Category Discipline
Why did two teenage boys demand daily family devotions?
Zeke and Andrew are two teenage boys in a family that started building a tradition of reading the Bible together during Advent when they were pint-sized. Each night they lit the candle, read that day’s page from their advent book,…
How Your Support Helped a Child Learn to Take Her Own Time-Outs
“I wasn’t safe! I need to go to my room to think about this,” exclaimed five-year-old Selah after hitting her infant brother Caleb. It seemed almost miraculous that she would say such a thing.
The Golden Opportunity of “I’m so STUPID!”
“I’m so stupid, I’m SO STUPID!” Most parents at some point are faced with a discouraged, self-condemning child. That’s painful to hear. Our anxiety often drives us to try to talk a child out of their opinion, in an effort…
Why Do My Kids Misbehave to Get My Attention? [video]
Recently, Connected Families Co-Founder Lynne Jackson sat down with Connected Families Coach Chad Hayenga to get his thoughts on why kids misbehave to get our attention and how we can help them to get our attention in healthy ways instead. Click…
3 Hands-On Practical Tips to Teach Kids Character
Often times in the day-to-day messes of family life we need practical, specific ideas for how to communicate with our kids. Below are three of our most popular and practical tips — ideas that will provide a concrete tool in…
How Parents Can Predict a Meltdown…
Fists clench. Ears turn red. Lips quiver. The tiny chest heaves to draw in a breath and then — “NOOOOOOOO!!” When your child starts working up to a tantrum, those tell-tale warning signs can make an explosion seem expected or…
Are You Teaching Your Kids to Be Angry?
It starts with our example. Angry kids almost always have angry examples to follow. If those examples are parents, and those parents stay angry over the years, little can be done before their adulthood to re-teach kids about healthy anger.…
Why Kids Explode and What to Do About It
Just like us, our kids sometimes react angrily when something important to them feels attacked. First expressions of anger are almost always aggressive. As kids get old enough to express themselves, the aggression becomes words and actions. One day I…
How Flushing without Pooping Can Help Your Parenting
I was mad. Several times in recent weeks our kids had become careless about their toilet flushing habits. So when I went in to use the bathroom and saw the most recent “solid evidence,” I was irritated to say the…
A Parenting Fairy Tale…
Once upon a time, near a woods far away, there was a family named the Scrumpkins. Bingle (the dad) and Kalinda (the mom) were fearful of what might happen to their children if they explored the dark, foreboding woods behind…