“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…
“No matter how hard you try, you simply cannot control another person’s behavior. You can only influence it.” ~Dr. Scott Larson from “When Teens Stray” Parents often ask us, “How do I get my kid to do what I want…
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.…
The story of Moses at the burning bush is (thanks to Cecil DeMille and Charlton Heston) one of the most famous stories in the Old Testament (see Exodus 3 & 4). But have you ever read it as an example…
We have raised our own three kids who are now in their twenties. Through personal experience, as well as working with countless families, we have learned that not every child responds well to spanking. When we spanked our intense son…
I saw her coming, eyes flashing and surveying the crowded checkout lines. Her cart was full. Mine was too. I shifted my gaze to the lines as well. It was time to go and there was no way I was…
How Fights are Reinforced…or Resolved If kids get a stern scolding, angry tones, harsh consequences, and nothing else from parents when they physically fight, then fighting is reinforced. This is because the combative mood is continued and modeled by the parents.…
As parents who care for our children’s spiritual well-being, we try to teach them right and wrong and help them tackle whatever spiritual problems they encounter. However, other than the fact that they’re born into sin, it may well be…
The memory is vivid. Our eldest son Daniel was quick with his tongue when unhappy. Quick and usually ugly. One day I was sternly (…OK harshly) disciplining my daughter for laziness, and she burst into tears. Daniel emerged from his…