Tag family time
Beat the Monday Blues with Sunday Lavender
In a coaching session, Karen shared that their family’s weekly schedule seemed to take them captive every Sunday night. Lilly, their third-grader, unofficially declared it “Moan and groan about Monday morning” time. The whole family would get drawn into her…
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!
A Simple, Fun Cure for Dinner Time Chaos
Is dinner at your house a bit crazy? Perhaps it needs a little injection of purpose. When the meal is all about getting kids to settle down and eat their food, it’s bound to be a struggle. But when it’s…
Does Your Family Have a Purpose?
Our family likes to have plans in the works for the upcoming year. A possible Florida trip this spring to see family? What about our family’s favorite summer vacation spot in the Colorado Rockies? In order to make these dreams a…
A Surprisingly Powerful Strategy to Spice Up Your Christmas
Last Christmas I pulled out God’s Word to read the familiar passages of Luke 2:4-20 to my niece and nephews and extended family. The version I read from was the Hawai’i Pidgin Bible (“Da Jesus Book”), a Wycliffe translation of…
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 to Help Kids Follow Family Rules
When it comes to family rules, a common mistake parents make is not clearly defining the rules! What is acceptable and what is not in a family can be a moving target depending on the whims of a parent’s mood,…
Beat Boredom with These Four Tips
Research has shown that being bored is not such a bad thing for kids. Boredom can foster creativity and patience. Yet, when a parent hears that tired phrase again and again, we may feel the need to “fix” the…
Building the Family Team: A Solution to Chore Wars
7-year-old Bryce was a master “chore evader.” When asked to help with chores, this distractable drama king would slump over and whine, “But I wanted to play!” His parents, Sandy and Jeff, had run out of ideas and came to…
The Gift of Not Giving:
Have you noticed that Christmas aisles seem to be stocked earlier and earlier these days? Commercials for Black Friday “doorbusters” are rampant, and there is even controversy about some stores beginning their sales on Thanksgiving Day. The holiday materialism debate is not new: on…