Live Better. Love More.
Leave A Legacy.

One of the biggest things I feared before becoming a mom was how to handle my kids’ teenage years.

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My years from junior high and high school should have been filled with the excitement of being a teen. Instead I felt ugly, insecure, and frustrated with life in general. My parents were wonderful in sticking with me during those turbulent years, but looking back gave me more of a sense of doom in my ability to parent a teenager.

As moms, we have so many choices every day of how to spend our time: taking care of children, running errands, doing something for our husbands, cleaning house, going to appointments, preparing meals—the list seems endless.

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And that list doesn’t include doing something specifically for yourself, or spending time just having fun with your children! Both of these items, though often forgotten, are at least as important as the ones on the first list!

No man feels equipped when he first becomes a dad. The sense of responsibility is almost overwhelming the first time a dad holds his first born child. Hopefully, he accepts that responsibility with a no-turning-back resolve.

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But, the success of a father depends on how actively he seeks to learn. For me, the best overview of my responsibility as a dad was found in a 2,000 year-old letter to some folks in ancient Turkey.

The world could use more courtesy and respect towards others. But those things are in lower supply today than ever. The reason: it’s not being modeled and trained to kids at home like it had at one time.

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I’ve written about how training our kids in simple habits such as greeting another goes a long way in cultivating courtesy and respect for others. Another underestimated social courtesy is that of using proper titles.

I have long since forgotten where I heard this phrase—it may have been Zig Ziglar—but, “fight for the bottom”, has been used in our family for years and is now being quoted by my grandchildren. It has diffused many arguments in our household, and it has the capacity to do that for yours as well.

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When a child is born, he knows nothing other than himself. He has very few needs—to be fed, changed, or put to sleep—but those needs are immediate, and they become the central focus of a household. Babies don’t know how to wait. And the only way they know to make their needs known is by crying.

Since I homeschooled, my children were used to being home every day. And yet, when summertime came, they too experienced the lack of direction that traditional school children do.

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What’s a mom to do when her kids have no direction and no motivation to do anything with all of their free time?

Do you consider it to be fair if every child in your family has the same responsibilities as well as privileges?

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Of course not! What you expect from a 12-year-old would not be the same as what you would expect from a 1-year-old. And the privileges that you give a 16-year-old would not be those you’d give to an 8-year-old. That seems easy enough to answer.

I’m concerned that people are less equipped to deal with death today than ever before. Because it’s painful, so much of what happens when a person dies takes place behind the scenes. It’s a stark contrast to just decades ago when a family member who’d died would lie in state in the parlor of the family home before burial.

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I’m not suggesting we return to that, but I do feel that death is a part of life. And we owe it to our kids to help them learn to process death in a healthy way.