says, parenting is “a high-cost/high-reward activity.” There’s nothing like those wonderful giggles. And there’s nothing like sleep deprivation. (By the way, some researchers at Queen’s University say that sleep deprivation can, in some respects, hinder our judgment as much as being drunk!)…
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Raising Boys (We need to support and encourage what makes them different)
This just appeared in the February print edition of The Presbyterian Record magazine. It’s a shortened take on my longer blog from March 2014. Enjoy! — Boys are different from girls. But how? And how can we help them thrive? Aside from my experience as a boy, as the father of a boy, and as…
