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What to Do When Your Family Meeting Turns into Target Practice… Literally.
Sometimes it can be hard and scary to start something new, especially with a blended family, and especially with teenagers! See how Tom and Shelly handled things when their first family meeting blew up in their faces… literally!
Is “Being the Parent” Actually Good Parenting?
I just read another decent parenting book by a well-known author. It’s got some good ideas in it about how to manage kids’ misbehavior. But like so many of the parenting books I read, it is laced with what I…
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…
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…
5 Ways to Communicate Love No Matter What (Even in Misbehavior!)
This is part of a series on “Discipline that Connects®: Four Powerful Messages All Kids Long to Hear”. Communicating “love no matter what” when kids misbehave can seem like a tall order. But when these five simple changes come from…
The Most Important Time to Love Your Child
What might happen if every time we disciplined our children we remembered this powerful message of God's love for us: "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!" (1 John 3:1).
Four Powerful Messages All Kids Long to Hear
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? Discipline…
What If We’re Doing It All Backwards?
Jeni wants her ten-year-old, Timmy, to be more obedient and responsible. What parent doesn’t want this? So when Timmy disobeys, and doesn’t 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.