When I served as baseball coach for each of my three children's teams, I focused on teaching life lessons as much as I focused on coaching baseball. One of the biggest lessons involved failure. I told my players that baseball is a game of failure. The best players in the Hall of Fame only get three hits every ten times they bat. That means they fail most of the time. But I told them baseball is also a game of opportunity. You always get another turn at bat, whether it's the s

image Most parents act as if there are two main ways to parent: their parents’ style and the opposite. I don’t believe people intellectually believe this fallacy as much as they subconsciously feel it and then follow it in their parenting. My observation is parents gravitate toward behaving like their own parents. It makes sense because that style has been ingrained in them. Their parents’ habits, sayings, reactions, and policies naturally come out in their own parenting when

My three now-adult children are complaining about adulthood. But they're not struggling with adulthood. There's a difference. Our adult kids seem to be handling life's challenges just fine. I'm convinced it's because we gave them a chance to choose and to experience failure and frustration as they grew up. A bedrock principle of my book, Unison Parenting, is for parents to agree on a system by which children gradually, incrementally make their own choices. Of course, you as a

"The Lasagna Period." That's how grief therapist Bryna Talamantez describes that time after a loss when friends and family provide food (like lasagna) and support to a grieving family. Talamantez writes of her own experience, "Then, the meal train and people stopping by just ended. After a few weeks, our friends went back to their daily lives and we seemed to be forgotten. . .Everyone stopped asking how I was doing with my grief." In her case, she had lost her father. Then c

Life experiences are all spiritual raw material. Any experience can draw us closer to God or move us farther away, depending on how we react. The parenting experience is no different. Your faith can grow through your parenting. Obviously, the fruit of the Spirit of love can grow. Many parents express that when they held their first child for the first time, their hearts seemed to swell like the reformed Grinch's heart. Of course, that love gets tested many times as parents. H

As parents read my book Unison Parenting, they comment on how important it is to get on and stay on the same page. However, they need to go beyond principles, philosophy, and framework to agreeing on day-to-day topics, like what to eat. Yes, how to address a child's physical needs, including our food choices, can be a parental war zone. We adults may have our own preferred foods, some of which are not appropriate or healthy for our children. Parents may also follow their own

image I usually write serious parenting blogs. This is not one of them. Instead, I want to reflect on a few learnings as a father of boys. The first was that my wife and I were in for trouble. When our oldest son was two, we had to take him to the emergency room. A teenaged boy, his family, and a few friends were near us in the waiting area; the boy's head was bandaged. After he was taken back, various friends gradually joined the group in the waiting area and asked what had

image Matthew 12:25 Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.” Does the following scenario describe your household or another family you know? A fellow author shared this: My husband and I disagreed on raising our children. I would say no, and he would say yes. Our daughter quickly learned that if she wanted something, Dad was her person. I was the one r

I recently saw an article by a parenting advisor who came up with a convoluted scheme for settling arguments between siblings who disagreed on what happened. Essentially, the scheme told parents to punish everybody until the truth came out. I looked at my wife and said, "We had a much simpler and more effective idea." She agreed. It's called "Give Me One Story," and it always worked like a charm. When faced with a situation where the stories don't line up, tell every child in

My sister was a concerned young mother of preschoolers who wanted to protect and shelter her children. I recommended she take them on a trip. When she asked me why, I said, "You will see your kids grow rapidly when you travel." She tried a trip and was pleasantly surprised. Regardless of your child's age, travel is a wonderful opportunity for them to grow and learn - not just learning about other places and people, but learning about themselves and their family. When children

"Parenting is the hardest thing you’ll ever do, and there are very high levels of stress and fatigue, especially in the parents of young children." Dr. Maggi Smeal, a pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, said this in response to the findings of a 2023 Pew Research study. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said being a parent has been at least somewhat harder than they expected, about 41% said that being a parent is tiring, and 29% said it is stressful all or

This is a summer re-run from 2024. In my last post, I responded to an advice columnist's suggestion that an annoyed restaurant guest should send a cookie to the table of a misbehaving child. I discussed a generic process for making low consequence decisions. Now let's apply that process to this particular situation. Let's first divide the situation based on a child's age. For toddlers, the key is distraction. I call it "giving them a new thought." It's not an age where a valu

This is a summer re-run from 2024. A question to an advice columnist triggered me. The advice seeker wanted to know what to do in a restaurant if a child is screaming or acting up at a nearby table. Among other ideas, the columnist suggested sending a cookie to the child. That made me wonder how the scenario would really play out. I have some ideas for the parents of that cookie-receiving child. I will divide them into two posts, over this week and next week. Today, I will ta

i This is a summer re-run from 2024. In my last post, I talked about entrusting your teen to other parents. Now I'll return to the younger days. It is practically inevitable you will entrust your elementary or preschool child to the care of other parents. It could be babysitting while you have a night out, or a play date, or a carpool ride, or a birthday party that you can't fully attend. (This post does not address daycare and nannies; we're talking about parents in your eve

This post is a summer rerun from 2024. When our children are young, it seems like we want a background check of everyone who comes into contact with them to ensure they're not kidnappers or abusers. I'll have more to say in next week's blog about trusting your younger child with other parents. But I want to start on the older end and whether to trust other parents with your teen. While we may be uber-protective when our children are young, it's easier in many ways than the te

I knew one of our children would become resilient by watching them shoot a plastic basketball at a short basketball hoop in the backyard when they were three years old. Over and over, the child missed the shot. While I watched from a distance for 20 minutes, the child never made a shot. I was thinking of helping or encouraging, but I simply watched and marveled at the lack of discouragement or frustration. Finally, the child made a shot, and I got excited with them. That didn

Recently, I was talking with a grandfather concerned about his elementary-age grandson. Two months prior, the boy had lost his mother in her early thirties. He went to live with his great-grandparents. What the boy didn't know is that his great-grandfather is terminally ill and may only last a few more weeks. This grandfather was rightfully concerned for his grandson's emotions and resiliency. He could relate, because he had lost his own mother at age 11 and had to learn how

Can you become uncomfortable and allow your child to express their emotions? You have to adapt to biting your tongue. You must bridle yourself from fixing the problem. Your best practice is to provide a safe space where any emotion can be expressed. Your child needs to know their parents are safe places where emotions can be freely expressed. From frustration to fear to anger to other emotions, parents can best act as loving parents by being the child's safe room. Teens in pa

During June, I want to devote my blog to helping your child (especially your teen) process and manage emotions. Let's start with two basic principles. You are not responsible for your child's emotions. You are responsible for your own emotions. Basic, yes, but parents can get it backward. They might fail to manage and be responsible for their own emotions, providing the wrong kind of role model. On the other hand, they might try to micromanage their child's emotions. This can

Watching a Facebook video by Russell J. Ledet, an Indiana University pediatrician and psychiatrist, I was reminded to tell you parents this message: You're not going to be a perfect parent with perfect kids. You're going to make mistakes. I've written and said that if I were the perfect parent with perfect kids, no one could relate to me. Luckily(?), I'm not. I have great adult children, and they would say I am a great father. They also have a long list of complaints about pa