The Five Powerful Results of Empathy
0There is no more important time for kids to know they’re loved than when they misbehave. If the love message misses them then, they may think that love is conditional. People who believe that tend to rise and fall with their performance and compromise themselves for approval. Not what we want for our kids. So communicate love through empathy!
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Sore Losers: Why They Melt Down and What You Can Do [Video]
Playing games with our kids can be a fun way to connect. But what happens when one or more of the children struggles with losing gracefully? Enjoyable playtime can quickly morph into a frustrating outburst. Kids are upset, other players are uncomfortable, and everyone may …
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R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Can I Get a Little?
No matter how hard we try to keep calm, sometimes we blow it. When that happens, we can be open to ideas from the Holy Spirit, as was Brenda, a mom who receives our email tips. When we heard her story we invited her to …
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Teenagers, Sass, and Life that Is Truly Life
“Are you going to help me or not?” I snapped at Daniel, our fifteen year-old-son. He’d been asking for the past hour to go to a friend’s house. I kept dodging his request while also badgering him to enlist his help in a backyard project …
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One of Our Biggest Parenting Mistakes…
One of our biggest parenting mistakes is to try to get kids to behave right for the wrong reasons. Now it’s a good thing to want our kids to behave responsibly, and to internalize the value of responsibility. But parents tend to turn this desire …
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Kids that “Just Don’t Care!”
“When we confront Devin about his behavior, he just acts like it’s not a big deal or blames someone else,” stated Patty. She and Carl were convinced that their ten-year-old son’s frequent lies and defensiveness were another sign that he didn’t care about them and …
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When Things Go Wrong, Don’t Fix the Problems!
Jeremy and Anna were frustrated about the chaotic dinners at their house. It was definitely a “herding cats” experience to get their two boys to the table and then a “managing monkeys” experience once they all got there. Their younger son Ayden sometimes got quite …
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Is My Anxiety Holding My Child Back?
You have good desires for your kids. You probably want them to learn neatness, diligence in homework, good eating patterns, and all sorts of other helpful habits. But if you are anxious as you try to help them learn better habits, that anxiety often makes …
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How a Pipe Cleaner Can Stop Your Child’s Meltdowns!
Does your child sometimes unexpectedly meltdown at the drop of a hat? Does unexpected change or inflexibility lead to frequent tantrums? If so, you’re not alone! Despite Jen’s best efforts, her goal of trying to stop her son’s meltdowns just seemed to make them worse. …
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7 Practical Tips for Picky Eaters
It is truly a God-given desire to feed your child healthy food. Unfortunately this good desire can easily go awry when your child turns up his nose at what you consider to be essential nutrition. A child’s rejection of certain foods is often rooted in …
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Regroup & Resolve: How Humble Pie Can Help Your Family
Every parent fails to deal perfectly with every parenting situation. In other words, we all screw up sometimes! Along the way we’ve discovered that what’s far more important than handling every parenting situation perfectly is to regroup, and resolve well. For it’s in resolving well …
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The Best Plan for Teaching Faith!
We had it all figured out. With strong desire to be more intentional about teaching faith at home, we’d put together a little lesson plan for a family Bible study. Complete with some fun object lessons and activities, it was sure to be a hit! …
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How to Deal with an Attention Addict
Recently, on a weekend when all our kids were home, we dug out the family videos for a trip down memory lane (or, in the case of our daughter-in-law, a crash-course in Jackson family history). Their antics were rather hilarious – particularly their clumsy attempts …
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Don’t Punish Your Child’s Nervous System — Understand It!
There are challenging kids, and there are “over-the-top” challenging kids. If standard parenting approaches just don’t work, or if you resonate with one or more of the comments below, you may well have an above average challenge with your child. If so – today’s parenting …
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“What Were You Thinking?!” or, How to Handle Impulsive Behavior
Q: How do I deal with my son’s often impulsive behavior? First and most importantly, everything we’re about to say is most effective when it’s rooted in a strong commitment for your son to walk in all that God has laid out for him (Eph. …
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Michael Phelps’ Secret… and What It Tells Us About Parenting
Michael Phelps is now the most decorated Olympian in history. On Wednesday night, he won his 18th and 19th medals, making him — according to many — “the greatest Olympian ever”. So what is Phelps’ secret? Well, it could be his high-altitude sleeping chamber. But …
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Raising Overcomers
Laying in the tent, during another in our long line of horrible weather Boundary Waters canoe trips, I was angry. We had intentionally picked the “statistically best average weather week” of the summer. Ha. This time instead of droning drizzle, bone-chilling cold, or homicidal mosquitoes, …
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The Talent Waiting To Be Discovered…. In Their Misbehavior!
John’s eyes pierced into mine. “No one has ever said anything like that to me!” he sternly said. I was sad that he’d lived nearly eighteen years and never heard the encouragement I’d offered. He was a jaded teen covered with piercings, tattoos, and tattered …
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Mercy In Our Struggle
“Can’t you just get in the bathtub without arguing?!!” Daniel and I were nose-to-nose in a typical power struggle. I knew it was going to take most of my intellectual and emotional savvy just to get this grimy little kid in the tub. Of course, …
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Connected Families | Learn to Parent with Contagious Love and Faith!