image In this second of my two-part blog series on your child's mental health, I again turn to Dr. Leslee Marcum of the Pathlight Mood and Anxiety Center for how you can approach your child to discuss mental health concerns. Prepare with your parenting partner. Role-play the conversation. Besides giving you practice, it allows you to synchronize with your parenting partner(s) on the situation and how it should be addressed. This is a crucial conversation to have, as parenting

The number one concern of parents these days is their child's mental health, according to a recent study by Pew Research Center. But talking about mental health is new to most parents. Until recently, mental health topics were taboo. How can a parent change to make mental health part of family dialogue before it's too late? And importantly, how can parents agree on a consistent approach? This is the first of two blogs I'm planning on this topic. To start, parents can work tog

My preacher dad never minded disruptive children during sanctuary worship. He just talked louder. More importantly, he saw the kid noise as an inevitable by-product of a beneficial process: getting your kids used to church. I don't think he held any special research to back his claim, but my dad would say it takes ten years for a kid to acclimate to church. You can start the clock at two years old, five years old, or twelve years old. But it's going to take ten years for them

I’ve been discussing chores, allowances, and money management in my last few posts. Ideally, when your child wants more money, they will supplement their allowance by joining the workforce. But besides networking and connections, how can they secure a job with seemingly no experience? Help them build a strong resume. Let me give an example of how one of my children secured a job with a famous fast chicken restaurant. His only work experience was umpiring t-ball and baseball g

My oldest child wanted a mobile phone. We had a family policy to pay for a phone and its service plan when the child reached driving age. They were allowed to have a phone by sixth grade if they would pay for the phone and service on our account themselves. To help the child make the decision, I created a spreadsheet that mapped their income (allowances plus accumulated savings) to the expenses of a mobile phone. The results indicated the child could afford a phone and the se

How do you start teaching kids about money? Basically, allow them to have some money and let them make mistakes. From my last post, remember the purpose for separating chores from allowances (with one exception below). Chores are about living in a household together and being responsible to those you live with. A child should not get paid every time they do a chore; this is an unrealistic expectation about life. Establish a consequence for not doing chores. On the other hand,

Two things can both be true: Kids need chores. Kids need allowances. Kids need chores for their development. They must understand what it means to participate in a family, to run a household, and to get through things you don't really want to do. It builds their self-esteem, self-discipline, and ability to work with others as a team. Kids need allowances. OK, "need" is a strong word. But they do need experiences with money long before they become adults. They need to understa

A fine line exists between validating your child's emotions and focusing primarily on your child's emotions. If you take my newsletter (and if you don't, sign up at UnisonFamily.com ), you'll recall my recent article on Gentle Parenting and how it fails your child. Emotional validation is a tactic or technique, while Gentle Parenting is an overall strategy, weak in setting limits and boundaries. I recommend a balance of love and limits found in Authoritative (not Authoritaria

In recent decades, but especially post-Covid, church attendance has declined. Instead of delving into the many reasons for it, I’ll just say: That’s a bad trend for families. In my decades of youth ministry, I witnessed how the arrival of children leads many families to church after years of absence. I also witnessed when children grow up and leave home, parents abandon the church again. Participating in a church home is a biblical principle. Jesus ordained the church’s creat

My two preschool boys had somehow developed a fear of ghosts. Telling them ghosts weren't real did not dissipate their fear, because somebody at preschool had actually seen a ghost. Parental take 2: We discussed what they knew about ghosts, and I confirmed they sounded scary. I wanted to reassure their safety, so I told them our security system came with a special ghost alarm. Once I set the system each evening, the ghosts could not come in secretly. If a ghost moved, our sys

A grandmother was telling me how her grandchildren started sharing what they were scared of. Everyone was surprised when her fourteen-year-old granddaughter revealed how terrified she was of being killed by a school shooter. The granddaughter said her dreams were often filled with scenes of school shootings. During the school day, she refuses to use the restroom at school, because it was a place where she would be trapped without escape if a shooter appeared. This girl sends

A friend and I were discussing one of the trickiest parts of parenting: how to respond to various kinds of disobedience. Parents can fall into a trap of customizing their rules and behavior modification for every different circumstance. When the child does THIS, they counter with THAT, for every new behavior. But this can lead to a Cat-and-Mouse Game. This parenting sets up a contest or puzzle for the child: How can the child get what they want? How can they find a loophole i

When I was raising my kids, I read (and applied) a study showing the number one predictor of academic performance was whether a father asked at dinner about a child’s day at school. Let’s unpack the assumptions in that statement. First, it assumes the family eats dinner together. Families are typically on the run after school lets out. A parent’s job may get in the way of sitting down together for the evening meal, or kids’ extracurricular activities may interfere with dinner

A mistake I made with my first child was to start by assuming that non-compliance to instructions was a battle of wills. I handled them that way while a preschooler and often took that attitude as they aged into new stages. Certainly that one could be a rebel (see next week's free Unison Parenting newsletter for more on rebellious children; sign up at UnisonFamily.com ). But that wasn't always the reason for their lack of obedience. The problem for kids of all ages, including

In my prior post on bullies, I mentioned my own sixth grade experience of being bullied. So, I feel a lot of sympathy for bullied children. I'm going to whisk through a framework for parents of bullied children, then develop a few points further in future blogs. Here is a four-part strategy if your kid is bullied: Detection and Support Strategies Escalation Find Friends In part 1, build open lines of communication in advance so your child knows they can bring their problems t

Yep, bullying still exists. Despite anti-bullying programs, the age-old torment of fellow classmates or teammates goes on. I’ll spend this post and my next on bullying. Here, I ask, what if your kid is one of the bullies? According to StopBullying.gov , there are four factors in bullying. First, it could be the school's culture. The school's leadership may be weak in addressing bullying, look the other way, or deny anything is happening on their watch. I was the new kid in to

I heard one of my favorite football coaches say this week that you get what you emphasize to your team. The same is true for parenting. A good example is the kind of questions you ask your child when they get home from school. One father took a more direct approach than "How was school?" He started asking his 12-year-old son, "Who did you help today?" As a result, the son now starts his daily description with "I held the door,", or "I helped a friend with math," or "I asked s

Parents must strike the right balance between overemphasizing and underemphasizing a child's emotional needs. In my last blog , I showed how parents can veer toward Permissive Parenting when they only focus on love, kindness, and feelings without discipline. On the other extreme are parents who neglect or do not properly address a child's emotional needs. Typically, we see this behavior with the other two negative parenting styles, Dominant Parenting and Neglectful Parenting.

I've been seeing several comments or scenarios lately that indicate the touchy-feely approach to parenting is still going strong. For example: A mom saying she's "in tune" with her three-year-old son. Another mom saying, "Kindness is the only thing that matters in parenting." A dad suggesting, "If you shower your kids with love, they'll be well-behaved." In Unison Parenting terms, these statements all trend toward an unproductive style called Permissive Parenting. Touchy-feel

Chip Waggoner serves as traffic reporter on the Fox 4 Good Day morning show in Dallas-Ft. Worth. He is articulate and fairly athletic. Meanwhile, his son Benjamin was born with unique physical challenges that impact the lower half of his body. Chip’s book, "MIP: Miracle in Progress" tells about his family's faith journey in raising Benjamin. A persistent theme in the book is, "What is normal?" Doctors advised the Waggoners that Benjamin's normal would be different than theirs