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.

When I was a child, our family rarely took vacations. I grew up in an unusual family with six children, three of them having special needs. That alone discouraged my parents from taking us all on trips. But in addition to that, it was common in those days to just cash in the vacation days for family needs rather than using the funds to travel.

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Over the years, I remember a few times going to our grandparents cabin up north, but those times were few and far between. I have fond memories of those trips, and wish there would have been more of them. But I understand how difficult those trips were for my parents.