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Mar 16

Cleaning Kids

Did you know that most toddlers want to help their parents and most teens don’t? What’s happening with that scenario? For one thing, we adults (into which category I always put young men and ladies progressing through those teen-numbered birthday years) know there are options to spending time. If we use Saturday morning to sleep, talk on the phone, and listen to music, we can NEVER use that same time for practicing an instrument, fixing breakfast for the family, reading a good book, going to a museum, cleaning the kitchen or bedroom, talking with family members, or sharing Christ with someone. It’s a matter of priorities. Read more

Mar 14

Ten Starters for Parents as Preschool Teachers

So much potential in parental preschool programs! So rewarding! So fulfilling! So much hard work! Begin by thinking about these starter suggestions, each of which is worthy of fuller explanation. Read more

Mar 12

Perfect Marriage

In spite of my chattering on here day after day, I am hesitant to give advice about families and marriage relationships and rearing children. I have no confidence what we have done will work for anyone else because no one else has the secret ingredient in our family recipe: the perfect husband and father who has lived with our family since, well, since our family began. Read more

Mar 9

Preschool Hours

I was on the edge of my seat, not because State of the Union addresses are particularly gripping, but because our president was calling for better opportunities for our three and four year old children. Was he going to propose the public education system have mandatory courses covering the care, enrichment and education of children? No. Was his plan to pay mothers a living wage to stay home and tutor their own children? No. Was he going to call for the government to provide enrichment books, games, and learning materials at a discounted price for parents? No. Sadly, the proposal was limited to taking children at an even younger age from their homes for mass produced learning and child care, rather than the individualized tutorial and nurturing environment of a real home.

Deflated, I sat back and realized that the best child care would still not be universally available to the toddlers of America. This newest governmental vision fell short of the gold-standard entitlement package the Lord has for His youngest creations.  Read more

Mar 7

The World before Words

Little approaches the equal parts of awe and dread mingling in new parents’ souls when Baby comes to their arms for the first time.

No matter how eager or prepared parents are, even the best carry to the nursery baggage from their growing up experiences, limitations and gaps in wisdom, and deceptions about what is right when “right,” especially when “right” is a hash of what they want to believe, what they wish were true, what makes it easy for them to excuse their own behavior, and placate their own desires.

We can talk about some baggage. When we say someone is easily angered or quickly impatient, we have a mental picture of how the person behaves.

But those words address elements of the murky world beyond words, the realm of sense and impression, sub-conscious auras, the part of life we can neither express nor explain and, frankly, may not even recognize its influence.

This is the world in which all newborns are steeped, where no mental words explain their knowledge or sense about their world. Adults cannot consciously return to that world without worlds, but we can consider: What if none of my thinking was connected to language? What, or how, would I “know” anything? Read more

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