Category Discipline
Four Powerful Messages All Kids Long to Hear
ย Every parent wants their child to choose good, right behavior. Every family consists of real, mistake-prone people. No one is perfect. How do we teach our children to learn from their mistakes and help them grow up well? Disciplineโฆ
What If We’re Doing It All Backwards?
Jeni wants her ten-year-old, Timmy, to be more obedient and responsible. What parent doesnโt want this? So when Timmy disobeys, and doesnโt take responsibility to clean up the kitchen as assigned on his chore chart, she enters the all too common battle of wills to get him to do his job.
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. Heโd been asking for the past hour to go to a friendโs house. I kept dodging his request while also badgering him to enlist hisโฆ
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. Itโs a good thing to want our kids to behave responsibly and to internalize the value of responsibility, but parents tendโฆ
What’s Your Child Really Saying?
It was the first warm day of spring in Minnesota, which usually means MUD. The ground was still soggy from the snow melt, but the air was clean and fresh and the flowers were just beginning to peek through the soil. I was outside with two of our three kids...
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 betterโฆ
“How Do I Get My Kids to Do What I Want?”
โNo matter how hard you try, you simply cannot control another personโs behavior. You can only influence it.โ ย ~Dr. Scott Larson from “When Teens Stray” Parents often ask us, โHow do I get my kid to do what I wantโฆ
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 childโs rejection of certainโฆ
Regroup & Resolve
Every parent fails to deal perfectly with every parenting situation. In other words, we all screw up sometimes! Along the way weโve discovered that whatโs far more important than handling every parenting situation perfectly is to regroup, and resolve well.โฆ
Do Warnings Teach Kids to Be Less Responsible?
When dealing with a misbehaving child, many parents follow this pattern: instruction, warning, warning, last warning, really strong last warning, angry explosion!! When we stretch out our instructions into multiple warnings and donโt follow through, it teaches our children toโฆ